The Ol’ Lefthander Has Headed for His Final Home

I happened to see this report last Friday, but got busy and forgot to comment. Joe Nuxhall has died.

Hardcore baseball fans might recognize that name—he’s the youngest player to have played in the majors. I wasn’t around for that—that was in the twilight of WWII—and in fact I didn’t know that about Joe for years. I knew him as the voice of the “Big Red Machine”, which was the nickname given to my then-beloved Cincinnati Reds. I grew up listening to him call Reds games; first I listened along with my father and his mother, both staunch Reds fans, then on my own after I received my first transister radio. Many was the night I fell asleep listening to “the ol’ lefthander”, as he called himself in his signature signoff, and Marty Brenneman. Before Marty, Al Michaels—a name sports fans should recognize—was Joe’s partner in the booth. I think it was Joe’s being a fellow lefty that first endeared me to him ... I was the only one in my family, and I don’t recall any classmates from back then being southpaws, so I felt quite alone.

With exposure to other commentators, I started to realize how special Joe Nuxhall was. Joe was one of the greats from the old style of broadcasting, where a guy could actually show his enthusiasm for his team. And even though he was a Reds fan through and through, he was also pretty fair in calling the game. He sounded like he was enjoying every minute of every game I heard; and when I got to attend my first few Reds games, I remember spending a fair amount of time with the binoculars looking into the broadcast booth. Sure enough, even when the mics were off and the guys were taking a commercial break, they looked like they were having a good time. There was little inane chatter, just to avoid “dead air”; and occasionally Joe would get started on some subject and go off into reminiscing. He also provided amusing glimpses into clubhouse shenanigans, too; I remember him telling a story about some of the guys—Joe Morgan and Tony Pérez among them, I think it was—deciding that a few spins in a dryer would help Dave Concepción break a slump. He was my favorite player (in part because he bucked superstition and wore number 13), so I was both amused and pleased at the opportunity to see another side of one of the best shortstops ever to play the game.

And so, another bit of the era of sports as entertainment is gone. Joe embodied the love of baseball, and the love of the Cincinnati Reds for me. He seemed like what he apparently really was: a local boy who did good. I never saw, nor heard of, any bit of ego about Joe Nuxhall, no expectation of star treatment or special treatment of any kind. The article I linked to above does a good job of providing a sense of the man, so if you’re so inclined, read it for yourself to get a fuller sense of the man and why I honor him here: Joe Nuxhall dead at 79.