Building the Essential Cincinnati Reds Library
The 38 Best Books about the Cincinnati Reds
Over the years, I’ve been trying to accumulate a library of the essential books about the Cincinnati Reds. Mostly because — and this may shock you — I like to read and I like the Reds. A perfect marriage of my interests! And while I’ve shifted over to digital books in recent years, I need physical copies of all of my Reds books.
During the research phase of “The Big 50,” my obsession for these books went into overdrive. I scoured eBay and Amazon, trying to acquire any of the books that I didn’t own yet. I probably spent too much for a couple of them, but I’m pretty happy with my current library.
If you’re interested in putting together your own Reds library, or if you’re just looking for something to read, I present: The Essential Cincinnati Reds Library. At the end, just to make it a round number (The Big 50, perhaps?), I list my twelve favorite non-Reds baseball books, too. You’re welcome!
The Inner Circle
The Big 50: The Men and Moments that Made the Cincinnati Reds by Chris Garber and some other guy. Second edition coming soon!
100 Things Reds Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Joel Luckhaupt. You should read this not only because Joel (statistician for Reds broadcasts on Fox Sports Ohio) is a friend and an all-around good dude. It’s also the law. You MUST read this before you die.
The Machine: A Hot Team, a Legendary Season, and a Heart-stopping World Series: The Story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds by Joe Posnanski. The definitive book about the definitive Reds team, written by the best sportswriter working today.
Game Six: Cincinnati, Boston, and the 1975 World Series, by Mark Frost. Really good chronicle of a single game. A game the Reds lost, to be sure, but…well, you know.
Redleg Journal: Year by Year and Day by Day with the Cincinnati Reds since 1866 by Greg Rhodes and John Snyder. Published in 2000 and long out of print, this is actually probably my favorite Reds book of all time. If you can find a copy, you need to have it. Long due for an update, but if you’re a Reds fan, you’ll have plenty of fun just flipping through this every so often.
Cincinnati's Crosley Field: A Gem in the Queen City by various authors. A look back at the greatest games in Crosley Field’s history. You need this one mostly because I wrote three of the chapters.
Books you need on your shelf
The Wire-to-Wire Reds: Sweet Lou, Nasty Boys, and the Wild Run to a World Championship by John Erardi and Joel Luckhaupt. Was that a fun season or was that a fun season? Well, this is a fun book.
Big Red Dynasty: How Bob Howsam & Sparky Anderson Built the Big Red Machine by Greg Rhodes and John Erardi. Rhodes and Erardi are legends of the Reds writing game, and this is one of the better entries.
Pennant Race by Jim Brosnan. Reds reliever Brosnan’s memoir of the 1961 season in which the Reds won the National League pennant. I’ve read this one a couple of times, and I’m guessing I’ll read it again one of these days.
The Cincinnati Game by Lonnie Wheeler and John Baskin. I don’t know how to describe this book except to say that it’s full of odds and ends about Reds history, and it’s a pretty fun read. Another book I’d like to see updated.
Cincinnati's Crosley Field: The Illustrated History of a Classic Ballpark by Greg Rhodes and John Erardi. Pictures and memories of Cincinnati’s beloved ballpark.
Baseball Revolutionaries: How the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings Rocked the Country and Made Baseball Famous by Greg Rhodes, John Erardi, and Greg Gajus. Rhodes and Erardi were joined by my friend Greg for another excellent entry into the genre.
The First Boys of Summer by John Erardi and Greg Rhodes. An earlier (1994) version of the 1869 Red Stockings story.
Opening Day: Celebrating Cincinnati's Baseball Holiday by John Erardi and Greg Rhodes. Exactly what it sounds like.
Catch You Later: The Autobiography of Johnny Bench by Johnny Bench and William Brashler. Published in 1979, this isn’t exactly hard-hitting journalism but it’s interesting enough. I’m waiting for someone to write the definitive account of Bench’s escapades off the field in the 1970s.
Joe Morgan: A Life in Baseball by Joe Morgan and David Falkner. Much of Morgan’s baseball analysis hasn’t aged well, but his stories of his life and career are outstanding.
Before the Machine: The Story of the 1961 Pennant-Winning Reds by Mark Schmetzer. I really enjoyed this one. Published in 2011, it is the best account of a special Reds season since Brosnan’s memoir.
The Comeback Kids by Mark Schmetzer and Joe Jacobs. Did we really need a book about the 2010 Cincinnati Reds? Sure, why not?
Tony Perez: From Cuba to Cooperstown by John Erardi. Biography of the heart of the Big Red Machine.
The Great Eight: The 1975 Cincinnati Reds by Mark Armour (Editor). Did we really need another book about the Big Red Machine? Sure, why not?
Cincinnati Seasons: My 34 Years with the Reds by Earl Lawson. Lawson covered the Reds from 1949 to 1984, primarily for the Cincinnati Post. The book is exactly what it sounds like: Lawson’s memories and recollections from three-plus decades on the beat.
The Real McCoy: My Half-Century with the Cincinnati Reds by Hal McCoy. Published in 2015, this is McCoy’s memoir of his years covering the Reds for the Dayton Daily News.
The Red Stockings of Cincinnati: Base Ball's First All-Professional Team and Its Historic 1869 and 1870 Seasons by Stephen D. Guschov. I’ll be honest, I haven’t read this one. But it’s on my shelf, so I suppose I’ll get around to it someday.
