On This Day: October 20, 1990 — Cincinnati Reds Complete Stunning World Series Sweep

Nobody outside Cincinnati gave the Reds a real chance. The Athletics had won 103 games in the regular season, their third straight year leading all of baseball in wins, and they were the defending World Series champions looking to become the first team to repeat since the 1977-78 Yankees. Canseco and McGwire — the “Bash Brothers” — had combined for 76 home runs and 209 RBIs that season. Rickey Henderson had just won AL MVP hitting .325 with 28 homers and 65 stolen bases. Vegas had Oakland as heavy favorites. Four days later, the A’s were golfing.

The 1990 Cincinnati Reds — wire-to-wire NL West champions who went in as 103-win Oakland’s biggest underdogs and left as world champions.

A Team That Never Trailed

Lou Piniella was in his first season as a big-league manager, and he never needed a second one to prove he belonged. His Reds led the NL West from Opening Day straight through to the pennant — a true wire-to-wire title, something only a handful of teams have ever pulled off. Piniella leaned on a bullpen trio nicknamed the “Nasty Boys” — Rob Dibble, Randy Myers, and Norm Charlton — who turned seven-inning leads into locks, and on a rotation anchored by a 25-year-old right-hander who was about to have the October of his life.

Jose Rijo Shuts the Door

Jose Rijo, traded away by Oakland years earlier, got the ball for Game 1 and again for the clincher in Game 4 — a built-in grudge match against his old organization. In the opener he threw seven shutout innings in a 7-0 rout. In Game 4 he was even better when it mattered most, working 8⅓ innings and allowing just one run before handing the ball to Randy Myers to close it out. Rijo finished the series 2-0 with a microscopic 0.59 ERA and 14 strikeouts, earning World Series MVP honors without much argument from anyone.

Jose Rijo’s 1990 Topps card. The right-hander went 2-0 with a 0.59 ERA against his former team and took home World Series MVP.

Game 4 itself was tight to the final out. Rijo and Oakland starter Dave Stewart — a rematch of their Game 1 duel — traded zeroes into the eighth inning before the Reds finally broke through. Barry Larkin led off with a single, Herm Winningham laid down a bunt single, and a throwing error by Stewart loaded the bases. Glenn Braggs grounded out for the first run, then Hal Morris lifted a sacrifice fly to bring home what turned out to be the winning run in a 2-1 final. It wasn’t a blowout. It was a knife fight that the better-prepared team won.

Billy Hatcher’s Record That Still Stands

If Rijo was the story of Game 4, Billy Hatcher was the story of the whole series. The Reds leadoff man opened the Fall Classic by ripping seven consecutive hits across Games 1 through 3, breaking a 66-year-old World Series record of six straight hits shared by Goose Goslin (1924) and Thurman Munson (1976). He finished the series 9-for-12 — a .750 batting average that blew past Babe Ruth’s 1928 mark of .625 and remains the highest batting average in World Series history to this day, more than three decades later. Hatcher didn’t win MVP — that went to Rijo — but for three games he was, statistically, the best hitter October had ever seen.

The Sweep Nobody Saw Coming

The Reds’ sweep of the A’s remains one of the most lopsided World Series upsets ever by regular-season record — a 91-71 team taking down a 103-59 juggernaut without so much as a close series. Oakland’s offense, built around three future 500-home-run-caliber sluggers in Canseco, McGwire, and a rejuvenated Henderson, managed just eight runs across all four games against Cincinnati’s pitching staff. The “Bash Brothers” image that had defined the A’s dynasty for three straight pennants never got going. Dennis Eckersley, Oakland’s lights-out closer, had already blown a save and the lead in Game 2, letting the Reds steal a game they had no business winning — and by the time Game 4 arrived, Oakland’s aura of invincibility was already gone.

Reds players mob Billy Bates at home plate during the series — a celebration that repeated itself three days later when Cincinnati finished the job in Game 4.

For a Reds franchise that hadn’t won it all since the Big Red Machine’s back-to-back titles in 1975-76, the 1990 championship was the last one the city would celebrate for decades. It’s remembered less for any single swing and more for the sheer completeness of the upset: a team that led wire-to-wire in its own division, then went into Oakland’s building and beat the defending champions four straight times without ever trailing in a game it needed. Thirty-six years later, Hatcher’s .750 is still standing, untouched, as the gold standard for a hot bat in October.

Sources

• 1990 World Series Game 4 Box Score — Baseball-Reference — final score, pitching lines, attendance.
• Billy Hatcher’s 1990 World Series Record — National Baseball Hall of Fame — Hatcher’s consecutive-hits and batting-average records.
• 1990 World Series Summary — Baseball-Reference — series results, MVP, team stats.
• 1990 Oakland Athletics Season — Wikipedia — A’s regular-season record and roster.