“This is No. 1 for me,” says retired Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman, who will be honored with a bronze statue Sept. 6 outside Great American Ball Park.
The statue means more to Brennaman than going into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Coopertown, being inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame, or the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame.
“My career would not have been what it was had it not been for me being accepted by the people who were listening to the broadcast,” says Brennaman, hired by the Reds in 1974 with no Major League Baseball broadcasting experience.
“The national things are wonderful, being in my profession and being accepted into the broadcasters’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. But none of that would have happened had I not been accepted as I was in this town. So this town’s acceptance is much more important to me than whatever notoriety I may have gained from being in the Baseball Hall of Fame or the Radio Hall of Fame.”
The Reds will honor Brennaman with a life-size bronze statue depicting him sitting behind the Reds radio microphone. It will be located against the west wall of the Reds office building, with Marty looking at the statues of Reds’ greats Joe Morgan and Pete Rose greeting fans as they enter Crosley Terrace.
Brennaman says it’s the perfect location.
“Pete Rose and Joe Morgan were my two closest friends in all the years I worked here, in terms of uniformed personnel, minus the managers,” he says.
“People will come to the ballpark, and the first thing they’ll see are Morgan and Rose and me. It’s as good of a location as you could ever put something like this.”
Not far away will be a statue honoring his longtime broadcast partner, Joe Nuxhall, the youngest pitcher in Major League Baseball history at 15. Nuxhall was the first Reds star to be honored with a statue in 2003, four months after the opening of Great American Ball Park. Since then, the Reds have erected statues of catcher Ernie Lombardi, slugger Ted Kluszewski, baseball hit king Pete Rose and Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, Frank Robinson, Tony Perez and Morgan.
Honoring a beloved local broadcaster is not unique throughout baseball. At least eight announcers have tributes: Jack Buck (St. Louis Cardinals); Harry Caray (Chicago Cubs); Bob Uecker (Milwaukee Brewers); Vin Scully (Los Angeles Dodgers); Ernie Harwell (Detroit Tigers); Dave Niehaus (Seattle Mariners); Harry Kalas (Philadelphia Phillies) and Jerry Coleman (San Diego Padres).
Brennaman’s honor comes 25 years after he was enshrined at Cooperstown. (And 10 years after I first suggested a statue for Brennaman in a WVXU blog post called “A Birthday Present for Marty Brennaman” on his 73rd birthday on July 28, 2015.)
“I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say that there were times when I thought about it. You know, [I was there] 46 years. But then I’d dismiss it. I never paid a lot of thought to it. At a fleeting moment I would think about a bronze statue being put out there for me,” he says.
Reds Hall of Fame Director Rick Walls and other Reds officials surprised Brennaman and his wife, Amanda, with the news two weeks ago at Crosley Terrace outside the ball park. They had been invited to the Reds Hall of Fame to discuss plans for a Big Red Machine reunion before the Reds-Padres game Saturday, June 28.
When someone asked Brenneman where his statue was, Brennaman joked, “Oh, mine’s in the mail.”
That’s when Walls said: “ ‘It’s going right here.’ And I was blown away. I was stunned. And Amanda started crying. And when Amanda starts crying it’s big, because she doesn’t do it very often. It was a nice way of telling me they were going to do this for me.”
Walls told them the club had been talking about the Brennaman statue for two years. It will be sculpted by Tom Tsuchiya, the internationally recognized artist who has made all the Reds players’ statues outside Great American Ball Park. He also creates plaques for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown and the Reds Hall of Fame.
