Before the Machine. Mark J. Schmetzer
expect when they showed up at aging Plant Field, which had been built by Henry B. Plant in 1899 as an area to provide activities for guests staying at his Tampa Bay Hotel. The Reds worked out at Plant Field before moving to Al Lopez Field for Grapefruit League exhibition games, clearing the way for Cincinnati’s minor league teams to start their camps.
“For a minute, I thought I had the wrong camp,” outfielder Gus Bell said shortly after arriving for spring training. “There sure are a whole lot of fellows here I don’t know.”
“When we went to spring training, you would wait to see who’s coming through the door,” Maloney said.
Several players expected the faces to change as camp progressed. Going into camp, general manager Bill DeWitt believed Hutchinson’s biggest challenge would be developing a second base combination out of the mix of Cardenas, Chacon, Eddie Kasko, and Jim Baumer. Cardenas, twenty-two by then, was generally regarded as an outstanding defensive shortstop, but he’d hit just .232 in forty-eight games with the Reds in 1960 after being called up from Jersey City of the International League on July 24. Cardenas replaced Chacon, twenty-four, who’d made the Reds out of spring training in 1960, but he hit just .181 in forty-nine games before being sent to Jersey City.
The twenty-eight-year-old Kasko had been named the Reds Most Valuable Player in 1960 after hitting .292 while playing mostly third base, which automatically became Gene Freese’s spot after DeWitt acquired him from the Chicago White Sox in a December trade.
Kasko, who played with Freese for St. Louis in 1958, also was a possibility at second base, though the favorite going into camp was Baumer, a former prospect who’d broken into the major leagues at the age of eighteen with the White Sox in 1949. He appeared in eight games with Chicago that year and then didn’t return to the majors until 1961 at the age of thirty.
Baumer had been picked by the Reds out of the Pittsburgh system in the 1960 Rule 5 draft after hitting .293 at Salt Lake City the previous season. Salt Lake City general manager Eddie Leishman was on record as believing the right-handed-hitting Oklahoman could hit .260 and drive in runs at the major league level.
“I think I can do better than that,” Baumer said.
“He’ll have to play his way off this ballclub,” DeWitt said.
Catcher Hal Bevan, who played for Seattle against Baumer in the Pacific Coast League in 1960, also respected Baumer’s potential.
“He’s one of the most consistent players I’ve ever seen,” said Bevan, a PCL All-Star in 1960. “He does a good job every day.”
Others were less impressed. Rumors of trades swirled around camp the entire spring. One had relief pitcher Jim Brosnan being dealt to San Francisco for his former Cardinals teammate, second baseman Don Blasingame. Well-traveled relief pitcher Bill Henry fully expected to not open the season with Cincinnati.
“I thought sure I would be traded during the winter,” said Henry, who believed he’d fallen behind left-hander Marshall Bridges in the bullpen pecking order. “In fact, I began getting the feeling last summer. If you’ll remember, I wasn’t used much after the All-Star Game. I was going badly, and the other fellow got a chance and made good.”
Bridges, a drawling Mississippian from Jackson known as “Fox” and “Sheriff,” had gone 4–0 with a 1.07 ERA in fourteen games after being picked by the Reds from St. Louis on waivers in August, but Henry still possessed a crackling fastball that made him too valuable to give up—at least, for the time being.
Bevan was among a corps of inexperienced candidates to back up incumbent Ed Bailey behind the plate. Though thirty years old, he had a total of twenty-one games of major-league experience, none since appearing in three games for Kansas City in 1955.
The other choices were John Edwards, a Columbus, Ohio, native and Ohio State University student, and twenty-six-year-old Jerry Zimmerman, a former Boston prospect who’d been signed by the Reds as a free agent in September 1959. Neither player had appeared in a major league game. Edwards, a chemical engineering student, reported late because he was finishing the semester.
The rest of the regulars seemed to be fairly settled. Coleman, who won the Southern Association Triple Crown with Mobile in 1959, looked ready for full-time duty at first base after hitting .324 in ninety-three games with Seattle and .271 with six home runs and thirty-two RBI in sixty-six games with the Reds in 1960. He might’ve opened the 1960 season with the Reds if he hadn’t struggled through a miserable spring training.
“There’s sure a big difference in him this spring,” Hutchinson said about Coleman. “He’s relaxed—not all tensed up.”
Dick Sisler, who managed Coleman at Seattle in 1960, believed that the raves from winning the Triple Crown undermined the big, affable first baseman.
“He tried to justify all of the publicity he got, and the pressure got to him,” Sisler said.
Pinson and Robinson were destined to hold down two of the three outfield spots, with Bell and Post battling for right field after combining to hit thirty-one home runs in 1960.
Also in the outfield mix was Jerry Lynch, though it was more likely that he would resume the role of primary pinch-hitter for which he’d already become famous. The left-handed batter, known for his aggressive approach, set the National League’s single-season record for pinch-hit appearances with seventy-six in 1960—beating the record of seventy-five set by Sam “Sambo” Leslie for the New York Giants in 1932—and turned in nineteen hits, three short of Leslie’s record. Lynch also drew eight walks.
Other than the middle infield situation, Hutchinson focused on the pitching, especially the rotation. Purkey, invariably described by sportswriters as “the handsome changeup artist,” had led the team with seventeen wins and a .607 winning percentage in 1960 despite possessing less-than-overpowering stuff. The Pittsburgh native had good size and could occasionally uncork a fastball with some speed on it, but he depended more on style than on substance. He also liked to mix in knuckleballs, which would make his fastball look even more imposing.
O’Toole was coming off a 12–12 season in just his second year in the majors and third in professional baseball. He had won six of his last ten decisions after getting married on July 2, still making his scheduled start on July 3 at Chicago, which he lost, falling to 6–8.
The newly acquired Jay, because of his potential and what the Reds gave up to get him, was penciled in for a third starting slot, but after him, the competition was wide open.
One frontrunner was the immensely talented Maloney, who wouldn’t turn twenty-one until June 2. Maloney had been called up to the Reds during a massive reshuffling toward the end of July in 1960. He made the jump from Double-A Nashville, where he’d gone 14–5 and been picked to play in the all-star game, an appearance he couldn’t make because, by then, he was with the Reds.
Almost simultaneously, Coleman was brought in from Triple-A Seattle, where he’d put together an all-star half-season, and Cardenas was called up from Triple-A Jersey City.
Maloney suffered through the expected growing pains, going 2–6 with a 4.64 ERA in eleven games, ten of them starts. Still, he showed signs of the dominant pitcher everybody expected him to become. One was his 5–0 complete-game win over Philadelphia on September 24.
“Altogether, six guys got called up to get their feet wet in the middle of the 1960 season,” Maloney recalled. “I just knew that I’d gotten a taste of the big leagues and had a chance to stay on the team going to spring training.”
Maloney may have been the most famous of the youngsters. He’d been a hotly pursued prospect after an outstanding career at Fresno High School, where he hit .310, .340, and .500 in his last three seasons and .485 in an American Legion tournament, in which he was named the outstanding player, while playing for Fresno Post No. 4 in 1957. There were as many teams that wanted him to play shortstop as wanted him to pitch, even after he put together a stretch of nineteen consecutive no-hit innings for Fresno City College.
Maloney often has been described as a “bonus baby,” but he wasn’t