Big Red Machine cogs, immortalized in iconic photo, celebrate championship’s 50th anniversary

Pitcher Will McEnaney and catcher Johnny Bench, keys to dramatic 1975 World Series victory, live in Palm Beach County.

Fifty years later, the two old Big Red Machine batterymates still get together to reminisce — and not just because they live 15 minutes from each other in Palm Beach County. 

When you win the World Series together two years in a row, on a team considered among the best in baseball history, it’s a bond no distance can break.

Long before moving to Palm Beach Gardens, Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench led the Cincinnati Reds to back-to-back championships in 1975 and ’76. He was a key piston in the machine’s so-called “Great Eight” starting lineup. 

Future Royal Palm Beach resident Will McEnaney, an unflappable left-handed relief pitcher, played a key role on those teams with clutch performances in high-pressure situations, shutting down the final opposing batters in close games. 

With Bench behind the plate, McEnaney threw the pitches that induced the final outs in both the ’75 and ’76 championship clinchers.  

The two players are immortalized together on an iconic 1975 Sports Illustrated magazine cover of an image captured by photographer John Iacono: McEnaney, his face contorted in ecstatic joy, jumping into Bench’s arms the moment Cincinnati got the final out in the dramatic seven-game classic over the Boston Red Sox. 

Now, in retirement, they’re Palm Beach County neighbors with a unique World Series connection.

“Here’s Will. It was a great reaction from him when the series was over,” Bench, 77, said from his home office where the framed cover hangs on a wall. “I mean, can you imagine being the last pitcher on the mound, the closer that gets the job done to win the World Series?”

McEnaney, 73, never imagined playing Major League Baseball let alone becoming just the third pitcher in history to close out back-to-back championships.  

“It was the most unbelievable feeling,” he recalled the other day, reliving Oct. 22, 1975, as if it were yesterday. “Here I am, 23 years old. It’s almost indescribable, and this is 50 years ago. I still remember the feeling. Incredible.” 

Big Red Machine reunion

Bench and McEnaney try to get together at least once a year. This year they joined 21 of their teammates from the ’75 and ’76 teams at a Big Red Machine 50th anniversary reunion in Cincinnati.

Bench, as dedicated a leader in retirement as he was on the field, played a major role in organizing the four-day event in late June, knowing it could be the last time they all see each other. 

“It was an emotional, heartwarming time. We hadn’t seen some guys in 50 years. As soon as someone walked into the hotel lobby, it was hugs and screams,” Bench said, laughing as he recalled how “we’re all limping around and talking about the weather and the medications we are on.”

Bench said he set up a “stipend” for each player and arranged for personalized Big Red Machine “member” jackets, caps and Tommy Bahama shirts — “so nobody can doubt the fact that this is a real member of the Big Red Machine. I guarantee you they’ll be wearing them to the grocery store.”

Many were in tears during a roll call of teammates who have died over the years, including manager Sparky Anderson and players Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Don Gullett and Pedro Borbon.

“It was really a special treat for all of us to be there, and it’s our last opportunity,” Bench said. “Fifty years had taken its toll on a lot of us. We were happy that 25 of us were still around to appreciate and enjoy the anniversary of such a great feat.”

‘We never would have won without Will’

When he’s in South Florida, Bench tries to stay in touch with his old teammates. Tony Perez, one of his closest friends, is in Miami. Jack Billingham is in New Smyrna Beach. Rawly Eastwick is in Georgia. 

“I’ll see Will two or three times a year,” said Bench, who called McEnaney on Feb. 14 to wish him a happy birthday. “Even though we are not (in touch) on a daily or weekly or monthly basis, it still never changes the respect and the feelings we have for each other.” 

Years ago when McEnaney worked as the scoreboard operator for Florida State League games at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium in Jupiter, Bench would stop by the press box to hang out.

“I remember sitting there one day with Johnny and Will,” recalled John Frost, the stadium’s public address announcer during McEnaney’s tenure. “And Johnny looked at me and said, ‘We never would have won without Will.’ He went out of his way, with Will sitting there, to compliment his friend. I thought that was so classy of Johnny.”

Hard road to the major leagues

For Bench, the championships are the crown jewels on a sparkling Hall of Fame career: two-time Most Valuable Player, 14-time All-Star, 10-time Gold Glove winner, first catcher to win the Rookie of the Year award. 

For McEnaney, the championships are the highlights of a career he never thought he’d have.

