When I was a young boy, I had a poster in my bedroom that showed cartoon caricatures of the stars of the Cincinnati Reds poised upon a large tractor (a Big Red Machine, as it were) and was labeled with the declarative caption "Team of the 70s". I took the statement as an unquestioned given, without wondering if there were other franchises who could lay claim to the same title. Given that it was already into the 1980s before I remember looking at the poster, I didn't even question if the ten-year crown was a title that had any meaning other than as promotional braggadocio, spread over a rather arbitrary stretch of time.
A short essay concerning the opening of Spring Training
