Seven or eight more years, Marty Brennaman figures, and he will retire. He'll be 65, and it will be time to go home, grow tomatoes, play golf and spend time with his wife.

        Brennaman has has every intention of spending his final working years with the Reds.

        “I'll be 58 (this week), and I can't see working much past 65,” he said.

        His partner, Joe Nuxhall, is 71.

        “I've always said I won't be around when I'm as old as Joe,” Brennaman said. “When I'm 71, people will have a hard time trying to remember what my last name is.”

        Hardly. But Brennaman has been broadcasting for so long — 27 seasons of games nearly every night for seven months a year — he has no illusions of needing it to survive. He has been married to his wife, Sherri, for 22 years. He'd like to be able to spend his golden years with her.

        “I think what he means is he wants to play more golf,” Sherri said. “I'm not sure he'll retire at 65. They'll have to pull Marty out kicking and screaming, like Joe.”

        Brennaman probably will play more golf, but he appreciates what he and his wife have had to sacrifice for the job.

        “It takes a special kind of woman to be married to someone in this profession, and it takes a really special woman to be married to me,” he said. “I can be very moody. How Sherri has hung around for 22 years, I don't know.

        “She handles all the things a husband with a 9-to-5 job readily handles. She's basically raised our daughter Ashley (20), who's a wonderful girl, and Sherri deserves the majority of the credit for that. She definitely is a special person.”

        If the Reds asked, Brennaman says, he would do home games after he reaches 65 if the Reds asked him. That's an unusual step, but not unprecedented. Harry Caray didn't do road games in his final years with the Chicago Cubs, and St. Louis Cardinals great Jack Buck doesn't do them now.

        In that case, Brennaman would help smooth the transition to the next voice of the Reds. Could that mean teaming with son Thom Brennaman, who used to do the Cubs on radio and TV and now does Arizona Diamondbacks' TV?

        “He's 37. He'd be 45 then. He'd still be a young man. I could see that as a possibility,” Marty said. “Thom's a Cincinnati guy, no matter how many teams he works for.”

        Thom, for his part, says he'd consider it. “But right now, that's not an alternative.”

        Marty may not be around forever. But he will always belong to the Reds.

        “I've never worked for anybody else (in major league baseball), and that's important to me,” Mr. Brennaman said. “I'd be stupid to go somewhere else. Maybe my act wouldn't be as successful as it's been here. I've been offered jobs in just about every major market, and it always came down to the most important factor being this city and the quality of life here. The job itself was always secondary.

        “This is where I want to end it. I love this place.”

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