Sad day for Reds Fans- Joe has Rounded 3rd and headed home!Joe passed away overnight

[MrCinatit]

Joe helped us love the Reds even though the tough times because he loved the Reds.
Time to break out the '76 album and '90 tape and listen to some memories.

Rest in peace, big guy.

[Bob Borkowski]

So sorry to hear of Joe's passing.

So many on here don't remember him as a player. I recall that he was a good pitcher in the 50's but really didn't gain full control of his talent until he returned to the Reds in 1962.

Also, whenever he was on the 'Star of the Game Show' with Waite Hoyt (or whoever) during those years you could see that he had the 'gift for gab' that would serve him so well as a broadcaster.

Joe was one of a kind. My prayers to the family.

[BuckeyeRedleg]

Rest in Peace, Joe.

You were such a big part of my life growing up.

You'll be missed as if you were a member of my own family.

Bless you, Old Lefthander.

[MWM]

This makes me sad. My first memories of the Reds were listening to Marty and Joe. He was a one of a kind and I'll miss him dearly.

[BuckWoody]

It's very nearly like losing a favorite uncle. Joe was Reds baseball for me. Thoughts and prayers go to his family.

Opening Day is going to be very hard to get through this year without a lot of tears.

Rest in peace, Joe.

[Dan]

Joe's homerun calls were legendary, as we all know. My favorite memory, though has to be his call of Rose's 4192. I was lucky enough to be at the game, so I actually didn't get to hear it live. Only afterwards, during replays, did I hear him willing Pete's hit to fall in short left-center. "Get down, ball! Get down!"

[Strikes Out Looking]

Joe was a class act all the way around. My thoughts and prayers go out to his blood family as well as his Red's family who loved him very much.

I met him a number of times through the years, and a couple of years ago at fantasy camp was lucky enough to spend a great deal of time with him. As we were both a couple of kids from Hamilton (only about 36 years apart in age), we knew a number of the same people and families. In Fairfield, he lived about a mile from my own parents. I can be rather prickly and usually don't like alot of people, but Joe was one of the nicest, genuine people I have ever met. My life has been enriched by knowing him and by listening to him for years.

[bucksfan2]

Im 25 years old and when I was a kid in grade school the radio was still the place you got your baseball from. I remember staying up late listening to my clock radio when the reds were out west. I listend to the reds on radio a lot and remember the glory days of Joe on the radio. He was fun to listen to and had a great way of announcing the game. He was a homer for the reds, loved the reds, but was still a very good anouncer.

Unfortunatly he hung around for too long. I was driving to work and was hearing some of his old calls and forgot how priceless and great they were. For me it took that to get the past 5 season out of my head. Just his call of Oliver knocking in Bates in the 90 world series brought back my best baseball memories.

Joe will be missed. Not only as a red but also in the community. He was truely a guy who gave everything he had back to the community. I only met the guy twice at his golf outing and it was a brief hand shake.

[OldRightHander]

I'm sitting here in the Flying J in Toledo just trying to digest this. I woke up and heard something on Baseball This Morning and then turned over to WLW. I figured the fitting thing would be to wear my Reds shirt today. I'm here in a truck stop with tears in my eyes, maybe not the manly image you would expect to see in such a place, but I don't really care.

I have said so many things about Joe over the years here that I don't know if there is anything left to say. He was just one of those constant things over the years, especially during my youth. He was the soundtrack of summer. I heard someone say, maybe Daugherty but I'm not sure, that Joe was like a cold glass of lemonade on a hot day, something you took your time with and savored.

Joe taught me a lot about life in general, not those grand lessons that determine our eternal fate or anything like that, but just how to enjoy life and get everything out of each moment. He was never in a hurry. The couple times I met him in public settings it seemed that he took time with each person, no matter how long the line was. I learned from people like him that life is to be enjoyed and that it is enjoyed most if lived at a slower pace.

I remember so many calls that still stick in my mind to this day. Bench's homer, Billy Bates, Concepcion's red seater, Taubensee's red seater (be a fair ball baby, be a fair ball!), and so many others I don't have the time or space to relate at the moment.

In short, I feel like I just lost my best friend, my grandfather, and a mentor all at the same time. Joe didn't broadcast baseball, he was baseball. He has rounded third and made it safely home. He will be missed.

[toledodan]

Originally Posted by Boss-Hog

I'm very saddened by this news. Like so many others, I grew up listening to Marty & Joe and will miss the unmatched enthusiasm he had for the Reds. My thoughts are with his family...may he rest in peace.

my very thoughts as well. thank you for everything you did and GOD BLESS!

[919191]

Wow. The last couple of years, when Joe did the game, I took a radio and a few beers to the backyard and listened to the game instead of sitting in front of the TV. I tried to explain to my wife why, but she really didn't get it. Some of my earliest memories are my mom sitting in the kitchen listening to Joe and McIntyre on the radio. It won't be the same, but nothing from your childhood is when experienced as an adult I guess.

RIP Joe.

[Heath]

Well, if it's any consolation, he's free of any pain and problems he had over the last few years.

Prayers to the family in their time of loss.

[chicoruiz]

From a selfish point of view, we all would have liked to have Joe around for much longer. But all in all, those were 79 pretty good years...a career making a good living at the game you love, married sixty years to your soulmate, a couple of good kids, making the world a little better place through charitable activities, more friends than you can count...that's a life well lived; I'd take that. Well done, Nuxie.

