“Hamilton Joe,” aka “The Ol’ Lefthander,” who was forever “Roundin’ third and headin’ for home,” has died after a long bout with cancer. He was 79.
On June 10, 1944, he became the youngest player in modern baseball, when, at 15 years, 10 months and 11 days (iirc, check the link below) – a high school freshman – he was driven from his school to Crosley Field where he pitched part of an inning against the Cardinals. The war had depleted the Reds’ roster, as it had many teams’.
He made it back to the Reds in 1952 and played all but one season for them, and retired in 1966, and began broadcasting in 1967. He was most famous for his thirty year partnership with Marty Brennaman (1974-2004). He called a few games each season from his retirement until September of this year.
Now, I will be honest. Ol’ Joe could be a bit of a spastic mushmouth–he’d be the first to admit it. But that was part of his charm. That was why we loved him here in Cincy, northern Kentucky and Indiana.
So, RIP, Joe.
Now, if you are unfamiliar with Nuxhall, perhaps we could memorialize him and all the other great announcers who were not polished, but were great in their simplicity. So, name your favorite whose charm outweighed his faults, who was “great” in not being great.
Bob Prince, of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was called the Gunner - not because of his staccato machine gun-like delivery, however. He picked up the name because of an encounter with a jealous husband who was packing a gun. He was immensely popular with everybody in the Tri-State area, except for the Pirates’ ownership, apparently. He was fired in 1975, became an announcer for ABC’s Monday Night Baseball and the Houston Astros for a short time. He drifted from job to job, eventually returning to Pittsburgh to call Pirate games for a cable station. He was eventually rehired by KDKA and the Pirates in 1985, but, suffering from cancer, he was only able to call three innings of a game on May 3, 1985. He died 5 weeks later.
His career lasted from 1948, to 1975, a span of 28 seasons. It was the longest tenure of any Pittsburgh sports announcer until the record was broken by current Pirate announcer Lanny Frattare, who began broadcasting games in 1976. Prince created the Green Weenie, a large, green hot dog-shaped rattle, which became a good-luck charm similar to the Steelers’ Terrible Towel, which was later created by announcer Myron Cope. He gave Roberto Clemente the nickname of “The Great One.” He had many colorful expressions that became familiar to Pirate fans, such as “Kiss it goodbye” when a Pirate player hit a home run, and “Bug loose on the rug” for a ground ball hit on Astro Turf. “Foul by a gnat’s eyelash,” and “Close as fuzz on a tick’s ear,” usually meant the difference between a ball being fair or foul or a player being safe or out. A “can o’ corn” was a routine fly ball and after a come-from-behind win or close victory, the Gunner would exult, “We had 'em all the way!”
Prince was a big part of my life as a sports fan growing up in western Pennsylvania.
Prince was everything an announcer should be, including an unabashed “homer.” He made every Pirate game a memorable event. I loved the stupid nicknames myself. “Tiger” Hoak, “Deacon” Law, "The Callery PA Hummer, “Stick” Alley, “Big Stu” (after “Big Klu”), “The Kitten” and all the others momentarily forgottten. I enjoyed Joe Nuxhall also, but Bob Prince was the greatest. “Arriba, arriba.”
Not baseball, but Al Derogatis is the gold standard for football announcers. He didn’t have an announcer’s voice at all – a bit hoarse and in a high register – but he was one of the first color commentators and always came up with incisive and illustrative comments about the play and strategy.
I “came in” late in Herb Score’s broadcasting career for the Indians, but I was lucky because by then he was flubbing all over the place which made him quite lovable and exciting to hear. He’d say things like “Baerga grounds out to Baerga” or completely fuck up the pronunciation of a player’s name.
I think we were all willing to forgive his “style” because he had, after all, been beaned in the face with a line drive in the past.
It was pretty awesome when Tom Hamilton joined him in the 90’s because Hamilton, while not a player himself, is a great baseball fan and loves asking his fellow broadcasters about their playing career. He really revered working with Herb Score. Furthermore, Hamilton’s style is pretty opposite of Score’s - he’s really excitable while Score sounded like he was about to fall asleep sometimes.
