Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities. I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 08 of the 2009 baseball season
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 4 week of February.
February 18
1944 Just one day after playing a high school basketball game, 15-year old Joe Nuxhall signs a contract with the Reds.
Joseph Henry Nuxhall was born July 30, 1928 in Hamilton, Ohio.
The youngest player of the 20th century to reach the majors, Nuxhall was an exceptionally promising schoolboy pitcher, signed by the Reds with special permission from his school principal.
He was 15 years, 10 months, and 11 days old on June 10, 1944, when manager Bill McKechnie sent him in to pitch the ninth inning of a game hopelessly lost to the Cardinals. In his brief appearance he yielded five runs on two hits and five walks, while retiring only two batters.
In 1887, 14-year-old Fred Chapman pitched five innings in one game, and is the youngest-ever participant in major league history.
Nuxhall long known as “The Ol’ Left-hander,” compiled a career earned run average of 3.90 and a record of 135 wins and 117 loses during his 16-season career, with all but 5 of his victories being earned with the Reds.
During World War II, many regular baseball players were unavailable while serving in the military. Meanwhile, Nuxhall, at 6′ 2″ and 190 pounds, was the biggest member of the ninth grade class in nearby Hamilton, Ohio. He was a left-hander with a hard fastball, but not much control.
He had already been playing in a semipro league with his father for a few years. In 1943, scouts looking to fill out the Reds’ depleted roster were following Orville Nuxhall, Joe’s father. But they were informed that Orville wasn’t interested in signing a professional contract because of his five children. The scouts then became interested in the son, who was only 14 at the time.
After waiting until the following year’s basketball season was over, Nuxhall signed a major league contract with the Reds on February 18, 1944. General manager Warren Giles intended to wait until school was over in June to add him to the team, but more of his players were inducted into the service in the spring. With permission from his high school principal, Nuxhall was in uniform with the team on Opening Day.
Following his appearance with the Reds, he was assigned to the Birmingham Barons in the Southern League, but pitched only a third of an inning there where he struck out his first batter, then allowed a hit, five walks, a hit batter and five runs.
Nuxhall attended spring training with the Reds in 1945, but decided to remain home until he finished high school the following year. He regained his amateur status and played football, basketball and baseball for Hamilton High School as a senior in 1946, earning all-state honors in football and basketball.
Over the next five years, Nuxhall played in the minor leagues with Syracuse, Lima, Muncie, Columbia, Charleston, and Tulsa before returning to the Reds in 1952.
He won a career-high 17 games in 1955, leading the league with five shutouts, and pitching 3-1/3 scoreless innings in the All-Star Game.
Nuxhall spent almost 15 of his 16 major league seasons with Cincinnati, where he was a two-time National League All-Star.
He began having arm trouble in 1960, was traded to the A’s in 1961, and hooked on with the Angels briefly in 1962 before returning to the Reds.
A lifetime .198 batter with 15 home runs, in 1961 he hit .292 and contemplated continuing his career as a pinch hitter/first baseman. But he bounced back as a pitcher, returning to the Reds for the 1962 stretch drive and going 5-0.
In 1963, he was 15-8, with a career-low 2.61 Earned Run Average.
Nuxhall retired just before Opening Day 1967 and become a Reds broadcaster, despite his lack of broadcasting experience.
For 31 years, Nuxhall had a thriving on-air partnership with Marty Brennaman that began in 1974. The pair became a beloved tradition for Reds fans around the country.
Together, Nuxhall and Brennaman called some of the greatest moments in Reds history, including the “Big Red Machine” and its back-to-back World Series championships in 1975-76.
Part of his trademark radio signoff phrase – “This is the old left-hander, rounding third and heading for home” – is displayed on the outside of the Reds’ stadium, Great American Ball Park, which opened in 2003.
A likeness of Nuxhall is one of four statues that decorate the main entrance of the stadium.
He was elected to the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame in 1968, and officially retired from the Reds on October 3, 2004, 60 years after his pitching debut.
On June 10, 2007, the Reds honored Nuxhall, Marty Brennaman, and Waite Hoyt with replica microphones that hang on the wall near the radio booth.
Joe Nuxhall died November 15, 2007 after a long battle with cancer.
In December, 2007 the Reds announced Nuxhall would be honored throughout the 2008 baseball season with their uniforms displaying a patch with the word “NUXY”.
On March 31, 2008 the Cincinnati Reds remembered Nuxhall on their 2008 Opening Day. Players wore an alternate jersey during their introductions, which bore the number 41 and Nuxhall’s name on the back.
In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary
Under the letter: C
Charge the mound
For a batter to run to the mound after being hit or knocked down by a pitch and to start a fight with the pitcher. The batter is often ejected and suspended.
For example, in 1994, Reggie Sanders of the Cincinnati Reds received a five-game suspension for charging the mound.
And now for the ninth inning…
Continuing our trip around baseball cities…
For those of you that want to stick around, here’s an
Extra Inning
I received the following email from, fellow OC Podcaster and friend, Paul Mc Elligott:
As a lifelong Dodger fan who was particularly fanatical in the 1970s,
I have to dispute the idea that it was the infield of Cey, Russell,
Lopes & Garvey that earned the nickname of the The Big Blue Wrecking
Crew.
If memory serves, the name was inspired by the foursome of Cey,
Garvey, Reggie Smith and Dusty Baker, who each hit 30 or more home
runs in 1977, the first time four teammates had accomplished that mark
in a single season.
Thanks for the email Paul
I went back to my sources and found that that small statement, from Game 0906, came direct from Wikipedia.
So now Dodger fans, I’ll leave it up to you. Was it the combination of the infield of Garvey, Lopes, Cey, and Russell or was it the home run hitters of Garvey, Smith, Cey, and Baker.
Come to think of it, could it have been the entire “crew” of the Dodgers of that time in the mid to late 1970″s.
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Well, that’s it for today’s game of Baseball History Podcast. I’ll see you later at the ballpark.
