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Paul Daugherty
Enquirer columnist files news and observations

Paul Daugherty
Paul Daugherty has been an Enquirer sports columnist since 1994 and has been chronicling Cincinnati sports since 1988. He has covered almost every major sporting event in America, as well as five Summer Olympics. Along the way, he has been named one of the country's top-5 sports columnists four times, and Ohio columnist of the year on seven different occasions. Last year, he was voted 2nd-best sports columnist in the country, by the Associated Press Sports Editors.

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Friday, November 16, 2007

Joe Nuxhall

He was the only person I've ever known about whom a bad word was never spoken. If you can live your entire life and have that be your epitaph, you've led quite a life. We've lost someone essential to who we are around here, someone who represented what we like to think is our finest nature. We're friendly, if guarded if we don't know you. We're approachable. If you need us, we're there.

Mostly, we're regular. We're incapable of pretense. Who you see is who you get and once we love you, we don't leave. Joe never left. He never will, of course.

On the radio, where most of us knew him, Joe was summer. He sounded like baseball: Lolling, drowsy, taking his own sweet time. Balls went to right-left-center. Latin names could be mangled. Calls on close plays could take days and really, so what? You didn't listen to Joe for perfection. Or, maybe you did. Perfection assumes different forms.

The best ambassador we've ever known has passed. He'll be missed.


13 Comments:

at 8:47 AM Anonymous Anonymous said...

PD...I agree with everything you said but you are underrating him as a broadcaster. Right-left center? How many times did that happen? Maybe he made a mistake or two over the course of many years but it was hardly common. When I hear the clips played on the radio throughout the day, I hear a fabulous announcer.

 
at 8:53 AM Anonymous Anonymous said...

Paul,
Might I suggest you posting a column you wrote about Joe that was in your book that came out about 10 years ago.
I still have the book right on my bookshelf and that column marked with a post-it and I flip to it every once in a while (especially in the winter) when I'm anxiously awaiting the return of Spring and Marty and Joe.
Sadly, those days are gone.
I think that column perfectly described what we as a city appreciated about Joe and the Reds.

If you could post that column here I think it would be a great memory for all of your readers.

I'll definitely be flipping to that page once or twice tonight to remember the old-lefthander.

 
at 8:57 AM Anonymous Anonymous said...

In my early formative years as a little leaguer in a suburb of Detroit, I listened to Ernie Harwell. As you listen, over time, there develops a resonance in your mind that says "BASEBALL". We moved to Cincinnati in 1975, I was a high schooler by then. Listening to baseball in the summer is what I did. Working as a landscaper, listen to Marty and Joe; mowing the lawn--Marty and Joe; driving around town-Marty and Joe. It just infuses your life. For a baseball fan, its like the thread that links day-to-day, year-to-year, decade-to-decade. I didn't know Joe Nuxhall personally, but I know the resonance that lives in my soul that says BASEBALL.
I will miss that.

 
at 8:59 AM Anonymous Anonymous said...

Doc you are truly a gifted writer

 
at 9:12 AM Anonymous Anonymous said...

PD - I hear you man. You said it best when said Joe was summer. He was baseball more so than Marty as I tucked my radio under my pillow as I fell asleep. To listen to him call the Dodgers when the whole house was quiet...

 
at 9:24 AM Anonymous Anonymous said...

Joe Nuxhall is to Reds baseball as angels are to heaven. A great broadcaster, a great man, and most importantly, a good man.

Enjoy your eternal summers, ol' lefthander, you are home !

 
at 10:24 AM Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nuxhall Field at Great American Ballpark?

 
at 12:01 PM Anonymous Anonymous said...

sad year with both Nuxie and Prosser passing away. Rest in Peace Joe

 
at 12:43 PM Anonymous Anonymous said...

As much as I've complained about people hiding behind anon on these blogs, 10:24 I have no problem w/ your post. A wonderful idea.

Robert Young
Milford

 
at 1:11 PM Anonymous Anonymous said...

well said. i think we all agree! nice job paul.

 
at 1:56 PM Anonymous Anonymous said...

Paul, you wrote a column several years back titled something along the lines of "He's our voice of Summer". May I suggest you re run that?

 
at 3:57 PM Anonymous Anonymous said...

"We're friendly, if guarded if we don't know you. We're approachable. If you need us, we're there.

Mostly, we're regular. We're incapable of pretense. Who you see is who you get and once we love you, we don't leave."

Paul- that might be the best description of who "we" are that I've ever read. Simple and succinct. Beautiful---thanks.

 
at 11:39 AM Anonymous Anonymous said...

I cannot disagree with a single post already made here, including that of Doc. That would be similar to the idea that there was never a single bad thought of Nuxxie, much less one said. One comment made in today's Enquirer stated that Joe always had 3 extended families: the cities of Hamilton, Fairfield, and Cincinnati. I believe a fourth was left out: the Cincinnati Reds. I cannot think of another iconic figure that meant more to as large an area (southwest Ohio) than Nuxxie. It's nice to see just how regular a large celebrity can be, seeing as how those in the Hamilton and Fairfield communities considered him one of their own and treated him as a regular guy. Listening to a game while kicked back next to the pool will NEVER be the same no matter how hard the Reds try to replace him. In our hearts Nuxxie will live on...Rounding third and heading to heaven.

Pat
Western Hills

 
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