"Big Red Machine" featured on MLB Network
Hall of Famers and former Cincinnati Reds teammates Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez - members of the "Big Red Machine" - are featured in a new episode of MLB Network's Studio 42 with Bob Costas on Friday, December 3 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT. Throughout the hour-long interview filmed in Cooperstown, New York in July 2010, Bench, Morgan and Perez discuss playing for the late Hall of Fame Manager Sparky Anderson, winning the 1975 World Series against the Boston Red Sox in seven games, where the Reds? dynasty of the 1970's ranks in Major League Baseball history, and if former teammate Pete Rose should be a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Prior to Studio 42 with Bob Costas, MLB Network's live nightly studio show during the offseason, Hot Stove, will air at 6:00 p.m. ET with updates and analysis of the moves all 30 clubs are making and planning in preparation for the upcoming season. Studio 42 with Bob Costas is presented by Travelers.

Highlights from the interview include:

BENCH ON THE BIG RED MACHINE
"Joe Morgan was the one guy that absolutely put our team really over the top....Then we had George Foster come in, Ken Griffey Sr. was as good a two-place hitter as there has ever been in the game, and Cesar Geronimo won four Gold Glove awards. I mean, how could you ask for a better team?"

MORGAN ON PLAYING FOR HALL OF FAME MANAGER SPARKY ANDERSON:
"Sparky Anderson made sure that not only these three guys [Bench, Perez and Morgan], but everybody on the team knew that we were only a little small spoke in the wheel. We weren't the wheel. Everybody in here is part of this wheel. And you do your job, and he didn't care whether Johnny Bench drove in the winning run, or Pete Rose or whomever. He just said, 'Get it done.' And we did."

MORGAN ON WINNING THE 1975 AND 1976 WORLD SERIES:
"We were a complete team. We could do more than just pitch and hit. We could run the bases, we could play defense. And I've said it before, we were the smartest team I've ever been around.... Bob Howsam was the General Manager who put this team together. He said to me after we won in 1976, 'Joe, there will never be another team like this.'"

BENCH ON PETE ROSE BEING INELIGBLE FOR INDUCTION TO THE NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME:
"If Pete Rose got help and came out and said, 'I have a problem. I realize now that I have a problem.' And if he fell on his knees and said, 'My gosh, I'm sorry to all of America and all of baseball.' I think it would have been two years, three years, five years at most."

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