Cincinnati Reds Scrapbook by Bob Rathgeber. A “collection of the great players, the unusual characters, the fascinating incidents” in Reds history. Honestly, this isn’t very good. But it does exist!
Big Red: Baseball, Fatherhood, and My Life in the Big Red Machine by Ken Griffey. Senior’s autobiography is mostly entertaining.
The rest…
Memories of a Ballplayer: Bill Werber and Baseball in the 1930s by Bill Werber and C. Paul Rogers. Memoir from the heart and soul of the 1939 and 1940 championship clubs. Well worth your time if you’re interested in that era of big league baseball.
Making the Big Red Machine: Bob Howsam and the Cincinnati Reds of the 1970s by Daryl Raymond Smith. Yet another Machine tale, this one focusing on GM Howsam.
Arlie Latham: A Baseball Biography of the Freshest Man on Earth by LM Sutter. Latham is the most entertaining Reds personality you’ve never heard of, and this book does him justice.
Cincinnati Red and Dodger Blue: Baseball's Greatest Forgotten Rivalry by Tom Van Riper. Reds fans of a certain vintage will remember when this was perhaps the biggest rivalry in baseball. Seriously, kids, it’s true!
The Hunt for a Reds October: Cincinnati in 1990 by Charles Faber and Zachariah Webb. All in all, I prefer Erardi and Luckhaupt’s story of the Wire to Wire Reds, but I could probably read ten books about that team.
The 1976 Cincinnati Reds: Last Hurrah for the Big Red Machine by Doug Feldmann. I bet you can guess what this book is about.
Tales from the Cincinnati Reds Dugout: A Collection of the Greatest Reds Stories Ever Told by Tom Browning and Dann Stupp. This isn’t exactly the greatest book on this list, but I have a soft spot for it because I loved Browning and he came on my podcast to promote the book. Rest in peace, legend.
Cincinnati Reds Legends by Mike Shannon. Of all the books written about the Cincinnati Reds, this is certainly one of them.
Day by Day in Cincinnati Reds History by Floyd Conner and John Snyder. A precursor to Redleg Journal, published in 1983.
Big Klu: The Baseball Life of Ted Kluszewski by William A. Cook. Have you ever wanted to learn more about Big Klu? Well, now you can!
Born to Play: The Eric Davis Story: Life Lessons in Overcoming Adversity On and Off the Field by Eric Davis and Ralph Wiley. Written in the aftermath of Davis’ cancer scare, this is a readable account of his life and career.
Harry Wright: The Father of Professional Base Ball by Christopher Devine. Much respect for spelling “base ball” as it was spelled in 1869.
The 1940 Cincinnati Reds: A World Championship and Baseball's Only In-Season Suicide by Brian Mulligan. I haven’t read this account yet, but I did write about the sad story of Willard Hershberger.
Etc.
What follows are my favorite books about baseball that aren’t primarily about the Reds. The first five below are absolutely indispensable. If you’re a baseball fan, you have to read these.
The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski. My favorite baseball book of all time.
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. Perhaps the most influential sports book ever.
Ball Four by Jim Bouton. There was a time when I read this every single spring. Still laugh out loud funny, it’s Bouton’s memoir of his 1969 season on the mound.
The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter. I picked up the audiobook version of this and listened on my drive back from college one year. It blew me away, and I’ve listened to it a couple more times over the years. I recommend the audiobook because it contains the actual audio of Ritter’s interviews with players from the deadball era. Great stuff.
The Summer Game by Roger Angell. Angell is the greatest baseball writer of all time, and this — his first — is his best one, in my opinion. If you have a Kindle, you may want to pick up this collection, containing three of Angell’s best (The Summer Game, Five Seasons, and Season Ticket). When I lay my head on my pillow at night, I dream of writing as beautifully as Roger Angell. Alas, those are heights I’ll never reach.
The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve picked this up, flipped to a random page, and enjoyed the ride.
Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments by Joe Posnanski. The most entertaining book I read last year. Well worth your time.
Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof. The Reds won that World Series fair and square.
Summer of '49 by David Halberstam. A recounting of a magical summer of DiMaggio’s Yankees and Williams’ Red Sox.
Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig by Jonathan Eig. I think I’ve read every baseball biography from the major publishers, and this was perhaps my favorite.
UPDATE
Thanks to all of you who commented and emailed me about this piece. I’ve updated it below with your suggestions, some of which I had considered for my original list (but cut so that I could keep it to a tidy round number of 50 books).
Reds books
The Cincinnati Reds by Lee Allen.
Redleg Memories: The Reds of the Fifties and Sixties by Greg Rhodes.
Pete Rose: An American Dilemma by Kostya Kennedy.
Marge Schott Unleashed by Mike Bass.
The Pete Rose Story (1970) and Charlie Hustle (1974), “both ghosted by Bob Hertzel.”
Baseball books
The Baseball 100 by Joe Posnanski.
Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of ‘76 by Dan Epstein.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler.
Veeck As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck by Bill Veeck and Ed Linn.
Books by Dave Parker, Lou Piniella, and Davey Johnson were also mentioned.
I would add “Baseball My Way” by Joe Morgan. While not strictly a Reds book, all of the photos of him are in a Reds uniform. This was my go-to baseball book growing up. I took it out of the library every year before baseball season and read it cover to cover. It didn’t necessarily make me a better player, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. A few years ago I found a used copy and have now added it to my own library.
Cobra by Dave Parker is definitely worth it. It is just a good book. His Reds time is a small part of the story though so much of his life runs through Cincy is fantastic.