1976 World Series: Cincinnati Reds vs. New York Yankees [VHS]

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Product Feature

• Major league baseball
• New York Yankee vs. Cincinnatie Reds
• 1976 world series
• Best series ever. Watch it over and over!!

Product Description

VHS tape in original box. In excellent condition. Dont think it was ever watched.

1976 World Series: Cincinnati Reds vs. New York Yankees [VHS] Review

It hadn't been accomplished in many decades -- a National League team winning back-to-back World Series championships, that is. But in 1976, Sparky Anderson's star-laden Cincinnati Reds did just that, taking their second straight world crown by defeating the New York Yankees, four games to none.

Led by catcher Johnny Bench, who was Series MVP, the Reds knocked off the Yanks by scores of 5-1, 4-3, 6-2, and 7-2. And this came on the heels of Cincinnati's three-game sweep over the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLCS. 7 wins and 0 losses for the Reds in the '76 post-season!

Cincy batted at a .333 clip for the four games of the '76 World Series; while New York could muster just a .222 team batting mark. The club ERA stats were equally one-sided in favor of the Reds -- Cincy's ERA was an excellent 2.00; the Yanks' pitchers amassed a poor 5.45 mark.

28-year-old, 9-year veteran Johnny Lee Bench was on fire during the '76 Series, hitting .533 (8-for-15), with 2 home runs and 6 runs-batted-in. Bench also had 1 double, 1 triple, and 4 runs scored. He struck out just 1 time in the 4 contests. This World Series performance helped to make up for Johnny's poor 1976 regular season (.234 / 16 HR / 74 RBI).

Other top hitters in the '76 Series included George Foster (.429 batting average), Dave Concepcion (.357), Dan Driessen (.357), Joe Morgan (.333), Tony Perez (.313), and Cesar Geronimo (.308).

On the losing Yankees' side, Thurman Munson was a hot hitter, batting .529, with nine hits in the four games. Future Reds' manager Lou Piniella hit .333 for the Yanks during the Series.

Dan Driessen of the Reds had the distinction of becoming the very first National Leaguer to be used as a Designated Hitter in the World Series. Starting with this '76 Series, the DH was used in alternate World Series. In later years, a more sensible system of utilizing the DH was implemented, whereby the DH is only used in the A.L. ballparks. The pitchers are now forced to bat in World Series' games hosted by National League teams.

Cincinnati's Reds won 102 games during the regular season in '76 (following up their 108 victories from 1975), and won the N.L. West title by 10 games over the Los Angeles Dodgers. The third-place team (Houston) finished a very distant 22 games behind the surging Reds.

1976 also represented Cincinnati's 5th trip to the post-season during the first 7 years of the decade of the '70s (missing out on making the playoffs only in 1971 and 1974). The team would find winning their division much more difficult in future seasons, however. The Reds finished a distant second (to the Dodgers) in 1977, the year they acquired pitcher Tom Seaver from the Mets in mid-season. And they finished in 2nd place again in '78. In 1979, the Reds rounded out a successful decade by winning the N.L. West, but losing in 3 straight to the Pirates in the playoffs.

MLB Home Video produced this VHS video, which is narrated by former big-league catcher Joe Garagiola. What with there only being the minimum of four games played during this '76 Series, the video's run time isn't very long (29 minutes). But all the pertinent info and game highlights are included in this color video program. (The picture quality isn't very much to write home about though.)

One quibble regarding this video's packaging -- On all other World Series VHS videos put out by MLB Home Video, the team winning the Series is listed first on the box sleeve (both front and back). But, for some unknown reason, the 1976 Reds are listed SECOND on the packaging (e.g.: New York Yankees vs. Cincinnati Reds). Very odd, IMO. I have yet to encounter another video in the MLB World Series collection that makes this error and displays the losing team first on the box cover.*

* = EDIT: That is, up until the 2005 World Series DVD, which lists the losing team (Houston) before the victorious White Sox. Starting with that '05 disc, they started showing the losing team first for several years in a row. Mighty strange. ~shrug~

Anyway, it's not a big deal obviously. Just a trivial oddity that I noticed.

A semi-off-topic comment (a "1976 Memory Flashback") --- One of the main things I recall about the 1976 Reds/Yanks World Series is being able to watch Game 1 on "videotape" just minutes after the game concluded at Riverfront Stadium. In '76, video cassette recorders were brand-spanking-new, and it seemed quite remarkable (at the time) to be able to "replay" Game 1 of the World Series and see, at my leisure, how Don Gullett beat Doyle Alexander, 5-1.

The video machine used to record that particular game was one of the early, bulky "Betamax" units. Remember those babies? They cost about $2,500 in '76 and didn't even include a built-in timer/clock! The timer, which resembled your bedroom's clock-radio, was a separate box that sat atop the Beta recorder. And it took TWO Beta tapes to record the game, because those tapes could only hold one hour of material. Can you imagine that today? Thank heavens for DVDs, huh? :)

To be quite technical, it might very well have taken even a THIRD Beta videotape to capture every pitch of Game 1 of the '76 Series, with the exact game time being 2 hours and 10 minutes. So, unless those old-time tapes had about 5 minutes of "extra" tape tacked on to their 1-hour spools (which is likely, similar to VHS tapes nowadays), then I guess a third tape must have been utilized to get the final ninth-inning out of Game #1. That final out in the Reds' 5-1 win, for the record, was a foul pop-up caught by third baseman Pete Rose, hit by Yanks' pinch-hitter Oscar Gamble. Pedro Borbon was on the mound and threw that last pitch of the game. Oh, btw, Gamble wore uniform number 23. Borbon wore #34. -- Now THAT'S baseball trivia at its finest! :-)

For those who can recall the Cincinnati Reds' short-lived, two-year "dynasty", this video serves as a valuable keepsake and reminder of when the Reds sat atop the major-league baseball world.

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