Photos: Mourning Joe Nuxhall

"We’ve lost someone essential to who we are around here. Joe Nuxhall represented what we like to think is the best of our nature: Friendly, approachable, loyal. If you need us, we’re there. We’re incapable of pretense. What better described Joe than that?

Here’s something else about us: Once we love you, we don’t leave. Joe never left. He never will.

Joe was summer. Joe was nights on the deck, a can of perspiring beverage in our hand. Joe was the big sky above, the mysterious sounds of the evening, what the composer Andrew Lloyd Weber calls “the music of the night.’’

Joe sounded like baseball: Lolling, drowsy, taking his own sweet time. We spend much effort running here and there, hoping at a dead run to wring meaning from our days. Joe taught us to slow down, put our feet up and listen to the ballgame. Baseball was not on the clock. Neither was Joe."

Picture by Nuxhall's statue outside of Great American Ballpark with memorial after he passed away.

Joe Nuxhall's seat in the Cincinnati Reds radio broadcast booth.

At nightfall, the "Rounding Third and Heading for Home" signoff line from Nuxhall was illuminated on the side of Great American Ball Park. All other ballpark lights were turned off in honor of Nuxhall.