I stopped rooting for the Reds – Maysville, Ky., is just up the mighty Ohio from Cincinnati – because they made one of the great trades in baseball history. I didn’t care that they landed Joe Morgan, who would win consecutive MVPs. All that mattered to me was that they traded Lee May.
May was the first baseman in the initial manifestation of the Big Red Machine. I knew the Reds had better players – Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, maybe Bobby Tolan. I liked them, too. I liked May more. He was the Big Bopper from Birmingham. If you care to check, he led the 1971 Reds in WAR, though back then War was a silly card game nobody ever won. (You’ll also note that 1971 was the Reds’ one bad season of the era.)
For a year, I hated the Reds. I rooted against them – I pulled for Oakland, the team of long hair and mustaches – in the 1972 World Series. The Reds had traded my guy.