Unlike Bench, who once said he practiced signing his autograph as a fifth-grader, McEnaney struggled just to play youth baseball in Springfield, Ohio. He still remembers “Mrs. Mosier,” the coach who finally gave him and his 7-year-old twin brother, Mike, their first chance after other Midget League coaches rejected them. (He said he never knew her first name.)   

A mischievous teenager, Will was suspended from the high school baseball team for drinking beer, casting doubt on whether any major league team would want to take a chance on him. He played on summer travel teams, hoping to get noticed by scouts. 

One day in 1970, he thought he was headed to Vietnam when his mother screamed from the kitchen, “Will, you’ve been drafted!” She showed him the newspaper blurb about the Reds drafting him in the eighth round.

A dramatic World Series

Five years later, he was on the mound at Fenway Park in the top of ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series, charged with holding a one-run lead and facing the top of the Red Sox batting order.  

The series had been full of incredible drama. Five games were decided by one run. The night before, Carlton Fisk’s home run off the foul pole in the 12th inning ended Game 6, keeping alive Boston’s dream for the team’s first championship since 1918. 

In Game 7, with the Reds trailing 3-0 after five innings, McEnaney remembers sitting in the bullpen wondering how much he’d get from the losing team’s share of World Series money. But Cincinnati rallied to tie it, then scored the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth inning. 

The way the series had gone, it wouldn’t have surprised anyone if the Red Sox rallied again in the bottom of the ninth.  

“We’ve all got a little bugaboo. We are all on edge, a lot of tension about that last out,’’ recalled Bench, who said he played the final two games battling the flu and a fever. 

“Here I am thinking about ‘how in the hell are we going to do it?’ We can’t let this slip away now,” he said. “And Will just walked in, easy breezy, ‘here I am,’ unfazed, and did the job.” 

McEnaney retired all three batters he faced, the last his boyhood idol, future Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski, who popped an easy fly out that delivered the Reds’ first championship since 1940.

“As soon as (center fielder Cesar Geronimo) camped up under it, I turned around to John. John’s coming out to me saying, ‘What do we do? What do we do?’ So I just jumped in his arms. And it was over. Just like that,” he said. 

‘I bought every copy they had’

A few days after the World Series parade in downtown Cincinnati, McEnaney visited his parents in Springfield. There was a knock on the door. 

It was “Mrs. Mosier,” his very first baseball coach. 

“She comes out to my parents’ trailer and she’s got the Sports Illustrated and she wants me to sign it. It was the first time I’d seen it: ‘Oh, my God!’” he said, recalling his reaction. 

“I signed it for her. Then I went around to different places to find the Sports Illustrated but couldn’t find any. Finally I did, and I bought every copy they had.”

Of the five Sports Illustrated covers Bench appeared on, he said the cover he shared with McEnaney is most special, even if it only shows just the star catcher’s back.

“That was the moment that really transcended,” Bench said, “because we had lost two World Series, in ’70 and ’72, and now we finally win. It was a major, major thing for the Reds and Cincinnati.”

Bench was behind the plate a year later when McEnaney closed out the Big Red Machine’s four-game sweep of the Yankees. Two months later, Perez was traded, along with McEnaney, to the Montreal Expos, a move many consider the end of the Big Red Machine. 

The road to South Florida

McEnaney, whose major league career ended in 1980, moved to South Florida after a divorce from his first wife. He moved to Royal Palm Beach with his current wife in 1995, about six years after his final go at baseball with the West Palm Beach Tropics of the Senior Professional Baseball Association. (He spent the entire season on the disabled list.) 

He doesn’t follow baseball much these days. He said the game’s too different from the one he played.

As a Hall of Famer, Bench is a baseball ambassador who makes appearances and helps raise money for charities. He has lived in north Palm Beach County since 2014, owning a waterfront home in Jupiter before moving to Palm Beach Gardens around 2018. 

That the two batterymates happened to wind up in retirement as South Florida neighbors was part of their individual journeys that started with the Big Red Machine. 

“Will and I had a bond along with Rawly Eastwick, the two closers. There’s just a common thing we shared together night after night under pressure when he had to come in and do the job. And he was there faithfully,” Bench said. 

“He was dedicated to what he was doing. He had everything, all the tools, the pitches, the demeanor. What I admired about him more than anything was he was confident in the fact that he wanted the ball. He was unfazed by any situation that he came into. It takes a very special man to do that and that’s why I was so appreciative of Will.”