It is testimony to their status that when you say "Marty and Joe," everyone from Amelia to Addyston knows who you are talking about.
As Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall enter the 25th year of their unlikely partnership, they are as Cincinnati as Skyline Chili, Fountain Square and Eden Park.
They are broadcasters who have become bigger than the broadcast.
People tune in to hear talk of tomato plants, golf, movies, Elvis and pro wrestling. They smile at the way Marty says, "The attendance for tonight's titanic struggle was . . . " every single night.
They get the subtle joke when Marty asks Joe if he's seen a certain movie he knows full well that Joe hasn't seen.
They have become bigger than any current Red this side of Barry Larkin.
"You'd see that on the Reds Caravan this winter," fellow broadcaster Chris Welsh said. "On our leg, we had Eduardo Perez, Aaron Boone, Jon Nunnally. But Marty stole the show - whether he was doing introductions or signing autographs."
Neither Nuxhall nor Brennaman can explain the phenomenon.
"Our act wouldn't fly everywhere," Brennaman said. "But I think what we do - by talking about my tomatoes, or his golf game, or my golf game now - is humanize ourselves. People know we ain't no different than them."
Welsh agrees with the everyman theory.
"Marty has been coming into people's homes for years. You listen to Marty while you're cooking, while you're cutting the grass, while you're driving.
"And people don't read about how much money he makes. Marty's never dropped a fly ball or made the last out."
Nuxhall seems a little overwhelmed by the attention.
"I'm just happy people enjoy us," he said. "We try to do a good job with the game as well as entertain. It's a nice feeling that people find that satisfying."
Brennaman contends that Nuxhall is as popular as any Red ever, including Pete Rose.
"People just love Joe," he said.
And Marty for that matter, too. WLW (700 AM) banks on that.
THEIR SIGNATURE CALLS:
Where they came from...
'And this one belongs to the Reds.'
Marty Brennaman first used his trademark call the second week on the job. "Davey Concepcion won a game with a hit in the bottom of the ninth," Brennaman said, "and I just said it. I thought, 'That ain't half bad.' In fact, it's the best thing I've ever come up with. In those days with the way the team was going, I used it a lot."
'This is the old left-hander rounding third and heading for home.'
Joe Nuxhall's closing line came about two weeks into his first year. "Whitey Wiedtelmann, one of the coaches, came to me and said, 'Joe, you need a sign-off," Nuxhall said. "He gave me the line. I did it for a few weeks, then I thought it sounded corny, so I quit. I started getting all kinds of letters, so I went back to it."
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"The Reds are a big investment for us," WLW General Manager Dave Martin said. "We try to recover as much as we can. With the team in transition, we emphasize the one thing you're going to get is Marty and Joe.
"The advertisers have accepted that."
To wit: Reds broadcasts are sold out for the year. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a new team on another station owned by Jacor, have sold only about 50 percent.
Nuxhall and Brennaman get along famously on and off the air. But they are an odd couple.
Brennaman is the smooth professional. He fills the airwaves with stats, stories and chatter, all woven smoothly together. He can call basketball, football and baseball with the best. Nuxhall's broadcast style has never been described as smooth. You sometimes have to check to make sure you haven't lost the signal when he's doing a game, because he sometimes simply stops talking between pitches. He is a baseball guy.
Brennaman is a snappy dresser; Nuxhall is a once-a-year tie guy. Brennaman has an edge, a sharp tongue; Nuxhall is the affable old-timer who rarely rips players publicly.
Their partnership is the second longest in baseball behind Jack Buck and Mike Shannon, who enter their 27th year of calling St. Louis Cardinal games.
"It's amazing," Nuxhall said. "I wasn't going anywhere. But Marty chose to stay."
In their 25 years together, Nuxhall and Brennaman have called close to 3,000 games. Brennaman has used his trademark: "And this one belongs to the Reds" to crown three World Champions. They called Pete Rose's record-breaking hit. They did games from center field. They brought Elvis back into the building.
Brennaman has shared pregame shows with Sparky Anderson, John McNamara, Russ Nixon, Vern Rapp, Pete Rose, Tommy Helms, Lou Piniella, Tony Perez, Davey Johnson, Ray Knight and Jack McKeon.
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TOP 5 MOMENTS
Marty Brennaman
1985: Pete Rose's 4,192nd career hit, making Rose the all-time Hit King.
1974: Tony Perez's game-winning homer against San Francisco.
1988: Tom Browning's perfect game against Los Angeles.
1978: Tom Seaver's no-hitter against the Cardinals.
1990: Game 1 of the World Series against Oakland.
Joe Nuxhall
1985: Pete Rose's 4,192nd career hit.
1983: Johnny Bench's home run on "Johnny Bench Night" at Riverfront Stadium.
1990: The World Series, the only one Joe has covered.
