PEEKING THROUGH THE CORNFIELD: GHOSTS OF BASEBALL’S PAST 1/21 with Jordan Miesse
Joe Nuxhall
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On July 30, 1928, the youngest player to ever play in a Major League baseball game was born. As impressive a feat as that is, Joe Nuxhall’s story doesn’t end there.
Nuxhall was born and raised in Hamilton, Ohio and by ninth grade he was 6’2” and 190 pounds. The kid was a big lefty that could throw hard and he and his father, Orville, were both regularly playing semi-pro baseball together when Joe was fourteen.
It was 1943, and over 500 Major Leaguers, including the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Bob Feller, and Yogi Berra, had traded in their baseball uniforms for US issued olive drab to join the fight against fascism around the world. MLB scouts were desperate to fill their depleted rosters. Orville Nuxhall attracted scouts from the Cincinnati Reds but turned the team down to be able to raise his five children. The scouts’ attention turned to young Joe.
On February 18, 1944, after Nuxhall’s high school basketball season had ended, the Reds signed the 15-year-old to a Major League contract. Warren Giles, the Reds GM, secured permission from Nuxhall’s principal to have him in uniform on Opening Day 1944.
On June 10, 1944, 49 days before his sixteenth birthday and four days after D-Day, Joe Nuxhall made his Major League debut in a mop up role at Crosley Field in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Reds were down 13-0 in the ninth when Nuxhall came in in relief.
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“I was scared to death,” Nuxhall said, recounting that day. “I got all shook up and tripped over the top step and fell flat on my face in the dirt. It was embarrassing.” Never-the-less, Nuxy, as he would come to be called by the Cincinnati faithful, took the mound.
“Probably two weeks prior to that, I was pitching against seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders, kids 13 and 14 years old. All of a sudden, I look up and there’s Stan Musial and the likes. It was a scary situation.”
He started out well enough by getting Cards shortstop George Fallon to ground out. Unfortunately, he could not get out of the inning, giving up five walks (one to Musial), two hits, a wild pitch and five runs. This inauspicious debut, and subsequent demotion to the minors, would not hold Nuxy back, however.
After briefly pitching with the Birmingham Barons of the Southern League, Nuxhall returned home and regained his amateur status for his senior year of high school. He earned all-state honors in both football and basketball his senior year, and then proceeded to play for six different minor league baseball teams after graduation and by 1952, at the age of 23, Joe Nuxhall had made his way back to Major League Baseball once again with the Cincinnati Reds.
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Over the next fifteen years, Joe Nuxhall proved that he was a Major League pitcher. He started 287 games, mostly with the Reds. He was a very good pitcher for much of his lengthy career, earning two consecutive All Star nods in 1955 and 1956. He would finish his career after the 1966 season at the age of 37. He had amassed 1372 strikeouts to go along with his 135-117 record and 3.90 ERA. He would be elected to the Reds Hall of Fame in 1968.
Nuxhall retired from playing baseball in April of 1967, but not from the Reds organization. He immediately went to the broadcast booth, with no experience in the field, and there he would remain a staple with Reds Nation for the next 37 years. So much so that when Great American Ballpark opened in 2003, the Reds made sure to have his catch phrase, “This is the old left-hander, rounding third and heading for home”, emblazoned on the outside of the building along with a statue of his likeness outside of the main entrance.
Joe Nuxhall passed away at the age of 79 on November 15, 2007. The following year, on Opening Day 2008, the entire Reds team wore his number 41 with the name “Nuxhall” on the back of their jerseys for their introductions. Starting pitcher Aaron Harang was allowed to wear the jersey for the whole game in honor of The Ol’ Lefthander.
Contributed by Jordan Miesse
Sourced from the Los Angeles Times, “At Age 15, Nuxhall Grew Up in a Hurry : The Youngest-Ever Pitcher in Majors Broke in 50 Years Ago Against Musial.” Joe Kay, June 5, 1994 (Print).
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