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November 15, 2007
Joe Nuxhall died today. The papers and airwaves are full of tributes. Joe and his partner, Marty Brennaman, broadcast the play-by-play for the Cincinnati Reds for thirty years. He was a Cincinnati legend.
Joe grew up in Hamilton, Ohio. He first pitched for the Cincinnati Reds in 1944 at the age of fifteen --still a major league record. After a trip to the minors, he returned and played for the Reds –mostly—until 1967. His lifetime record: 135 wins.
When I was 14, my best friend , Ken Kranze, was the Nuxhalls’ next-door neighbor. One day, Joe invited the two of us to go to Crosley Field for a game. Of course we accepted at once!
Joe was not scheduled to pitch that day, but he did have to dress and be ready, so we arrived at Crosley Field several hours early. Joe headed for the locker room; he turned us loose in the empty ballpark!
Kenny and I picked out two empty seats along the third base line and watched as the grounds crew did their work. Then some players came out and began exercising and playing catch. All went well until batting practice started. There were no batting cages in those days –at least not on game days-- so players stood at home plate and pitchers worked from the mound. Soon a foul ball came our way, and Kenny and I chased it down. A souvenir! What luck!
Right behind the foul ball was an usher who chased us down and began asking lots of questions. Did we have tickets? How did we get into the ballpark? Where were our parents? Were we neighborhood kids?
Kenny and I must have been wide-eyed and frightened as we stammered our answers – we were from Hamilton! Joe Nuxhall brought us!
The usher did his duty, and Kenny and I soon found our-selves in the alley behind Crosley Field. No money. No tickets. But I don’t remember being afraid; the usher probab-ly told us, “Wait here!”
To his credit, the usher went straight to the locker room to check our story with Nuxhall himself. Joe soon appeared at the back gate, and we were admitted to Crosley Field once again. This time, we were given assigned seats behind home plate, where we stayed for the rest of the afternoon!
I remember Joe apologizing to us on the way home –the Reds had lost that day to the Phillies. Poor Joe must have been very embarrassed by our expulsion. He may even have received a sermon from the usher! After all, when this all happened, Joe was only twenty-seven!
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What other memories of that day?
We were fascinated by the old Crosley Field scoreboard out in left field. Behind the board was an access space that allowed crew members to climb up and insert cards with the proper numbers into display slots as runs were scored, innings concluded, etc. Sometimes, if you were watching, you could see through one of the openings as a hand or a face appeared briefly.
Behind home plate was the usual backstop, a screen made from cord or chainlink, to shield the fans in the box seats from foul balls. Above the backstop, the screen continued back at an angle to the front edge of the gallery seats and the press box. Naturally, many of the foul balls sailed over the backstop onto this screen, rolling up toward the press box and then back down again to field level, where a ball boy waited to retrieve them.
Before the game, a group of Philadelphia Phillies, including pitcher and seven-time All-Star Robin Roberts, came out and warmed up, standing side-by-side and catching balls that were batted to them from only a few feet away. It was amaz-ing to see how easily they chatted back and forth with one another as they caught the batted balls.
Out over the fence in deep right field was a factory or warehouse with a rooftop billboard advertising a company that fabricated steel heating ducts. On the billboard, a human figure –a tin man just like the one in the famous movie-- had been fashioned out of old pieces of galvanized metal. He was also motorized, so that his arms and legs moved. He appeared to be walking and carrying a round piece of duct! As this is written, in 2007, the sign and the tin man are still there, easily visible along I-75 in downtown Cincinnati.
But Crosley Field is gone. And so is the new stadium that replaced it!
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