Nuxhall Doesn’t Remember His Major League Debut

Fantasies are “in” for sports now. You can live out your dream by pitching for your favorite baseball team, actually living out that dream you had when you were a teen-ager.

In the case of one Hamilton, Ohio, pitcher, the fantasy turned into reality. In turn, it turned into folklore.

Only thing about this fantasy was that it really happened and it took place more than 40 years ago.

Joe Nuxhall was a gangly teen-ager playing on his junior high school team in Ohio when a baseball scout from the Cincinnati Reds came to town.

Unlike the tales that have spun since Nuxhall became the youngest pitcher ever in major league baseball, he wasn’t the man--or boy--the scout was looking for.

“He was there to sign my father,” Nuxhall recalled. “He wasn’t after me at all. I was a good pitcher on my junior high team but my dad was a pretty fair country pitcher.”

Joe’s father had a family of six to support. There were no bonus babies, let alone free agents in 1944, so it was more profitable for the senior Nuxhall to bypass a chance at professional baseball.

“The scout, and I don’t know how serious he was at the time, asked my father if he could take a look at me,” Nuxhall recalled. “My father gave the go-ahead, they liked what I saw and then they signed me.”

It was during World War II and many professionals were in the service which may have accounted for the Cincinnati Reds opting to give a contract to a 15-year-old.

Players have been signed in their teens, only to languish for years in the minor leagues, never to surface in the majors. But a quirk allowed Nuxhall to get a chance.

“It was the end of the year and I had been up sitting on the bench for the Reds. It was just more or a less a quirk that I was there in the first place, but I had been signed and it was late in the year,” Nuxhall said. “I was really enjoying it. Could you imagine, telling your high school friends that you weren’t only at the the game but you were sitting on the bench?”

But sitting on the bench is not throwing in the major leagues.

The Reds were playing the St. Louis Cardinals, who were about to wrap up their third consecutive National League pennant. The Reds were again going nowhere and were to wind up finishing seventh in the National League, eight games under .500.

The Reds fell behind early and instead of wasting another pitcher, Cincinnati manager Bill McKechnie turned to his teen-ager and said some words Nuxhall never forgot.

“He said to me, ‘Kid, warm up, you are going in,”’ Nuxhall said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

The southpaw did not have time to be nervous, much less understand the significance of what he was going to do. He warmed up in the bullpen and was sent in.

“People have asked me through the years whether I was nervous. You bet I was,” Nuxhall said.

Nuxhall was able to get the first two batters out, quite an accomplishment in itself. He probably would have just been glad to leave it at that but baseball requires three outs to a side.

Nuxhall faced Stan (The Man) Musial, a future Hall of Fame member and one of the best hitters in the history of the game.

“I lost it. I got wild. I couldn’t find the strike zone,” Nuxhall said. “I walked Musial, walked the next couple of guys and then they scored something like three or four runs. I honestly don’t remember.”

Nuxhall did struggle to get through the end of the inning.

“Some earned-run average, huh? I think it was 14 or something,” Nuxhall said.

And it might have stayed at that lofty figure had Nuxhall never made it back to the majors. He could have followed the path of other prodigies or flukes and had his place safely chronicled in the baseball encyclopedia.

But the Reds did see something in teen-ager Nuxhall. Undaunted by his debut, Nuxhall went back to the minors and refined his art.

He also developed a savvy that convinced the Reds in 1952--eight years later--to give him the traditional cup of coffee with the majors. (The first appearance was probably just a sip of cola.)

He came up and was 1-4 in 1952.

“I think that first trip up probably did help me as far as shooting for a goal and getting over the nervousness that other pitchers probably face when they were a whole lot older than me,” Nuxhall says.

Nuxhall went on to pitch 15 more seasons in the major leagues. He won 135 and lost 117 and became one of the game’s steadiest pitchers.

He won 17 games, a career high, for the Reds in 1955. He also pitched briefly for Kansas City and the Angels in 1961 before retiring.

Nuxhall is now a mainstay of the Reds’ broadcast booth, yelling for another Cincinnati home run or a victory.

But on that day in September, he was a nervous teen-ager, waiting to go into the history books.