My Big Red Machine

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>This is the 50th anniversary for the first of the back-to-back World Series titles for Major League Baseball's storied Big Red Machine and out of all the books written about those Cincinnati Reds teams of the 1970s this is the most unique. It is filled with great storytelling through vivid writing. It involves Terence Moore who pulled a rarity. He went from living and dying with his sports heroes as a youth to dealing with them up close and personal on a regular basis. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>They say you should never meet your heroes.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Terence did . . . and more.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Not only that but Terence built a lifetime bond with several of them while becoming an award-winning journalist and a Baseball Hall of Fame voter.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Terence began hugging those Reds as a fan during the late 1960s and he continued into the 1970s. Then on May 7 1978 he graduated from Miami (Ohio) University located 35 miles north of Cincinnati and a week later he became a professional sports journalist for </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>The Cincinnati Enquirer. </em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>He often was assigned by the paper to write about those Reds. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Terence had to learn in a flash how to control his awe around a clubhouse filled with perennial All-Stars and future Baseball Hall of Famers. Since newspapers still were in their heyday during the Big Red Machine's era he also had to find ways to survive and to prosper in that massive and competitive media environment.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>That was despite two things: (1) Terence usually was the youngest writer by far consistently around those Reds and (2) he was the first full-time African American sportswriter ever to work for a major metropolitan paper in the region. In fact he was one of just two African Americans in the country writing about baseball on a consistent basis in that capacity and he gives fascinating details on his Jackie Robinson role.</span></p>