I really missed Herb when he left - but that’s partially because his direct replacement was Davey Nelson who, while sweet, was completely clueless in the booth (that’s ok, it’s not for everyone…) and it made the loss of Herb stand out even more.
I’m totally in love with Tom Hamilton and there’s no doubt he will end up being one of the greatest baseball radio announcers of all time. But his time with Herb Score was special and Herb will never be replaced in Cleveland.
I’m not a native Cincinnatian, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard Joe Nuxhall call a game. But I saw him leading the “Chicken Dance” at Oktoberfest this year. I was determined not to participate in or in any way enjoy the Chicken Dance, but there I was getting all wrapped up in the moment because of Joe Nuxhall. He talked for a couple of minutes about how being recognized by the people of Cincinnati was better than getting into the Hall of Fame, because in Cincy, he was being recognized by family. And he had up on stage a couple of players from a Little League team who had gone to, but lost, the LL World Series. He told them how great they were and told them that, unlike the major leagues, Little League really had a World Series, because they were competing with the best teams from every country. He looked pretty weak then, but he just stood up there and made us all feel good about ourselves, even a cranky old transplant like me. I’d never seen or heard the man before, and I stood there getting a little misty. Then, like the other 25,000 people there, I stuck my thumbs under my arms and made a fool of myself.
I heard Nuxhall on quite a few Reds radio broadcasts, and he and Marty Brennaman made a pretty good team. Not my favorite announcers by a long shot, but better than many. The current duo, Marty and Son of Brennaman are not nearly as good.
Ralph Kiner, former Pirates slugger and long-time Mets announcer is remembered for his sometimes hilarious flubs on-air*, but he was enjoyable to listen to, and along with Lindsay Nelson and Bob Murphy** was what made Mets broadcasts high-quality. Homerism was kept to a minimum and they did a solid job.
One “beloved” broadcaster who was a notorious homer and master of fractured phrases and mispronunciations was Harry Caray, who I acknowledge finding consistently obnoxious. In addition to his other foibles he was a major front-runner - if you were a player on a hot streak Harry loved you. If you were slumping he’d rip you to shreds.
*“If Casey Stengel was alive today, he’d be spinning in his grave.”
**There’s a bit in one of the Nero Wolfe mysteries (set in New York) where Wolfe’s sidekick Archie is listening to a Mets game, and when Bob Murphy takes over for another announcer Archie has to go turn the radio down. It was true - Murphy was noticeably louder than the others.
I grew up listening to Marty and Joe during the Big Red Machine years. Marty then and now had a “tell it like it is” style (if you are a fan of his I highly recommend the hot-stove program he does with his son during the off-season, every Wednesday night at six EST on WLW or XM channel 173). Joe was the perfect compliment to this, a homer but an honest one, with just the right cadence when a game started to heat up in the late innings. I can still hear his high-pitched squeal when Ken Griffey beat bobby Tolan to 1st in the bottom of the 9th to win the 1976 NLCS.
There goes the ol’ lefthander, rounding 3rd and heading for home; good-night Joe…
I also grew up listening to Marty and Joe, then moved at the age of 11 to Dallas, where I was lucky enough to see the birth of the greatest radio baseball combo of all time, Mark Holtz and Eric Nadel. Now, you can imagine, broadcasting for the Texas Rangers in the eighties (and most of the nineties) was a thankless task, but these two made every game an event (or non-event, when applicable). Mark Holtz passed away from leukemia in 1997, two years after moving to TV and away from Eric Nadel, who has assumed the posiition of greatest radio play-by-play man in the game (IMHO, of course). I’ll always remember Mark for his quip during minor comeback attempt in the ninth vs. the powerhouse Tigers. Alluding to a Rangers comback, “Well, I’ve seen stranger th…no, come to think of it, this would be the strangest thing I’ve ever seen”. RIP Mark, RIP Joe, long live baseball on the radio.
I remember being 9, lying awake, lights out, summer of 1977, listening to Marty Brenneman and Joe Nuxhall call Reds games on my clock radio. “And this one belongs to the Reds!”
