Saturday, September 21, 2002
Nuxhall, 5 others worked stadium
beginning to end
By Howard Wilkinson hwilkinson@enquirer.com
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Baseball players come and go; managers are hired to be fired. But a major league franchise like the Cincinnati Reds, with a history that goes back to bare-handed fielders with handlebar mustaches, are bound to have some people in the organization who have been around so long they seem to be not only part of the furniture but part of the fabric of the ball club on the field.
The Reds have six of them - employees who have worked for the club for all of its 32-year run at Riverfront Stadium/Cinergy Field and, for most of them, long before the turnstiles at that stadium began turning.
Combined, the six have 257 years of baseball experience.
“We're the survivors,” said Joe Nuxhall, the former Reds left-handed pitcher who has been with the organization 51 years, including 36 in the Reds radio broadcast booth.
The year the stadium opened, Mr. Nuxhall shared the radio booth with Jim McIntyre; Al Michaels followed for the next three seasons; and, in 1974, Marty Brennaman arrived for a run with Mr. Nuxhall that stands at 28 years and counting.
Mr. Nuxhall is, by far, the best-known of the six Cinergy “lifers” but each of the others has left his or her mark on baseball's oldest franchise. They include:
Bernie Stowe, the senior clubhouse and equipment manager, who joined the Reds as a clubhouse boy at Crosley Field in 1947.
Chief Bender, the longtime director of the Reds' minor league system, who came over from the St. Louis Cardinals in 1967 and who is now the club's senior adviser for player development.
Gene Bennett, a Reds scout for 50 years who has signed the likes of Don Gullett and Barry Larkin.
Lois Schneider, who came to Cincinnati from St. Louis in 1968 to work for Mr. Bender and who is now secretary to general manager Jim Bowden.
Larry Barton Jr., a special assistant to the general manager who began his career with the Reds the year Riverfront Stadium opened.
For some, Riverfront/Cinergy was the “office” where they came to work every morning for 32 years; for others it was the home base they touched frequently as their jobs scouting talent took them across the country.
Each has his or her own special memories of the place.
For Ms. Schneider, the best memories are of the 1970s, when the team went to the World Series four times, was world champion twice and the Astroturf field was filled with Hall of Famers to be.
“I feel really fortunate to have been around for that,” Ms. Schneider said. “It was a special time.”
People think that front-office employees of the Reds know all their uniformed fellow employees well, she said, “but that's not really the case.”
But one she did come to know well was her favorite in her 34 years with the Reds 1/2ndash 3/4 Sparky Anderson, manager of the Big Red Machine of the 1970s.
“Sparky stands out most in my mind,” she said. “He'd walk through the offices and talk to everybody. It didn't matter if you were the fellow sweeping the floor or the fellow who ran the place. Sparky never met a stranger. Everybody loved Sparky.”
Her greatest thrill came two years ago when she and other veteran Reds employees went to Cooperstown, N.Y., for the induction of Mr. Anderson and Tony Perez into baseball's Hall of Fame.
For Mr. Bennett, who has spent five decades scouring the Midwest for baseball talent as a Reds scout, the most striking memory was sitting in a blue box seat behind home plate with his son on July 14, 1970, six weeks after the stadium opened its gates.
It was baseball's All-Star game, held in the brand-new ballpark, with President Richard Nixon on hand to throw out the first pitch.
But that's not the part Mr. Bennett remembers. He remembers the bottom of the 12th inning when Pete Rose rounded third and collided with catcher Ray Fosse in a bone-jarring crash. Mr. Rose scored the winning run.
“I've been around baseball for a long time and I had never seen a harder collision than that,” Mr. Bennett said. “It hurt just looking at it.”
Mr. Bender remembered being with a large group of Reds employees at the ground-breaking for Riverfront Stadium in 1968, a year after he came to Cincinnati from St. Louis with general manager Bob Howsam.
“It was just a big mud-hole, kind of a mess down there then,” Mr. Bender said. “I couldn't believe they could build a ballpark there. Now I can hardly believe they are tearing it down.”
For Mr. Bender, the most memorable person in his years with the Reds was Mr. Howsam, who, as general manager in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was the architect of the Big Red Machine that dominated baseball for a decade.
“He knew what kind of team it would take to win in that ballpark and that's the kind of team he built,” said Mr. Bender. “A team built on speed and power. That's what we had. And that's what filled the ballpark.”
For Mr. Nuxhall, more baseball memories than he can count have been made in that ballpark - the night of Tom Browning's perfect game; Tom Seaver's no-hitter; Pete Rose passing Ty Cobb on the all-time hit list with 4,192; Johnny Bench's home run on Sept. 17, 1983, the last homer of his Hall-of-Fame career; and the second game of the 1990 World Series, a game the Reds won on a 10th-inning Joe Oliver rip down the left field line.
Mr. Nuxhall is looking forward to moving next door to Great American Ball Park next year, where he will become the first baseball announcer to work in three ballparks for the same team.
But, he said, he will always remember Cinergy fondly.
“The new place should be better than the old one, just like people thought Riverfront was an improvement back then,” Mr. Nuxhall said. “But it's going to be kind of tough to say goodbye.”
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Nuxhall, 5 others worked stadium beginning to end
