After The Dynasty
Approaching his 60th birthday at the close of the 1977 season, Howsam turned over his general manager responsibilities to a longtime assistant, Dick Wagner. But the Reds' success ended when Howsam stepped aside. With the free agent era dawning, and with the Reds' stubborn refusal to play the big-money game, "The Big Red Machine" began to lose key players. Howsam had already traded Perez to the Montreal Expos in the months following the 1976 title. Gullett, Rose and Morgan were allowed to leave via free agency. Nolan developed arm problems. Wagner fired Anderson after Sparky refused to scapegoat his coaching staff when the Reds finished second in the NL West in both 1977 and 1978.
Howsam resigned as president in 1978, and Wagner was blamed by many for the team's decline, although Howsam, one of the most conservative voices in the game at that point, helped set fiscal policy for the club. Howsam returned to the club presidency in 1983 after Wagner's firing, with the team in last place. He hired Rose as player-manager, and helped restore the Reds to respectability. Howsam was elected to the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame in 2004.
In retirement, Howsam served on the Colorado Baseball Commission, which succeeded in bringing the Colorado Rockies to Denver as an MLB expansion team in 1993. He had been elected to his home state's Sports Hall of Fame in 1971. He died from a heart ailment at age 89 on February 19, 2008, in his Sun City, Arizona, home.
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