Before the Machine: The Story of the 1961 Pennant-Winning Cincinnati Reds (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781578604630)

Except for twenty-two months from 1989 into 1991, Mark Schmetzer has lived his entire life in Greater Cincinnati and spent most of that time following, rooting for, and writing about the Cincinnati Reds. In 2010, he co-authored The Comeback Kids (Clerisy Press) with Joe Jacobs. That season was the twenty-fifth out of the last twenty-seven in which the La Salle High School and University of Cincinnati graduate covered the Reds on a daily basis. He started in 1984, the Reds' first season without an active Johnny Bench, writing for RedsVue, a paper that later became Reds Report. The 1961 Reds clinched the National League pennant on his sixth birthday. He lives in Forest Park, Ohio, with his wife, Sharon