[redsmetz]

Here's Erardi's piece from the Enquirer's website

Marty and Joe: Soundtrack of summer
Broadcasting duo will be forever linked
BY JOHN ERARDI | JERARDI@ENQUIRER.COM

As a broadcaster, Joe Nuxhall was no Vin Scully when it came to using the language.

But the Ol’ Lefthander’s style – folksy and relaxed – made for easy listening.

Curt Smith has written three books on baseball broadcasting and is regarded as the pre-eminent chronicler of what sports announcers call a broadcasting art form. In his 2005 book “Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball’s All-Time Best Announcers,” Smith rated Nuxhall 95th.

For comparison, Waite Hoyt, who like Nuxhall was a former major-league pitcher and, (mostly with the Yankees, where his work got him elected to the Hall of Fame) could do Reds’ play-by-play and color commentary with equal aplomb, was rated 62nd.

It says something about the quality of Nuxhall’s down-home approach – something that played so well with longtime broadcasting partner Marty Brennaman’s, crisp, critical and sometimes caustic style – that “The Ol’ Lefthander” would rate so highly in Smith’s analysis.

“He would have been run out of Boston or New York, but he was perfect for Cincinnati,” Smith said in 2006, when the Reds were deciding who would replace Steve Stewart and team with Brennaman in the booth.

Nuxhall retired after the 2004 season -- though he continued to work select games -- and it was difficult to find a pairing as good as Marty and Joe.

Said Smith: “I know. I’ve listened to (Nuxhall) a lot, and I like him – but that kind of marriage doesn’t come along that often.”

KINDRED SPIRITS

“Marty and Joe” went down like lemonade on a hot Cincinnati day. They matched up like burgers with tomatoes on back decks, and forever will be linked, even in Joe’s passing.

Brennaman knew there would be no replacing that team, "Marty and Joe," not even when Marty’s son, Thom, joined his dad in the booth starting this season.

“Having Thom here certainly softens (getting only to do a handful of games with Joe during the 2007 season)," Marty said last April.

“The day Joe stepped down, I knew it would never be quite the same again,” Brennaman said. “Given time, hopefully we (Marty and Thom) will have the success that I had with Joe. I will always treasure the time I had with Joe and the love that we developed over the years.”

The Italians have a word for such kindred spirits: simpatico.

Author Smith, a student of language, linked Joe with Marty with that word.

“They had that simpatico,” he said. “You can’t invent it. Either it exists, or it doesn’t.”

And, yes, Marty and Joe clicked right from the beginning.

“The first time that Joe and I ever met,” Brennaman said, “the first thing out of my mouth within five minutes of meeting him was, ‘I got your baseball card!'”

HUMOROUS START

The first time they broadcast a Reds “home” game together was at Al Lopez Field in Tampa, Fla., during spring training in 1974. Brennaman was replacing the popular Al Michaels, who had left Cincinnati for the San Francisco Giants’ play-by-play gig, and frequently had been told Brennaman had been saturated by people telling him what big shoes he had to fill, giving him and had a serious case of “Al Michaels on the brain.”

“So, we’re lined up … three in a row: engineer Ken Kimball, me in the middle and Joe on the other side,” Brennaman recalled in the book “Opening Day.”

“Ken cues me up to go on the air, and I say, ‘Good afternoon everyone, welcome to Al Michaels Field in Tampa, Florida.’”

And the reaction?

“As soon as I said it, I knew what I said,” Brennaman recalled. “Al Michaels Field. And that son of a (gun) Joe, he shows me no mercy. He’s rolling. I thought he was going to fall out of his chair. So I go to the obligatory commercial break before we came back to do the lineups, and the first thing out of Joe’s mouth during the break is, ‘I’ll be damned. We haven’t even gotten to the regular season yet and I’ve got material for the banquet circuit next fall!’”

Brennaman was rated by Smith as the 31st greatest baseball broadcaster of all-time. Michaels, by the way, ranked 22nd.

DOWN-HOME STYLE

Smith is critical of most former players who have tried to do play-by-play. But he liked Nuxhall, despite Joe’s literal boosterism in the booth.

“Get up, get up, get outta here!” Nuxhall would say when a Reds player hit a ball that looked as if like it might get over the fence.

“To be really good at play-by-play, you have to use the language well, set the stage, capture the drama and sell the game to the public with your words,” Smith said.

Nuxhall was no Scully, the legendary Dodgers broadcaster, or Hoyt when it came to using the language. But he was good at setting the stage and decent at capturing the drama of a game. Toward the end of his career, Nuxhall lost his edge a bit and it became harder to follow the action through Joe’s description. But Joe was Joe, and no listeners – certainly no longtime listeners – seemed to mind.

STRONG AT THE FINISH

In 2004, when Nuxhall was preparing for the last of 37 straight years of full-time game broadcasts (he had started on Opening Day, 1967; Brennaman came long seven years later), a newspaper reporter wrote that the Ol’ Lefthander would be remembered for who he is, not who he was.

Now it is reversed. Nuxie will remembered for who he was.

Which is quite a guy.

In his final game that year, Marty and Joe were still so good together that when when one got choked up at some memory, the other took over without missing a beat. But there was no escaping the need for a solo at the broadcast’s end, so there was nobody to pick up for Joe when he had to wrap it all up.

“For the last time,” he began, “It’s the Ol’ Lefthander …”

He paused briefly to regroup, and, then, in a shaking voice, said, “ … rounding third and heading for home.’”

Then, of course, Joe did what Joe always did – he rallied.

He finished at his robust best.

“Good afternoon, everyone.”

[macro]