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] Joe Nuxhall, who became the youngest player in modern major league history when he pitched in one game for the 1944 Reds at age 15, then went on to spend more than half a century with Cincinnati as a pitcher and broadcaster, died Thursday in Fairfield, Ohio, outside Cincinnati. He was 79.
His death, at a hospital, was announced by the Reds, who said he had lymphoma.
On the afternoon of Saturday, June 10, 1944, four days after the D-Day invasion, the Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals were playing at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field as World War II baseball carried on with players who were rejected for military service or were too young or too old for the draft. The Cardinals, en route to a third consecutive pennant, were leading the Reds, 13-0, in the eighth inning when Cincinnati Manager Bill McKechnie beckoned to a young man seated in the dugout.
He was 6 feet 3 inches and weighed about 190 pounds, a left-handed pitcher who threw a fastball 85 miles an hour. He had spent the spring in junior high school.
A year earlier, the Reds scouted a right-handed pitcher named Orville Nuxhall, who was playing in a Hamilton, Ohio, Sunday baseball league. They also noticed his son, Joe, barely in his teens, who was also pitching in the league.
Joe Nuxhall signed with Cincinnati in February 1944, and when his ninth-grade classes in Hamilton let out, he would occasionally get into uniform at the Reds’ home games.
Then came the moment in the debacle against the Cardinals when his manager told him to grab his glove and head to the bullpen. Wearing cleats borrowed from a friend, Nuxhall made it as far as the top step of the dugout.
“I was scared to death,” he told The Associated Press 50 years later. “I got all shook up and tripped over the top step and fell flat on my face in the dirt.”
Nuxhall did make it to the bullpen, then entered the game at the start of the ninth inning, arriving in the major leagues at the age of 15 years 10 months 11 days. He got the first Cardinals batter, George Fallon, to ground out, then walked St. Louis pitcher Mort Cooper. He induced the next hitter, Augie Bergamo, to fly out. While facing Debs Garms, the 1940 league batting champion when he was with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Nuxhall glanced at the on-deck circle.
Waiting to hit next was Stan Musial, the 1943 batting champion. Nuxhall walked Garms. Musial followed with a line single to right, then Nuxhall walked three batters, threw a wild pitch and gave up another hit. With five runs in, McKechnie took Nuxhall back to the dugout. |
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