Baseball loses some of its 'Main Spark' with Anderson's death

"Sparky Who?"

The headline in the Cincinnati Enquirer said what basically everyone was thinking that day. The Reds - the baseball team of my youth - had hired their new manager, some guy named George "Sparky" Anderson.

I had never heard of him. I didn't know anyone who had.

I was outraged.

You have to understand what the Reds meant to anyone growing up in or near southwest Ohio in the 1960s and '70s. Following that team wasn't something we chose to do; we had to, as surely as we have to breathe.

I marked up so many white T-shirts with red Magic Marker pens - usually with Pete Rose's No. 14 - that my mom finally gave up. I wore those shirts for Wiffle Ball games in our back yard, complete with pre-game introductions in the voice of the Reds' public address announcer.

And now that team, my team, had put this career minor-leaguer in charge.

Sparky Who?

We soon found out who.

Sparky Anderson became the greatest manager my team ever had, one of the best in baseball history. He was the man behind the scenes of the Big Red Machine, the finest team of its era. This grand old man died Thursday in California after being admitted to hospice care with complications from dementia.

The world just got a little colder, a lot sadder.

Sparky marshaled a team of superstar egos and talents into a relentless team that won two World Series titles, four pennants, and five division titles. He won another Series championship later at Detroit, but to me and countless others he will always be a Cincinnati Red.

He had a couple of nicknames - the "Main Spark" (for obvious reasons) or "Captain Hook." Starting pitchers in that era expected to finish what they started but Sparky was one of the first to use his whole bullpen. Once you got to the fifth or sixth inning as a starter, it was time to start looking over your shoulder.

He was a wonderfully open man, gentle and welcoming with a twinkle in his eye. He lived in the same modest home in Thousand Oaks, Calif. from the '70 until he died. Once you were his friend, you stayed his friend. He was a big-timer who never acted like one and people loved him for it.

They also loved that he never met syntax he couldn't mangle, such as the time he was asked to compare Yankees catcher Thurman Munson to Johnny Bench.

"Don't never embarrass nobody by comparing them to Johnny Bench," he said, while Munson stood nearby, fuming.

I had no idea as an Ohio teenager that I'd get to meet this man, let alone ever have the privilege of sitting in his office just to talk some ball. After he went to Detroit to take over the Tigers, I used to make up excuses just go to Lakeland for spring training stories when all I really wanted to do was talk with Sparky.

"I've had people say that nobody can be that good, nobody can be that nice," Reds Hall of Fame radioman Marty Brennaman said. "Yes, they can."

We remember him in Tampa, where he got the Machine ready for the 162-game season by spending spring training at old Al Lopez Field.

"He loved Tampa and he loved coming to spring training," Brennaman said. "Let me tell you something though that people never talk about. They didn't realize how tough a guy he could be when the occasion called for it."

Remember how he said don't never embarrass nobody by comparing them to Johnny Bench? That didn't stop him from airing Bench out on the team bus - while his teammates looked on, slack-jawed - when he felt the Hall of Fame catcher was making too much noise after a loss.

Brennaman said he "cried like a baby" when, for reasons passing understanding, the Reds fired Sparky after the 1978 season. I don't doubt that, just as I don't doubt that many more tears are being shed now.

"I've seen him periodically over the years," he said. "He (went) on this Reds cruise they have every November, but the last couple of years he wasn't doing so well. At the Hall of Fame weekend last July in Cooperstown, there were times he'd go in and out when someone asked him a question."

Nothing stays the same. The Reds left Tampa years ago and now spend the spring in Arizona. Tampa Bay has its own baseball team, filled with good people, too. Actually, Sparky would have really liked what the Rays have done. There is a lot of Sparky in Rays manager Joe Maddon.

But a decent, accomplished man has left us.

Sparky Who?

The best, that's who.

God speed.