About Cincinnati Reds
The franchise was founded in 1881 and it is said thanks to them the professional baseball was born. Prior to that though Cincinnati Red Stocking became the first professional baseball team that went into winning over 70 games against overmatched teams in the Midwest. And so the story continued with the team being officially named Reds in 1890 until 1953 which changed their rebranding to Redlegs to avoid association with the communists that lasted only five years and since 1960 the Reds have been named what they are now.
Besides the AA Pennant in 1882 the franchise struggled for success and it wasn’t until the famous 1919 where the Reds finally reached the top. After winning their first NL Pennant the Reds reached the World Series title against the White Sox but it wasn’t long until the news of several White Sox players throwing the game away on purpose in gambling scam emerged.
The whole event was branded the Black Sox Scandal and the very first Reds’ championship became a bit tainted. The franchise needed whole 20 years to win another NL Pennant in 1939, but it took two World Series to bring the title home year later in 1940 which they we on against Detroit.
Since then the team had won 6 more NL Pennants giving them 9 in total and out of the six World Series appearances the Reds brought home three more titles, back to back in 1975 and 1976 and their last one in 1990 against the Oakland for a total of five World Championships.
The Reads have been a member of Central Division in NL since 1994 (previously they were allocated to West Division) and won 3 division titles for a total of 10.
They last appeared in playoffs in 2013 after clinching wildcard berth. Their colours are red, black and white and their mascot, Mr. Red has some friends in Mr. Redlegs, Gapper and Rosie Red creating a one happy mascot gang.
The Reds’ players dominated the seventies as the team had 6 MVPs in the period of 1970-77 with Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan clinching the trophy twice. Funny enough the franchise has not yet fielded a CY Young award winner. Their last MVP was Joey Votto in 2010 who had been joined by Johnny Cueto as one of the recent brighter spots of the franchise. Cueto was the league strikeout champion in 2014.
It is easily seen that the seventies were a bright spot in the team history as the Reds had 3 100 win seasons out of their total 4 in that period of time. Their best regular season remains 1975’s effort of 108-54.
Fans of the Cincinnati would like to forget their team’s last season effort that saw them finish last in their division with a poor 64-98 effort. Hopefully this year will be more retro like in the memory of the seventies.
