CINCINNATI – A tall Pike Place roast in one hand, Marty Brennaman steps out of his white Cadillac and pulls out his overstuffed briefcase and a wooden stick with a green flag atop it.
His daughter, Ashley Brennaman Shirley, is the communications manager for the Kentucky Speedway and she needed him to deliver the green start flag to one of the Reds’ mascots.
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“I’m a jack of all trades,” he jokes.
If his last first day of the season is special, it’s not starting off like it.
“It’s not any different,” Marty says getting out of his car. “Maybe if I don’t act like it’s a big deal people will forget by the end of the year.”
That’s not going to happen.
Marty is in the house. (C. Trent Rosecrans/The Athletic)
Brennaman, 76, announced in January that the 2019 season would be his last as the Reds’ play-by-play announcer, ending a career with the team that began in 1974.
His first game with the Reds saw Hank Aaron tie Babe Ruth on the all-time home run list. He called three World Series winners and has won pretty much every award in his business.
The 2019 season will feature plenty adulation as Brennaman celebrates a season of lasts – last trip around the league, last call, last game and, on Thursday, last Opening Day.
And on his last Opening Day, he’s lugging around a delivery for his daughter and forgets to turn off his car.
There isn’t much pomp and circumstance as he goes through the concourse for his final game, aside from a single reporter who takes in a little of the day with him.
A stadium worker gets in the elevator with us and Marty bids him a good day as he gets off on the first floor. We get off on the third, where we walk through the kitchen, “Goodfellas” style, to get to the broadcast booth on the third level.
Taking the ‘Goodfellas’ route. (C. Trent Rosecrans/The Athletic)
Brennaman greets everyone in the same booming voice that he calls the games – there’s no difference in either attitude, volume or enthusiasm from his speaking voice and his radio voice. With Marty, what you see – and hear – is what you get.
“Good morning,” he says to the workers in the kitchen as he walks through. They respond in kind, and before he gets to the door into the media dining room, one of the workers says to him, “Congratulations on your retirement, Mr. Brennaman.” He thanks someone, not for the last time on the day, but it’s a genuine response. One he will repeat time and time again, each time with the same gratefulness at the gesture, that people care.
When Marty walks into the booth, broadcast partner Jeff Brantley is already there, sitting in his seat working on his scorebook. Dave “Yid” Armbruster, the long-time engineer for broadcasts, is there too. As Marty walks over to his desk, he sees a quarter, a dime and a penny sitting next to the cards with ad reads on them.
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“What’s this 36 cents for?” he asks.
Nobody knows.
“I thought one of you did it,” he says. “I figured someone was already messing with me.”
The only thing Marty Brennaman does better than take a joke is dish one out. There are so many jokes that sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s a joke and what’s just a bit of change on a table.
Tommy Thrall, newly hired to bolster the broadcast crew walks in.
Reds broadcaster Tommy Thrall. (C. Trent Rosecrans/The Athletic)
“I thought we got rid of him after Tuesday?” Marty says to Brantley.
“No, we didn’t,” Brantley says as Marty cackles. “He’s back in here.”
“How we looking there NKOTB?” Marty says.
“Just swell, how about yourself?” Thrall responds.
“You know me, buddy… a little slice of heaven.”
And it is.
That’s the thing about Brennaman, even in August of a 90-loss season, he has fun. That’s part of the reason he’s walking away. What’s the good of having free time if you can’t enjoy it? Heaven can be a ballpark, but heaven can also be away from a ballpark.
There may be no place that laughs more than Brennaman’s table in the Great American Ball Park media dining room.
The pregame table is part roast, part daily talk show, part variety show. It’s always entertaining.
Marty sits with his egg salad sandwich from his box lunch (the Reds always serve box lunches on Opening Day, the rest of the year there are hot meals that the media buy) and the court gathers around him. There’s Yid (always “Yid” or “Yiddy”), there’s Thrall, Brantley and the TV crew of Jim Day, Chris Welsh and Thom Brennaman, Marty’s son and broadcasting legend in his own right.
If you can’t take a joke, you can’t sit at this table. Thursday’s target is Thom. Day does a spot-on impression of his TV partner and has a greatest hits compilation – mostly parroting Thom’s stories of the 2001 Diamondbacks with “Schil” and “Unit,” Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson.
The Brennamans laugh harder than anyone.
“Thirty seconds to you,” Yid, with headphones on, announces at 4:05 p.m., five minutes before the scheduled first pitch and, well, 30 seconds before Marty goes live for his final Opening Day.
“A’ight,” Marty responds.
“Don’t forget you have one break.”
“Yid, are you kidding me?”
“I am kidding you,” Yid responds. “You’re getting older, you forget stuff.”