1978: Pete Rose's 44-game hit streak.
1990: Joe Oliver's game-winning hit in the 10th inning of Game Two of the World Series.
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But from Rose, Joe Morgan, Danny Driessen, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Ken Griffey, Merv Rettenmund, Davey Concepcion and Jack Billingham (the starting Opening Day lineup in 1974) to Pokey Reese, Jon Nunnally, Chris Stynes, Eduardo Perez, Willie Greene, Reggie Sanders, Eddie Taubensee, Bret Boone and Dave Burba (the starting lineup today), Marty and Joe have been the constant.
Brennaman was 31 years old when he took the Reds job. He saaid he didn't view it as a steppingstone but didn't imagine in 1974 that he'd have the same job heading into the next century.
"If you would have told me that," he said, "I would have said you were crazy."
Brennaman has been offered jobs in New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Atlanta.
"The times that I could have gone - sometimes I was under contract when they called - I weighed the pros and cons," he said, "and the pros of staying always outweighed going somewhere else."
Nuxhall was in his eighth year when Brennaman arrived. Nuxhall had dabbled in broadcasting near the end of his playing career - quite by accident.
"I bought a filling station, a service station," he said. "My brothers were running it. WMOH from Hamilton came down and wanted to know if I wanted to buy some advertising. I told them I'd think about it. A couple days later, they came back and asked me if I wanted to do Miami basketball.
"I said, 'What?' They said, 'Do Miami basketball play-by-play on the radio.' I'd try anything once."
A broadcast career was launched. Nuxhall did four years of Miami basketball.
When he retired in 1967, he moved to the booth.
Brennaman ended up in Cincinnati by chance. He was doing the Virginia Squires of the old American Basketball Association and the Tidewater Tides, the New York Mets' Triple-A team.
Marty Brennaman, left, and Joe Nuxhall took their radio broadcast to the center-field seats for a time in the 1970s.
(Enquirer file photo)
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Brennaman had climbed through the ranks to get where he was. After graduating from North Carolina in 1965, he moved from small station to small station, doing high school games. He did five years of football and basketball for Catawba College. The ABA was relatively big-time.
"I was happy," he said. "I was thrilled to be doing pro basketball."
But fate would intervene. The general manager of the Tides, Dave Rosenfield, ran into Dick Wagner, general manager of the Reds, at a baseball meeting. Wagner mentioned the Reds were looking for a replacement for Al Michaels, who had left the Reds for a job with the San Francisco Giants. Rosenfield mentioned Brennaman. A few days later, Jim Winters, then the broadcast director of the Reds, contacted Brennaman.
"He told me what they always tell you: Send tapes," Brennaman said. "I did, and then I didn't think much more of it."
Some time passed before Brennaman heard from the Reds, although he kept hearing from a writer who covered the Norfolk hockey team that he was moving up on the list.
"He would go to Cincinnati to cover Swords games and someone, I don't know the source, kept telling him I was still on the list," Brennaman said.
Winters then asked Brennaman to do tapes of commercials. Soon after, the Reds invited him to Cincinnati when he came to Indianapolis for a Pacers game.
"They wined me and dined me, took me to the Maisonette," Brennaman said. "They offered me the job. I talked to my wife and accepted the next day."
Brennaman was a different broadcaster then.
"I was a homer," he said. "Not anymore. But I was. I thought that's what they wanted. They never said that to me. I just assumed it."
Brennaman moved away from that style. Now he is perhaps the most critical play-by-play man working in baseball.
"I did what I was more comfortable with," he said. "Some guys are homers. I have no problem with that style."
Brennaman shows up in the Reds clubhouse every day after criticizing players on the radio the night before, but he rarely has any problem with players.
"Marty doesn't get on the player," Welsh said. "He gets on the performance, as he should. Marty is an outstanding analyst of baseball. The fact that he didn't play the game doesn't mean he doesn't understand it."
Brennaman was Nuxhall's fifth partner. There was never any adjustment period.
"We had no problems," Nuxhall said. "None. We understood each other from the start."
There have been moments when things were less than peachy. Nuxhall, in his excitement, yelled: "Get down, get down, get down!!!" when Pete Rose's 4,192nd hit came off his bat. In doing so, he stepped all over the biggest call of Brennaman's life.
Brennaman just kept going with the lines he planned.
Those conflicts are rare, and the chemistry has improved with time.
"We rarely talk when the other is talking," Brennaman said. "That kind of familiarity just evolves."
As they enter year 25, it's clear the partnership is winding down. Both have another year on their contract. Beyond that, it's hard to say.
Nuxhall is 69 years old and doesn't know how much longer he'll go on. When Nuxhall does quit, one of Cincinnati's great partnerships will end.
Until then, Marty and Joe will have some more fun.
"You never know what we're going to come up with next," Nuxhall said.
It's worth tuning in to find out.
