Month: August 2017

Aug 25: Minor draws a million

AUGUST 25, 1983 | LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY • A million fans can’t be wrong. The Louisville Redbirds became the first minor league baseball team to draw more than a million fans in a season on this date in 1983. Not long before that, a million was considered good for a major league team.

Louisville, the St. Louis Cardinals’ triple-A team, reached 1,006,103 in attendance with a crowd of more than 31,000. The Redbirds outdrew three major league teams that year – the Cleveland Indians (768,941), Seattle Mariners (813,537) and Minnesota Twins (858,939).

Minor league baseball experienced an attendance renaissance at the end of the 20th Century and beginning of the 21st. According milb.com, the official website of minor league baseball, minor league baseball draws more fans than the NBA or the NFL. By drawing 39.8 million in 2004 it broke the total attendance record of 39.6 million fans set in 1949.  Minor League attendance peaked in 2008 at 43.2 million.

While attendance has dropped in the last decade or so, it remains above 40 million each year.

[Minor league baseball does not include numerous independent leagues around the country that are not associated with major league teams.]

Contributing Sources:
Minor League attendance 2016
Minor League Baseball history
Major League Baseball attendance 

AUGUST 4: Origin of “Big Red Machine”

AUGUST 4, 1969 | PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA • The powerhouse Cincinnati Reds of the 1970’s was known as the “Big Red Machine,” but who coined the phrase, and exactly when are up for discussion. Tim Crothers, the author of Greatest Teams, published by Sports Illustrated in 1998, claims “Big Red Machine” first appeared in print on this date in 1969 after the Reds and Philadelphia Phillies slugged it out the night before.

The Reds survived 19-17. Pete Rose was quoted in the August 4th papers saying, “We scored so many runs and it was still a close game, but the Big Red Machine did it again and we’re in first place.”

Crothers said Rose was inspired by a 1934 Ford he once had which he called “Little Red Machine.” The story the Associated Press told on August 14, 1969 was that Big Red Machine was coined by Reds Manager Dave Bristol.

Regardless of its origin “Big Red Machine” remains the moniker of teams that performed with business-like precision from 1970 to 1976. With manager Sparky Anderson at the helm during that time, the Reds went 502-300. They won four division titles, three National League Pennants and two World Series.

They did it with the talents of Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, Pete Rose, George Foster, Dave Concepcion, and others.

It’s odd that the Big Red Machine has a reputation of being the best team of the 1970’s though in fact it was the rambunctious, rebellious Oakland A’s – the antithesis of the buttoned-up Cincinnati Reds – that won three World Series in a row (’72, ’73, ’74), including defeating the Big Red Machine in ’72.

CONTRIBUTING SOURCES:
Greatest Teams: The most dominant powerhouses in sports, by Tim Crothers, published by SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, 1998
Associated Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, August 4, 1969.