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worked in 1975. Only a few years earlier, players were traded freely, like baseball cards, and it didn’t really matter what they thought about it. They had no right to stop any trades, no control of their own destinies. But times were changing. The Major League Baseball Players Association had hired a tough old labor economist named Marvin Miller, who had negotiated for the steelworkers’ union. And Miller scared the hellout of the baseball owners. They rushed to offer concessions in the desperate and ultimately doomed hope that they could hold off the inevitable pain of player free agency. Perez had been with the Reds for more than ten years, and because of that he had the right to veto a trade if he wanted.
    “I just want you to sign this waiver,” Howsam said, and he slid a paper in front of Doggie.
    Perez would not sign the waiver. He could not sign it. He was an original member of the Machine—a founding member, to tell the truth. He signed with the Reds in 1960, just as the United States broke off relations with his native Cuba. He had given up his life for baseball; Tony had seen his mother and father once in a dozen years. The Reds were his family. He could not imagine himself playing for any other team.
    Doggie also could not imagine why the Reds wanted to trade him. They called him “Big Dog” (and variations of that canine theme—“Doggie,” “Pup”) because, as the Reds’ old manager Dave Bristol said countless times: “If the game lasts long enough, the Big Dog will win it.” Doggie had driven in ninety or more runs for eight straight seasons; nobody else in either league had done that. The brilliant Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray did not even know how close he was to the mark when he wrote: “Perez runs more to Gary Cooper than Carmen Miranda.” Murray was writing a gag, making the point that Perez was not hot-blooded like people might expect a Cuban player to be. But Gary Cooper was about right. Perez was the marshal, the calming force of the Machine, the star who did not act like a star, the surest bet to drive in that runner from second base at high noon.
    Reporters in general, though, did not get Doggie. They liked him fine, and they respected him. But they had trouble summing him up. Reporters on deadline needed droll quotes and pithy lines or cutting (and brief) analysis. Pete Rose would sit in the clubhouse and thinkup clever lines for the reporters. Joe Morgan, even then, sounded like he belonged on television.
    “How’d you do it, Doggie?” the reporters would ask after he smacked another game-winning hit.
    “See the ball, hit the ball,” Perez would say every time—every time—and after a while everyone around him, including those reporters, would say the words with him. Then they would go to Pete or Johnny or Joe to get the quote they needed for the paper.
    In the clubhouse, Tony Perez may have been Gary Cooper, but outside it he remained in the shadows—so much so that even his general manager, Bob Howsam, and his manager, Sparky Anderson, did not fully appreciate how much Doggie meant to the team.
    “If we do trade you, we will try to trade you to a contender,” Howsam said. “But I cannot make you any promises.”
    Perez did not speak. There was nothing to say. He did not sign the waiver. He went home to Puerto Rico, and he ran every day on the beach, and he let the realities consume him. If the Reds wanted to trade him, there still was not much he could do about it. Yes, technically, he could refuse the trade. He could embarrass the Reds. But where would that leave him? It would leave him stuck on a team that did not want him. He could not live like that. He waited every day for the news that he had been traded, and he prayed every day that the news would not come.
    A miracle happened. Every time the Reds tried to trade Perez, something fouled up. The Reds were close to trading Doggie to Kansas City for George Brett, only the Royals chickened out. The Reds were