The Machine by Joe Posnanski Page B

on baffling principles. For instance, he refused to sign autographs, even for kids. Especially for kids. “As an athlete I am no one to be idolized,” he told Sports Illustrated. “I will not perpetuate that hoax.”
    The Reds thought: What kind of Communist would not sign an autograph for a kid? It was un-American. The Reds players believed wholeheartedly that baseball players not only deserved to be idolized by kids, but should be idolized by kids. That’s how it was when America was strong. Kids looked up to the pitcher Walter Johnson, and then they went off to fight World War I. Kids looked up to Babe Ruth, and then they endured the Depression. Kids looked up to Lou Gehrig and Bob Feller and Joe DiMaggio, and then they went to fight again in World War II.
    “With Watergate, and with politicians under attack and all kinds of investigations, it’s important that the young people have somebody to look up to,” Bench told New York Daily News columnist Dick Young, and he was speaking for the whole Reds team. “Maybe it sounds corny to a few people, but that’s what made this country.”
    Still, none of that quite gets to the heart of why Marshall so paralyzed the Reds. They could deal with his quirkiness, his scholarship, his subversive attitude toward autographs, even his bizarre notion of baseball being insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But there was one other thing about Marshall that spooked them.
    That son of a gun could pitch every…single…day.
    “He can’t keep it up,” Pete Rose said again and again during the 1974 season. The Dodgers were a good baseball team that year, but the Reds felt sure they were better. Even as the Dodgers pulled ahead in the race, the Reds felt sure that they would win in the end. General manager Bob Howsam would sit in his office and compare his Reds players to Dodgers players, man to man, and it was like they said on the Snickers commercial of the time: no matter how you sliced it, it came up peanuts. The Reds had better players. The difference was Marshall. He seemed inescapable. The Dodgers beat the Reds in back-to-back games in April—Marshall pitched in both games. In three nasty games in Los Angeles (the fans threw garbage and batteries at Rose), the Dodgers swept the Reds—Marshall pitched in all three games. The Dodgers beat the Reds three out of four back in Cincinnati in early July, and Marshall pitched in the three victories.
    It was crazy. It was unprecedented. Marshall pitched in 66 of 97 games before the All-Star break. He pitched two out of every three days. And his arm never seemed to tire. His body never seemed to break down. There was something wrong about it, something unnatural—a pitcher was supposed to throw his pitches, then grab a beer, dump his elbow in a bucket of ice, and deal with pain until his next time out. Marshall did not seem to feel pain. He seemed invulnerable. He announced that he had discovered secrets about pitching. He claimed that he had conducted experiments that proved a pitcher using the correct form could throw every day. But he did not need to show his experiments; he was a living example. In late June, early July, Marshall pitched in 13 straight games, a record. In September, Marshall pitched in 18 games as the Dodgers held off the Reds. Marshall pitched in 106games in 1974, which beat the old record by an amazing 14 games. And Marshall held the old record too.
    “They didn’t beat us,” Rose told reporters after the season ended and the Reds had lost. “They can’t beat us. We beat ourselves.” Only it wasn’t true. The Dodgers did beat them. Marshall beat them. He won the Cy Young Award. He finished third in the Most Valuable Player voting, behind his teammate Steve Garvey (though every Reds player knew Marshall was more valuable). Then, during the off-season, Marshall announced that he had made some more discoveries and that in 1975 he would no longer pitch two out of three days—he would pitch three out of