Joe Nuxhall, shown during ceremonies honoring him, Sept. 18, 2004, in Cincinnati, who was the youngest player in major league history and the beloved "old left-hander" on Cincinnati Reds radio broadcasts, died overnight following a bout with cancer, the team said Friday. He was 79.
So long, Joe: Writer remembers legendary lefty
AARON KEITH HARRIS Staff Writer
XENIA – I knew Joe Nuxhall had died when I turned on the radio early Friday morning to hear the recording of Marty Brennaman’s call of Pete Rose’s 4,192nd hit, with Joe Nuxhall yelling from the edge of his seat for the ball to get down before Padre left-fielder Carmelo Martinez could get to it.
I was in the crowd that night 22 years ago – in the Red seats sixth row from the top way out in right field – so I didn’t get to hear the call live. But every time I’ve heard the call since, it instantly rekindles the flush of emotion that 50,000 other Reds fans felt that night.
Since 1974, Marty’s precision and Joe’s exuberance were as much the sound of the Cincinnati Reds as the crack of the bat. I know I’m not the only one who turned down the sound on Reds television broadcasts to hear Marty and Joe instead.
Joe was chief among fans of baseball’s oldest professional franchise since retiring from the Reds in 1967. He went from the field to the broadcast booth and never pretended to be an objective analyst.
When a Red put good wood on the ball, he reacted the same way a guy in the bleachers would. “Get up, get up, get out of here, come on!,” he’d yell. Or some variant thereof.
In between would-be home runs and great defensive plays, there is a lot of routine quiet in a ball game. Unlike many announcers, Joe never tried to fill those times up with chatter. When you tuned in to 700 WLW on a summer night and heard nothing but the low hum of the crowd for a minute or two, you knew it was the third, fourth or seventh inning, Marty was on a break and Joe was at the mic.
Hearing the sound of Joe not talking always comforted me. It reminded me of the way Riverfront Stadium smelled wonderfully of crushed peanuts, spilled beer and crushed cigarettes.
I tuned in Marty and Joe on 700 WLW way after my bedtime as a kid growing up in Fairborn. I tuned them in on late nights while at my grandparents’ home in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, while driving around Washington, D.C., or on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. I tuned them in via the Internet while I was living in Jerusalem during Joe’s last full year in the booth in 2004.
Each time, those voices brought me back home.
I reminisced for a minute about Joe Friday with another Reds fan, Capt. Doug Doherty of the Xenia Police Division. “I remember growing up that Joe always sounded just like your grandfather,” Doherty said.
Baseball’s funny that way. You wouldn’t expect the 15-year-old boy who in 1944 became the youngest Major Leaguer in history – if only for 2/3 of an inning – to become a revered patriarch for a great franchise and the most loved man of a great city.
But that’s exactly who Joe was.
On the radio with Bill Cunningham Friday, Pete Rose said it best: “Joe never made the Hall of Fame, but he made the Hall of Fame in the hearts of Cincinnati fans.”
All those hearts will always be a little emptier as long as the Reds take the field without Joe cheering them on from the radio booth.
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