Cincinnati Reds

As the Cincinnati Red Stockings (what was with the obsession with stocking in the late 19th century…), the Cincinnati Reds had a bit of a rough introduction to professional baseball in 1880 when they were unceremoniously turfed out of the National League after helping to found it in 1876. The reason? Selling beer (and renting their ground out on Sundays). They returned in 1890, abbreviating their name to the Reds and generally showing the new league how not to play baseball for the better part of three decades. Fortune began to swing around for the team starting in 1917, leading to a 1st place finish in the 1919 National League with a record of 96-44 through which the Reds earned the right to face the Chicago White Sox in the World Series. The Reds went on to win five games to three in a nine (!!) game series, but the victory came with a huge asterisk in bold print, as eight Sox players (including the legendary Shoeless Joe Jackson) were alleged to have accepted bribes from shady underworld types to deliberately throw the Series*. The Reds got a more legitimate shot at glory twenty years later, when they faced the mighty New York Yankees in the 1939 World Series, who had won the previous four World Series and were hungry to make it five. The Yanks swept the Reds easily, but the men from Cincinnati would be back in the World Series the very next year, tangling with the Detroit Tigers in a see-saw battle that ended in a dramatic come-from-behind 2-1 win for the Reds in Game Seven (both runs coming via sacrifice: one bunt and one fly ball). The Reds would try again in 1961, but were easily bettered by the Yankees. Their Golden Age was yet to come. Led into the 1970s by greats such as Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, and Joe Morgan, the team was christened The Big Red Machine and went on to finish in their division six times across the decade and appear in four World Series. The Reds were thwarted in their first two attempts, in 1970 by the also-surging Baltimore Orioles and in 1971 by the Oakland Athletics with a heartbreaking 3-2 Game Seven defeat, but bounced back in 1975 and 1976, winning back-to-back World Series over the Boston Red Sox (4-3) and (sweet revenge at last) the Yankees (4-0). After that, the Big Red Machine started to clunk, grow rusty, and discard parts (and Pete Rose was banned from baseball for gambling), and the Reds largely disappeared from the playoffs for a decade, after which they re-emerged to win it all again in 1990 in a sweep of the Athletics. Since then, however, the team has struggled, making the playoffs just five times and winning just a single series: the NLDS in 1995. With the Reds having posted winning records in three of the past four seasons, though, their fans will be heading into 2024 with a shred of optimism that their team can return to the postseason where they feel that they belong. But hey, even if they don’t, at least the Reds can now sell beer (even on Sundays). 

Cincinnati Reds Rivalries

The Cincinnati Reds have a fairly friendly local rivalry with state rivals the Cleveland Guardians (previously Indians) of the American League based on the Ohio Cup, an preseason exhibition game played for a few years before interleague play began in 1997. Their annual series is now known as the Battle of Ohio/Buckeye Series. The Reds also have historic rivalries with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Los Angeles Dodgers that have faded somewhat in recent years due to divisional restructuring. Getting your hands on tickets for such popular matchups can be challenging, so be sure to head to TicketX to find the most affordable tickets to the most exciting Cincinnati Reds games.

*Known as the Black Sox scandal, this unsavory incident led to all eight players being controversially banned from professional baseball for life and the so-called Curse of Shoeless Joe/Curse of the Black Sox that supposedly sentenced the soiled White Sox to their 88 exile from World Series or NL pennant glory.