Before the Machine. Mark J. Schmetzer

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      “I got things turned around there—got off to a fast start and never looked back,” Maloney recalled. “After I got called up to the Reds, I started to feel like I could play at that level, so I felt pretty good when I went home for that winter.”

      “Maloney doesn’t necessarily have the inside track, but you’d like to see a kid like him win it,” was the manager’s assessment at the time. “I’ll be satisfied if Jim wins ten or twelve for us. Sure, he has a lot of ability, but the major leagues are tough, and there’s no substitute for experience. Jimmy will make it big eventually, I’m sure, but he has a lot to learn.”

      While Maloney was a frontrunner for a starting job, by no means was he a lock. Left-hander Claude Osteen, a local favorite from the small town of Reading, Ohio, located just north of Cincinnati, also was one of those 1960 late-July callups. Osteen was only seventeen when he made his major league debut with the Reds on July 6, 1957, but he made just three appearances that season and two in 1959 before going 0–1 with a 5.03 ERA in twenty games, including three starts, in 1960.

      Also in the mix was right-hander Jay Hook, for whom time was running out. Baseball had been waiting for years as Hook decided which course he wanted his life to take. Pitching was one option, especially after the Waukegan, Illinois, native signed on August 17, 1957, for one of the largest bonuses ever paid to a pitcher. Hook, in fact, was among the traditional bonus babies from that era. He joined the Reds on September 2 and made his second big league start on September 29 and pitched five hitless innings in Milwaukee against a Braves team that would go on to win the World Series.

      Hook teased the Reds with occasional performances of that caliber over the next three seasons, just enough to keep the franchise hopeful of seeing its investment pay off, but he also seemed distracted by his other option. A very intelligent man out of Northwestern University, Hook graduated in 1959 with a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. He would earn a Master’s degree in thermodynamics in 1964, prompting him to retire from baseball and take a job with Chrysler.

      Hook’s career conflict didn’t go unnoticed by his teammates.

      “What do you think of the academic quality of the Engineering School at the University of Cincinnati?” he asked relief pitcher Jim Brosnan, a conversation recounted in Pennant Race, Brosnan’s diary of the 1961 season. Hook and Brosnan were aboard the team bus in St. Louis on their way to Hook’s first start of the season.

      “I no more knew the answer to that question than a girl hop-scotch player would know how to handle Warren Spahn’s curve, so I paused, pseudo-sagely, and said, ‘One of the best in the country.’

      “Hook nodded, saying, ‘I’ve got to start a lab project somewhere. My whole summer is just about wasted, don’t you see? Research-wise, that is.’

      “‘Sorry baseball’s interfering with your career,’ I mumbled.

      “’How about researching twenty-seven hitters for tonight’s game,’ I thought to ask, but held my tongue, foregoing such mundane matters. Maybe Hook relaxes before a game by planning his future.”

      Barely on the Reds’ radar going into spring training was Ken Hunt, a big right-hander from Ogden, Utah, who had struck out twenty-one batters in one game, averaging two per inning, and thrown two no-hitters in high school. He also was an all-state basketball player and attended Brigham Young University before signing with the Reds in 1958. He went a combined 5–16 in his first two seasons before finding the key in 1960 with Columbia, South Carolina, of the Class A South Atlantic League, also known as the Sally League. Hunt helped Columbia to the regular-season championship while leading the league with sixteen wins, a .727 winning percentage, and 221 strikeouts. He was the only unanimous pick for the league’s post-season all-star team and was named by the National Association of Baseball Writers as the pitcher on the all-star team for all Class A-level leagues. That performance earned an invitation as a non-roster player to Cincinnati’s spring training camp.