RCS: Next month, your book The Machine will be released, about the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. After all your research and writing -- having talked to Morgan, Rose, and Bench, among others -- what do you think is the the most overlooked aspect about that team?

Posnanski: I would say there are two things that really struck me. One is that now we look at that team now as this incredible team, and probably one of the most famous lineups probably in baseball history. Even now people can still recite it. But that team got off to a really bad start in 1975. They came into that year having never won the World Series as the Big Red Machine. They'd been to the World Series twice and lost both times. They were sort of facing this not quite good enough existence. When they came into that year they were not favored to win. The Dodgers were pretty clearly favored by most people to win the division. Then they got off to a terrible start and they were absolutely under .500 at the end of May, and there was this feeling it was all falling apart. There was talk about Sparky Anderson getting fired. It was definitely a much, much more turbulent year than even I remembered. Of course you look back on it in the end and they won by twenty games and clinched in early September and it sort of seemed like it was kind of a breeze. But it really wasn't. I don't know that they ever are. But that year in particular was very, very turbulent.

So that was really fun because the book is entirely about that year. That was the year that they played the Red Sox in the great World Series, and that was just a lot of fun to kind of relive that year and go through it both on and off the field.

And then the second and most overlooked thing about that team, probably for me, is just specific to Pete Rose. It's so interesting to me that Pete has sort of developed this reputation throughout the country, throughout the world of people who care about baseball. And it's not an unfair reputation, but it's very, very specific. He's sort of this pathetic figure who gambled on baseball and got thrown out of the game and kind of has just been lying his way through the last fifteen years. Now he shows up in Las Vegas to sign autographs. That's the entirety of what so many people seem to remember about Pete Rose.

One of the real fun parts for me was going back to 1975 when the feelings about him were very very different. That year he played every single game even though the team won by twenty, and Sparky Anderson kept begging him to take a rest; he refused to take a rest. He played the game exactly the way you'd want somebody to play it. He played it hard. He played it fiercely. He ran out every ground ball, and ran out every walk. He did all those things that today the players don't do. They don't play the game that way -- and I don't know if they ever as a pro, played it that way -- but Pete Rose did. And it meant so much to him, baseball was so important to him. He was wonderful to the media; he was wonderful to the fans. There was just a lot of good about him, and there was certainly a lot of bad too, but there was a lot of good about Pete Rose and I think that's a bit overlooked and a bit forgotten.

Hopefully, if people read the book they'll at least get to see that side of Pete Rose. It doesn't change what's happened to him in his life and it doesn't change the person that he has become, but I think it hopefully gives a fuller picture.

10 Questions with Joe Posnanski