‘LITTLE JOE’ STOOD TALL
Two-time MVP helped ‘Big Red Machine’ win two Series
CINCINNATI — At 5-7, he was the shortest cog in the ‘‘Big Red Machine.’’ But to his star-powered teammates, Joe Morgan was a driving force.
Morgan, the Hall of Fame second baseman who became the sparkplug of the dominant Reds teams in the mid-1970s, died Sunday at his home in Danville, California, a family spokesman said in a statement Monday. He was 77 and suffered from a nerve condition.
‘‘Joe Morgan was quite simply the best baseball player I played against or saw,’’ Reds Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench said in a text to the Associated Press.
Morgan’s death was the latest among major-league greats this year, including Whitey Ford, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Tom Seaver and Al Kaline.
‘‘All champions,’’ Bench said. ‘‘This hurts the most.’’
Morgan was a two-time National League Most Valuable Player (1975-76), a 10-time All- Star and a five-time Gold Glove winner. Known for flapping his left elbow at the plate, ‘‘Little Joe’’ could hit a home run, steal a base and disrupt any game with his daring.
Most of all, he completed the Reds’ twotime World Series championship team, boosting a club that featured players such as Pete Rose, Tony Perez and Bench to back-toback titles after coming over in a trade with the Astros before the 1972 season.
‘‘Joe would always amaze me,’’ Rose said. ‘‘He was by far the most intelligent player I’ve ever been around. He rubbed off on all of us. A big part of the ‘Big Red Machine.’ ’’
Morgan’s tiebreaking single with two outs in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 1975 World Series gave the Reds the crown against the Red Sox, and he spurred a fourgame sweep of the Yankees the next season.
In a 22-year career, Morgan scored 1,650 runs, stole 689 bases, hit 268 homers and batted .271. But those stats hardly reflected the force he created on the field.
Confident and cocky, he also was copied. His habit of flapping his back elbow as a way to keep it high when hitting was imitated by Little Leaguers in Cincinnati and beyond.
There was a moment of silence held at Petco Park in San Diego before the Astros and Rays played Game 2 of their American League Championship Series.
‘‘He meant a lot to us, a lot to me, a lot to baseball, a lot to African Americans around the country, a lot to players that were considered undersized,’’ said Astros manager Dusty Baker, a longtime friend. ‘‘He was one of the first examples of speed and power for a guy they said was too small to play.’’
After his playing career, Morgan spent years as an announcer for the Reds, Giants and Athletics, along with several networks. He was an analyst for ESPN’s Sunday night telecasts from 1990 to 2010 and won two Sports Emmy Awards.
Morgan was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990, the first year he was eligible, and always recognized his place on one of the all-time great teams.
‘‘Bench probably had the most raw baseball ability of any of us,’’ Morgan said before his Hall of Fame induction. ‘‘Pete had the most determination to make himself the player he was. Perez was the unsung hero. I guess I was just a guy who could do a lot of things.’’