Marty Brennaman has been the radio play-by-play voice of the Cincinnati Reds since before I existed. He retired after Thursday’s game against the Brewers.
How can you not be romantic about baseball? ❤️ (Sound 🆙)#ThanksMarty 🎙️ pic.twitter.com/wW2Xpdb1Pg
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) September 26, 2019
Everyone loves the radio play-by-play guy in their town. That’s a guy who, even if he grew up in another part of the country, becomes an adopted spokesman for their community.
Brennaman wasn’t from Cincinnati. He grew up in Virginia and only moved to Ohio when he teamed up with Joe Nuxhall.
I had just bailed on Ohio when Nuxhall retired. The Expos had moved out of Montreal, and when I was in Oregon, I adopted the Reds as a home-town team. I took pictures of the statues they had in front of Great American Ballpark during a trip home last year.
Even though I didn’t grow up rooting for the Reds, I still listened to the Reds. Listening to Nuxhall and Brennaman on the radio always ranked higher than watching the Reds on TV because they were always there.
Sometimes, they’d get into a rich discussion about something, sometimes about baseball, sometimes not. You’d go from them explaining the lead-off hitter was walking toward the box to start off the inning, and the next thing they’d say about the game was runners on 2nd and 3rd and two runs had scored. That would usually be in September when the Reds had been eliminated.
But Brennaman represented Cincinnati. He didn’t sugarcoat when the Reds were having a bad day. He also didn’t sugarcoat when the umpires were having a bad day.
Back home in Ohio, we didn’t like sugarcoating. So Marty Brennaman fit right in.
Thinking about it, now, that helped shape my insubordinate attitude at work.
“Don’t tell me to say something’s ‘tragic,'” I’ll explain to anyone who will listen. “If you tell people what happened, they can figure out if something’s tragic on their own. I don’t have to use all this flowery language. See what I did there? I put ‘flowery’ in a line about how a journalist’s job is not to tell people how to feel.”
Imagine that in a Marty Brennaman voice. It’s easy.
I’m glad Brennaman’s last game was when the Brewers were in town. The Reds were also good enough to tweet about 15 minutes of Brennaman and Bob Uecker going back and forth.
You know AtReds wouldn’t steer you wrong, right? If we’ve ever posted a 15-minute video clip worth your time, this is it. Legendary Brewers broadcaster Bob Uecker joins Marty and Thom on the air… and hilarity ensues. (Tweet 1/2)#ThanksMarty 📻 pic.twitter.com/7bZwj3wwo0
— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) September 26, 2019
That was a solid back and forth. You had Uecker explaining how he was the first Milwaukee native to play for the Braves when they were in Wisconsin. Then he was the first Milwuakee native to be demoted to the minors by the Braves.
Brennaman, sticking with the theme of not sugarcoating, said the Reds haven’t been very good this year; the Bengals haven’t been very good. Uecker was the one going on about how the Reds have a young, exciting team. Brennaman was right: It would be a blessing if they turned things around.
The way he talks without turning into a “homer,” when he says something good, you believe it.
When they brought Brennaman onto the field after the game, the Reds described him as the “soundtrack of our summers.” I remember listening to him in the car night after night in the summers growing up. At the risk of feeling ways about things, sometimes you don’t realize until later how something mundane like that might stick with you.
When I was at the ballpark, I also took a picture of a trophy in front of Pete Rose. You can never have too many pictures of a trophy.
