The Big Red Machine's Last Hurrah - by Randy Freking & Grant Freking (Paperback)

About the Book

What if I told you that the Big Red Machine was deprived of one last World Series run - not by competing teams, but by MLB owners?

This is the story of the bizarre 1981 season and how the Cincinnati Reds were excluded from the playoffs despite owning baseball's best record.

Incorporating fact and fiction, "The Big Red Machine's Last Hurrah" delivers corrective justice to Johnny Bench, Dave Concepción, George Foster, Ken Griffey and their talented teammates, supplying this special group with a final shot at glory in the Greatest World Series Never Played."The Big Red Machine's Last Hurrah" tells the real story of the infamous strike interrupted 1981 MLB "split season" concocted by Bowie Kuhn that resulted in the Reds being excluded from the postseason despite possessing the best record in baseball - and then what should have happened!

The fictional part of the book details the lawsuit that was filed to prevent this unjust result, Judge Joe Jackson's wise decision, and the resulting greatest World Series never played.

Book Synopsis

What if I told you that the Big Red Machine was deprived of one last World Series run - not by competing teams, but by MLB owners?

This is the story of the bizarre 1981 season and how the Cincinnati Reds were excluded from the playoffs despite owning baseball's best record.

Incorporating fact and fiction, "The Big Red Machine's Last Hurrah" delivers corrective justice to Johnny Bench, Dave Concepción, George Foster, Ken Griffey and their talented teammates, supplying this special group with a final shot at glory in the Greatest World Series Never Played."The Big Red Machine's Last Hurrah" tells the real story of the infamous strike interrupted 1981 MLB "split season" concocted by Bowie Kuhn that resulted in the Reds being excluded from the postseason despite possessing the best record in baseball - and then what should have happened!

The fictional part of the book details the lawsuit that was filed to prevent this unjust result, Judge Joe Jackson's wise decision, and the resulting greatest World Series never played."

Review Quotes

"A rollicking treatise from Uncle Randy and nephew Grant. They elevate the true story of the highway robbery of the 1981 Cincinnati Reds, who had the best overall record in MLB that year, into a whopper of a yarn with a satisfying and serendipitous ending. Mesmerizing from the first page to the last. Baseball as it should be!"
JOHN ERARDI
Award-winning Cincinnati sportswriter and author of multiple books on the Cincinnati Reds

"Grant and Randy Freking take us on a delightful journey about the travesty of the 1981 baseball season that I witnessed first hand from the radio booth. It is about time one of the greatest Reds teams receives the recognition that was stolen from them!"
MARTY BRENNAMAN
The voice of the Cincinnati Reds from 1974 to 2019 and recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award presented by the National Baseball Hall of Fame for his outstanding work as a broadcaster.

"I used to wear a red T-shirt that screamed 'We Wuz Robbed' across the front. It referred to baseball's moronic split season of 1981 that kept the last remnants of the Big Red Machine out of the playoffs. That shirt is long gone. The distaste for that season never went away. But now, Randy and Grant Freking have provided a remedy, a frolic of fact and fiction into the courtroom and back onto the diamond. We've always wondered 'What if?' Now we know."
JOHN POPOVICH
Retired Cincinnati WCPO-TV
(Channel 9) sports director & anchor.

"As imaginative as it is infuriating, 'The Big
Red Machine's Last Hurrah' circles back to one of the game's greatest injustices. No statute of limitations on barrister Randy Freking and his baseball lifer nephew Grant's lingering outrage over the improvised conclusion to the 1981 MLB season. A travesty that could only be concocted by a commissioner whose name sounds like 'Boo-ey'! Fashioning fact, fury and fantasy into such an entertaining read required a Triple Crown of passion, research and imagination. A bottom-of-the-ninth, walk-off homer!"
DENNIS JANSON
Retired Cincinnati WKRC-TV
(Channel 12) & WCPO-TV (Channel 9) sports anchor.

"Combining the best of fact and fiction, Randy and Grant Freking have merged an imagined legal brawl with a crisp historical account of the infamous 1981 season, and turned the courtroom and playing field upside down with their version of what should have happened. No spoiler alert here, but let me say Reds fans will find plenty to cheer about."
GREG RHODES
Author, Reds team historian and
former executive director of the Cincinnati Reds Hall
of Fame and Museum.

"This book proves the cliché that truth is stranger than fiction. Here, the fiction makes more sense than the historical facts!"
JACK GREINER
Noted First Amendment attorney, writer and
cohost of the podcast, "WE LOVE OUR TEAM"

About the Author

RANDY FREKING is a lifelong baseball fan and current cohost of the
podcast, WE LOVE OUR TEAM. He lives in Cincinnati with his wife,
Sue, and they have four adult children and enough grandchildren to
field a starting lineup. They are blessed with many nieces and nephews,
including coauthor Grant.
A retired lawyer versed in labor law, Randy is the author of Cincinnati's
150-Year Opening Day History: The Hoopla Started With A Parade
(Cincinnati Book Publishing, 2018); coauthor with Mike Zilliox of
@Titanicstruggle: The Best of Marty Brennaman (Cincinnati Book
Publishing, 2020); author of The Real Employee Handbook (CreateSpace
Independent Publishing Platform, 2012); and author of the ABA Consumer
Guide to Employee Rights (American Bar Association, 2015). Randy was
listed in every edition of Best Lawyers in America from 1994 through his
retirement in 2020.
Randy graduated from The Ohio State University College of Law, along
with classmates and avid baseball fans, Jim Neary and Bob Kiss. Neary and
Kiss, bearing the pseudonyms of Jim Far and Bob Smack in the fictional
chapters herein, were Randy's co-conspirators in filing the lawsuit that
inspired this book.

Grant Freking is also a lifelong baseball fan and overall sports enthusiast. He lives in Cincinnati, surrounded by family and friends.
A journalist/writer since age 16 and a graduate of The Ohio State University, Grant currently works in marketing and communications for the University of Cincinnati. He has written for a host of brands, magazines, newspapers, and websites, covering everything from high school gymnastics meets in Lafayette, Indiana, to signage and graphics conventions in Las Vegas. His writing has garnered honors from the Public Relations Society of America's Cincinnati chapter, Society of Professional Journalists, Indiana Associated Press Media Editors, Hoosier State Press Association, and Indiana High School Baseball Coaches Association.