Update May 4, 2023: Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy says the second-inning Reds' radio chats started with him chatting with Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall, before involvement by the Cincinnati papers, as I reported in my story.
"Actually, the segment started when the Dayton Daily News purchased the time, and I was on every second inning with Marty and Joe for two years by myself," McCoy emailed from his Dayton home. "The Enquirer saw the value and the attention we were getting and bought half the segment and the Enquirer and I alternated. It stayed that way until both papers quit paying for it, and then Marty decided to keep it going. Just wanted to set the record straight."
WXIX-TV also participated in the Reds radio rotation in the mid 1990s. Fox 19 paid for sports anchors Dan Hoard and Greg Hoard to visit with Marty and Joe every other home game for about two years, Dan Hoard says. Fox 19 didn't travel with the Reds so they were not part of the road broadcasts, he says.
Original post May 3, 2023: The sportswriters are gone and I miss them. So do Reds radio announcers Tommy Thrall and Jeff Brantley, who weren't around when the second-inning Reds game feature began more than 20 years ago with Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall.
Dropping daily conversations with Reds beat writers C. Trent Rosecrans, Bobby Nightengale and Mark Sheldon is an unintended consequence of the Major League Baseball's pitch clock this season, along with the drop in beer sales.
The 15-second timer between pitches has shaved about a half-hour off the average game this year. Games now can be completed in under three hours since hitters don't have unlimited time to re-adjust their batting gloves and helmet after each pitch. That's a good thing.
The faster pace also squeezed out time for the announcers to have a coherent conversation with radio booth guests. So the Reds eliminated the segment in late April. That's not good for loyal Reds fans.
"With the games moving much quicker so often it felt rushed, and so the decision was made to do away with it for now," says Thrall, in his fourth season as the Reds main play-by-play announcer. "It's really about the pace of play just not allowing much natural time for those kinds of conversations."
The writers don't disagree with the club's decision. And all involved don't want the segment to be counted out permanently.
The pitch clock "did make it more difficult to get a rhythm. I don’t think they were wrong," says Rosecrans of The Athletic.
"We were told the second-inning appearances were a bit choppy because of the pace of the pitch clock … It's difficult to hold a conversation, call a game and read the mid-inning ads if the half-inning lasts only two or three minutes," says Nightengale, who leaves the Enquirer later this month to write for his hometown paper, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
"The Reds said they could revisit the decision later in the year, but the main message they told us was they wanted to simplify the broadcast a bit. All of us writers enjoyed the second inning, so it's a bummer. But no denying the games are moving quickly," Nightengale says.
The writers' segment began with the old Cincinnati Post and Dayton Daily News as a paid promotion around 2000, says John Fay, retired Enquirer baseball writer. The Enquirer took it over in 2003 or '04, and when the Enquirer didn’t renew a few years later, Brennaman decided to continue it by alternating the beat guys, Fay says.
Thrall, Brantley, Brennaman or Joe Nuxhall would ask the writers about their stories about players' performances, slumps or families. They gave Reds fans great insights beyond the booth. Sometimes the writers talked about watching or interviewing a future star playing in the minor leagues or working out at the Reds' Arizona camp. And sometimes they could be critical of the team, too.
Thrall, hired before Brennaman's last season in 2019, and Brantley, the former pitcher added to the broadcast team in 2007, would like to continue the tradition in some way.
"I liked the segment with the writers. Each of them brought their own perspective that added some color to our broadcast," Brantley says. "Yes, I’m disappointed that the time constraints with the new pitch clock have pushed the writers out. Maybe we can find a way down the road to revisit that segment."
"I really liked that segment and I hope we can find a way to bring it back in some capacity," Thrall says.
Stay tuned.
