Death of An Icon

I have been a Cincinnati Reds fan all of my life. Baseball was my passion when I was young. In recent years it has switched more to football. But, I still love my Reds.

Many summer nights in my childhood I went to sleep listening to the Reds. My little battery operated transistor radio was always tuned to WLW in Cincinnati, "the flagship station of the Reds radio network." That meant I went to sleep listening to the voice of Joe Nuxhall. While I am sure that I listened to Reds games before he became one of their broadcasters, I don't remember it. I am also sure that I am a fan of Joe in large part because we are both left handers.

He was a storyteller and he had millions of them. His biography will always read that he was the youngest player ever to appear in a major league game. He pitched in his first game June 10, 1944 at the age of 15. No one will ever do that again.

Here's a quote from Paul Daugherty of the Cincinnati Enquirer: "Joe Nuxhall was the only person we’ve ever known about whom a bad word was never spoken. If you can go through an entire life and leave that as your epitaph, you’ve led quite a life."

That line is why I am posting this today. To my knowledge, "the ol' lefthander" was not a person of faith. Nothing in his millions of stories ever indicated a relationship with Christ. But, what an epitaph for all of us to aspire to - a person about whom a bad word was never spoken. May it be so.

For the final time the "ol' lefthander" has rounded third and headed for home.

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