The voice of the “Cincinnatuh” Reds and the youngest player in the modern history of major league baseball has died. Joe Nuxhall, “The Old Left-Hander”, died last night at age 79. I first heard the news this morning in an email from my father:

The old lefthander, rounded third and headed home. Good night Lefty!
This actually made me sad.

Not only was Nuxhall the voice of the Reds, but for virtually all of us who grew up in the southern half of Ohio, he was the voice of summer. To me, he was the voice of potato salad, hamburgers on the grill, homemade ice cream and sparklers. He was the voice of my dad’s 1971 Nova, Old Spice and Winston cigarettes. He was the voice of my childhood.

Nuxhall’s almost laconic delivery was perfectly suited for the Midwestern palette–nothing fancy, never hurried. He provided the perfect soundtrack to the slow, meandering days of an Ohio summer.

Several years ago, while visiting my dad, we watched the Reds play on television. The announcers for FOX SportsNet were George Grande and Chris Welsh. After several innings, I began to feel uneasy. Finally, it dawned on me why. “Jesus!” I said to my dad “Do these guys ever shut up?”

“I hadn’t noticed.” my dad said with a laugh. We then began timing the silence between comments from Grande and Welsh. In four innings of play, there was never more than four seconds of silence. What made the constant yammering more annoying was the fact that the game was being broadcast on television–the medium that requires the least amount of elaboration and description. After all, you’re watching the game. You can see what’s happening. But that didn’t stop Grande and Welsh. They were obviously compelled to fill up the “dead air” with anything that popped into their minds.

After the fifth inning, dad and I decided to go get something to eat. As we pulled out of the driveway, dad turned on “Joe and Marty” (Nuxhall and his longtime broadcast partner, Marty Brennaman). By this time, Joe had “semi-retired”, calling only a few innings at home games. We were lucky enough to catch a “Joe Inning”. We listened to the old left-hander as he called the game like he always did–slow and easy. It was such a stark contrast from the Grande/Welsh television team that we began timing the silence during Nuxhall’s time at the mic. The longest period of dead air was fifteen seconds.

Fifteen seconds doesn’t seem that long, but I urge you to count it out right now. I’ll wait. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi– Now imagine you are listening to the radio. That’s an eternity. But it wasn’t really dead air. During those long pauses, we heard the crowd, the organ player, the unmistakable ambiance of a day at the ballpark. We heard what it was like to be there. Nuxhall knew when to talk and when to just let us take in the sound of the game. If we needed to know something, Joe told us. If we didn’t, well, Joe trusted us enough to sit there and imagine sitting in the stands on that hot summer day and watching the story of the game slowly play out as if nothing else mattered in the world.

I’ll always remember Joe Nuxhall as the voice of my childhood, but more important, for those fifteen-second pauses that reminded me that the world and all its worry could wait a while.