The Cincinnati Reds, a Major League Baseball team, were originally members of the American Association from 1882 to 1889; the team has played in the National League ever since, being one of only five 19th-century teams still playing in its original city.
1866–1896: The original "Red Stockings" and the pre-NL days
An amateur team formed by lawyers that gradually added professionals was originally called the Resolute Base Ball Club of Cincinnati, but the name was soon changed to the Cincinnati Base Ball Club. The team became known as the Cincinnati Red Stockings due to its wearing knickers rather than the traditional trousers, with red knee socks- a costume condemned as "immoral" by the more prudish. It became baseball's first openly all-professional team when it became fully professional in 1869. The Red Stockings won 130 straight games throughout 1869 and 1870, before being defeated by the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn. Star players included brothers Harry and George Wright, Fred Waterman, and pitcher Asa Brainard. The 1869 Red Stockings made an eastern swing of 21 games and went undefeated. According to Walter Camp, the team received a banquet and a "champion bat ... this rather remarkable testimonial was twenty-seven feet long and nine inches in diameter." The following year, the team lost only one game. They were defeated at the Brooklyn Athletic's Capitoline grounds park. According to Camp, the Red Stockings lost 8–7 in 11 innings. The game apparently served as a precursor to today's unruly crowds because he wrote: "A crowd of ten thousand people assembled to witness this match, and so lost their heads in the excitement as to give the Western men a very unfair reception.""Base-Ball For The Spectator" Walter Camp, Century Magazine October 1889]
The Red Stockings lost many players and their namesake in 1870, when the team decided to dissolve. The name went to Boston where, in 1871, a new team featuring some of Cincinnati's former stars began play, wearing the same trademark knickers and red knee socks and thus similarly dubbed "Red Stockings" by the press. This franchise would eventually become the Atlanta Braves. A new Cincinnati Red Stockings team became a charter member of the National League in 1876, five years after the first Red Stockings team. The second Red Stockings team was expelled from the league after the 1880 season, for 'violating' rules which had not yet gone into effect: namely, serving beer at games and allowing their park to be used on Sundays.
A third Cincinnati team of the same name was founded in 1881, becoming a founding member of the American Association, a rival league that began play in 1882. That team (which is the same franchise of today) played for eight seasons in the American Association and won the first Association pennant in 1882. The pennant winning club still holds the record for the highest winning percentage of any Reds club to date (.688). In November 1889, the Cincinnati club and the AA's Brooklyn franchise both left the Association for the National League. Around this time, sportswriters started dropping "Stockings" when writing about the club and used simply "Reds", likely to avoid confusion with the established NL club in Boston, which was also referred to in the press as "Red Stockings".
1890–1911: In the National League for good
The Cincinnati Red Stockings left the American Association in 1890 to play in the National League.Palmer, Peter & Gillette, Gary, editors, The Baseball Encyclopedia. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2004, pp 1370 & 1387. One of the main reasons had absolutely nothing to do with the team directly—the upstart Player's League, an early, failed attempt to break the reserve clause in baseball. The league's impending presence severely weakened both previously existing leagues, and, because the National League decided to expand and the American Association was weakening, the team decided to accept the invitation to become members of the stronger National League. It was also at this time that the press first shortened their usual nickname from "Red Stockings" to "Reds". The Reds wandered through the 1890s signing local stars & aging veterans. During this time, the team never finished above third place (1897) and never closer than games (1890).
At the start of the 20th century, the Reds had hitting stars such as Sam Crawford and Cy Seymour. Seymour's .377 average in 1905 was the first individual batting crown won by a Red. In 1911, Bob Bescher stole 81 bases which is still a team record. Like the previous decade, the 1900s were not kind to the Reds, as much of the decade was spent in the league's second division.
In 1911 the club made its longstanding monicker official, putting "Reds" on its uniforms for the first time; that Reds-inside-elongated-C "wishbone" logo remains in use to this day.
1912–1932: Redland Field to the Great Depression In 1912, Redland Field, later to be known as Crosley Field, built on the corner of Findlay and Western Avenues on the city's west side opened for the Reds. The Reds had actually been playing baseball on that site for the last 20 years. By the late 1910s the Reds began to come out of the second division. The 1918 team finished 4th, and then new manager Pat Moran led the Reds to an NL pennant in 1919. The 1919 team had hitting stars led by Edd Roush and Heinie Groh while the pitching staff was led by Hod Eller and Harry "Slim" Sallee, a left-hander. The Reds finished ahead of John McGraw's New York Giants, and then won the world championship in 8 games over the Chicago White Sox.
