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him at third base and let him make all the plays—every hit he gets will be a bonus.”
    Before spring training started, Sparky could admit that Howsam made some sense. Even after spring training started, he could admit it when he was away from the ballpark, at the hotel, by the pool, lounging in the sun. Howsam’s words rang true on lawn chairs. Sparky would put Vukovich at third base and let him save all those runs with his brilliant defense. And sure, the Machine would still score plenty of runs. Sparky had Tony Perez back, he had his guys Bench and Morgan and Rose, he had a few turds who showed promise—yes, inthe lazy humidity of midafternoon, Sparky had himself convinced. But early the next morning, he would come back to the ballpark in Tampa, and he would feel that moist Florida chill on his arms, and he would watch Balsa hit slow, useless ground balls during batting practice, he would watch Balsa hit candy bloops to the shortstop. Then the rage would bubble all over again—there was no way on God’s green earth that he could have that turd playing every day for the Big Red Machine. Not this year.
    “Fix him, damn it,” he screamed at Big Klu.
    “You mean that literally?” Big Klu asked.
    “I don’t know what I mean,” Sparky said, and he kicked the dirt.
     
    “The Nautilus machine” became the punch line for Tony Perez’s favorite spring training joke. Baseball players—most of them anyway—did not lift weights in 1975. The compelling wisdom of the time was that baseball players who lifted weights would lose their flexibility, though the compelling wisdom of the day may have been written by baseball players who did not want to lift weights. Let the football players do that stuff.
    Still, the Reds had one of the very first Nautilus pullover machines. It was a gift from Arthur Jones, the inventor. Jones had this idea that he could create a machine that would help everyday people build up their muscles without going to a dark gym and lifting enormous barbells for hours. Who had the time to be Charles Atlas? Jones hoped to spread the word of his miraculous machine by giving one to the Cincinnati Reds. He wanted to say that his machine pumped up the Big Red Machine.
    Of course, none of the players used the thing except to hang jockstraps on it. Nobody even knew how to use it. That was why Tony Perez invented the “Nautilus machine list.” It was a simple gag: He would walk around the clubhouse and suddenly notice a player. Andhe would say, “What are you doing here? You are supposed to be working on the Nautilus.”
    The player would laugh. But Tony would look at him seriously.
    “You gonna be in big trouble with Sparky,” he would say. He pronounced “big” like “beeg.” “He put you on the list. Didn’t you see the list?”
    Some players fell for it. Most didn’t. But it tickled Doggie either way.
    “Hey, fatty,” Doggie said to Joe Morgan. “How much you eat this off-season? It’s a good thing your name on list to work out on Nautilus today. We can’t have a fat second baseman. I cannot go and field all your ground balls.”
    Morgan smiled. He always thought that this was what made the Machine different. This was their power. Nobody had feelings. Nobody showed weakness. Nobody took offense. When you played for the Machine, you never worried about the other team heckling you—the cruelest taunts always came from your own dugout. They called Morgan shrimp, midget, piss-ant, and much crueler and cruder stuff. But it was okay. Joe knew how to fight.
    “Doggie, what are you even doing here?” Joe asked. “Weren’t we supposed to trade you? I guess we couldn’t find even an American League club that would take your sorry ass.”
    Yes, Joe had a way of stabbing for the heart. Tony Perez had spent an agonizing winter in Puerto Rico worrying about being traded. Howsam called Perez into his office on the last day of the season, and he asked for permission to trade Perez. That’s how it