So?

Joe is Joe.

After 38 seasons in the booth, the next question he asks on the postgame show will be his first. He says 'at instead of that, his S's always come with a whistle attached. I'd be happy hearing about fly balls to right-left center until Joe is unhappy describing them.

Joe is Joe. He's summertime on my deck, a beer sweating in my hand, the moon rising. He's an errant wish from a middle-aged dreamer that time would stand still. Joe's good memories.

He sounds as comfortable as he makes me feel. That's enough for me.

But no one is entitled to a job in perpetuity, not even Joe Nuxhall. Michael Jordan couldn't play NBA basketball at age 50, no matter how much we still wanted to watch him. Jack Nicklaus can't play golf anymore, either. Everyone retires.

YOUR VOICE

There was ample evidence that until October 2002, when he signed his current deal he now claims was forced upon him, Joe was using his beloved status to take it easy on the job. For a few years, Joe coasted. He knew it and wasn't especially troubled by it. When he was on the air, Joe often sounded disengaged, especially when the Reds were losing or playing poorly. When he wasn't on the air, he slept occasionally.

What should the Reds do? The club is as good at managing the news as Wily Mo Pena is at catching routine fly balls.

Instead of celebrating their most prized employees - Nuxhall and Barry Larkin come to mind - the Reds seem to want them gone. They don't do anything without bumping into the furniture.

To have made angry someone as charitably benign as The Old Lefthander took some doing. But did the club mess up as badly as we think?

The team has shown it will work with Joe. The Reds went from offering Nuxhall a one-year deal in November 2002, to offering him a year and 60 games, to upping the 60 games this year to 80.

Nuxhall has fiddled with his reduced schedule, deciding on short notice to take trips that Steve Stewart had been assigned. The club accommodated Joe. Stewart was gracious in making the changes.

The telling point in all this is that Nuxhall never talked to the team about doing some games next season. What the Reds have to do now is have chief operating officer John Allen say this:

"We'd have welcomed Joe back for 15 or 20 games next season. He never asked. Very soon we will meet with Joe and hopefully get this resolved to everyone's satisfaction. All of us in the Reds organization realize what Joe Nuxhall has meant to the franchise."

Put Joe on a personal services contract. Make him a permanent fixture on the offseason caravan. Make him as much a part of the every day as he desires. There are ways to engage the Old Lefthander without having him on the radio. Find them.

Because at the moment, nobody is winning. Joe Nuxhall has hurt the people he loves the most. That's the irony, if you're looking. Other than his family, the Old Lefthander has no greater passion than the Cincinnati Reds. What he said Wednesday might have been true. Probably it is. The Reds wanted him out. But for Nuxhall to say so was shockingly out of character.

Meanwhile, the team said nothing, in its usual lead-footed way. Part of managing effectively is anticipating problems, or at least dealing swiftly with them when they arise. Nuxhall has the Reds in a PR headlock, because the Reds don't use their heads.

They can now. Allow Nuxhall some games next year. Keep him out front. Given the state of the product on the field, and the determinedly bottom-line approach to payroll, the Reds need all the help they can get. Let the 'Hander head for home on his terms.

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E-mail pdaugherty@enquirer.com

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