By 1920, the "Black Sox" scandal had brought a taint to the Reds' first championship. In the remainder of the 1920s and early 1930s the Reds were second division dwellers for most of those years. Eppa Rixey, Dolf Luque and Pete Donohue were pitching stars; the offense never quite lived up to the pitching. By 1931 the team was bankrupt, thanks to the Great Depression, and Redland Field was in a state of disrepair.
1933–1940: Revival of 1930s Powel Crosley Jr., an electronics magnate who, with his brother Lewis M. Crosley, produced radios, refrigerators, and other household items, bought the Reds out of bankruptcy in 1933, and hired Larry MacPhail to be the General Manager. Powel Crosley Jr. had also started WLW radio and the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation in Cincinnati and was doing quite well as a civic leader. (WLW has been the Reds' radio flagship for decades.) MacPhail began to develop the Reds' minor league system and expanded the Reds' base. The Reds, throughout the 1930s, became a team of "firsts". Crosley Field, (formerly Redland Field), became the host of the first night game in 1935. Johnny Vander Meer became the only pitcher in major league history to throw back-to-back no-hitters in 1938. Thanks to Vander Meer, Paul Derringer, and infielder-turned-pitcher Bucky Walters, the Reds had a solid pitching staff. The offense came around in the late 1930s. Ernie Lombardi was named the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1938, First baseman Frank McCormick was the 1940 NL MVP. Other position players included Harry Craft, Lonny Frey, Ival Goodman and Lew Riggs. By 1938 the Reds, now led by manager Bill McKechnie, were out of the second division finishing fourth. By 1939 they were National League champions. The Reds were swept by the New York Yankees in four straight. In 1940, they repeated as NL Champions, and for the first time in 21 years, the Reds captured a World championship, beating the Detroit Tigers 4 games to 3.
1941–1969: Kluszewski, Robinson, and the beginnings of a machine World War II and age finally caught up with the Reds. Throughout the remainder of the 1940s and the early 1950s, Cincinnati finished mostly in the second division. In 1944, Joe Nuxhall, (who was later to become part of the radio broadcasting team), at age 15, pitching for the Reds on loan from a Hamilton, Ohio Junior High School, became the youngest person ever to play in a major league game—a record that still stands today. Ewell "The Whip" Blackwell was the main pitching stalwart before arm problems cut short his career. Ted Kluszewski was the NL home run leader in 1954. The rest of the offense was a collection of over-the-hill players and not-ready-for-prime-time youngsters.
During 1954, the Reds changed their name to the Redlegs in response to the Second Red Scare and the height of the Communism movement. The name change never really caught on, and was reversed prior to the 1959 season.
In 1956, led by National League Rookie of the Year Frank Robinson, the Reds hit 221 HR to tie the NL record. The 1957 season brought two tough moments. The first caught Reds fans stuffing ballot boxes by having seven Reds in the All-Star Game. As a result, voting was banned until the 1970s. Around this time, the Dodgers and Giants left New York in favor of California. There were talks of moving the Reds or another National League club to New York. The maturation of Robinson and other players, increasing attendance in Cincinnati and a proposed third major league (which in turn prompted the established leagues to add four expansion teams including a replacement NL franchise for New York) halted those talks.
By 1961, Robinson was joined by Vada Pinson, Wally Post, Gordy Coleman and Gene Freese. Pitchers Joey Jay, Jim O'Toole, and Bob Purkey led the staff. The newly renamed Reds captured the 1961 National League pennant, holding off the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants, only to be defeated by the perennially powerful New York Yankees in the World Series. The Reds had many successful teams during the rest of the 1960s, but did not produce any championships. They won 98 games in 1962 (paced by Purkey's 23), but finished third. In 1964, they lost the pennant by one game, having taken 1st place when the Phillies collapsed in September but then losing out to the Cardinals. In that 1964 season, the beloved leader of the Reds, manager Fred Hutchinson, died of cancer, succumbing just weeks after the end of the 1964 season, one of baseball's most exciting pennant races ever. The failure of the Reds to win the 1964 pennant led to owner Bill DeWitt's selling off key components of the team, in anticipation of relocating the franchise. After the 1965 season he executed what may be the most lopsided trade in baseball history, sending former Most-Valuable Player Frank Robinson to the Baltimore Orioles for pitchers Milt Pappas, Jack Baldschun, and outfielder Dick Simpson. Robinson went on to win the MVP in the American league for 1966, win the "triple crown", and lead Baltimore to its first ever World Series title in a four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Reds did not recover from this trade until the rise of the "Big Red Machine" of the 1970s.