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“OK, Amanda Jr.,” Marty says, referencing his wife as Brantley chuckles in the background.
“Here we go,” he says. “Showtime boys, showtime.”
“Thank you very much, Yid,” Marty says into the microphone and across the Reds Radio Network that broadcasts in 69 cities across eight states. “And good afternoon everybody and welcome to Great American Ball Park on a glorious day for baseball, the single biggest day in the calendar year in our great city year in and year out and we’re moments away from getting underway. We’ll be back with the lineups and the play-by-play action in just a moment.”
Standing for the National Anthem. (C. Trent Rosecrans/The Athletic)
After a minute during the commercial break, Brantley turns to Marty and says, “Do you think David (Bell) is nervous?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve got to be, now,” Brantley responds.
“He’s got both his brothers here, his sisters are here…”
“He grew up here for godsakes!” Brantley interrupts.
“… he went to Moeller High School.”
“There’s something in that No. 25 down there, you can’t teach that.”
“That’s right,” Marty says.
“Stand by,” Yid announces.
Marty announces both lineups – sponsored by McDonald’s – giving the batting orders and defensive lineups for both teams. No matter what else happens, the game is always the main attraction. There’s fun, but there’s always baseball, always the game. Even if many of us are making this about Marty, for him, it’s about the team. He’d always said he didn’t want a farewell tour, that he’d prefer to just walk away at the end of the season. That’s what he wanted, but not what the Reds wanted. After 46 years, he felt he owed it to the team to put their wishes ahead of his own. While Marty can be as sharp-tongued as anyone when it comes to the Cincinnati Reds, his heart belongs to the team. He respects the franchise and the ownership group too much to do what he wants to do.
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“Jeff Brantley, it’s nice to be back with you, pal. Looking forward to a good, good year, hopefully, a winning year for this ballclub,” he starts. “Now, after spending five, six weeks in Arizona, that first pitch from Luis Castillo to Adam Frazier will be when it officially starts to count.”
After a little banter, that first pitch comes.
“Frazier a left-hand batter, the third baseman drawn in, (Eugenio) Suárez, the windup and the pitch… It’s a ground ball to the right side, backhanded by Votto and given up to Castillo… And the 2019 baseball season is underway.”
The Reds have two people in the booth taking video of Marty as he calls his final Opening Day. I’m there. In the second inning, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred comes in.
The two are making small talk about the city and Opening Day, it’s Manfred’s first in Cincinnati. As the two talk before the microphones go live, the crowd erupts.
“Marty, Marty,” Yid says, pointing out at the field as Marty was looking back at Manfred who was atop a stool between the two broadcasters.
The video boards are focused on Marty and the crowd is cheering.
“You’re on,” Yid tells him. “To the camera.”
Marty does as he’s instructed, waving to the crowd. It interrupts the commissioner, but he’s not the one being honored today. This is Marty’s day, and even if this is the only overt reminder of that, it’s enough.
Marty waves. And then he holds up both hands to those cheering.
Brantley and Manfred clap as well.
“Standby!” Yid shouts.
“We’ve got that out of the way,” Marty says not completely under his breath, but a little over it.
Throughout the game, the door to the booth opens and closes, everyone wants to see the legend on this day on more time. It’s the beginning of the season, but it’s the beginning of the end of the beloved broadcaster’s career.
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Marty doesn’t bring up it being his last year until he’s asked. And he’s asked plenty, not during the broadcast, but in every moment. The two men filming will set up interviews for later. After the game, he’ll spend a couple of minutes being interviewed by former Red and WLW host Tracy Jones as Thrall handles the postgame show duties.
Cameras shot video of Brennaman throughout Opening Day. (C. Trent Rosecrans/The Athletic)
Marty’s accommodating to others, a seasoned storyteller, he understands the story. It is a story. He’s not uncomfortable with being the center of attention, but he’s not seeking it. The center seeks him.
“Does it bother you?” I ask as we wait for the elevator to go from the press box down to the field level where he’s parked.
“No,” he said, reiterating that despite the hubbub in the broadcast booth, it was a pretty normal Opening Day. “I could broadcast on the floor of Grand Central Station.”
“We were speculating during the commercial break whether David Bell would bring Raisel Iglesias back and that he is,” Marty starts the ninth inning with the Reds leading the Pirates 5-3. “He gave up a leadoff hit in the eighth before he got a ground out, a fly out and a strikeout. He comes back to pitch the ninth, trying to notch a save and first confronted by center fielder and left-handed batter JB Shuck. And the first pitch is taken, ball one.”
The ninth is up-and-down, with Iglesias walking Shuck, getting Erik Gonzalez to pop up and then walking Colin Moran.
“They’ve seen all they want to see of Raisel Iglesias,” Marty says. “He is going to have the ball taken out of his hand and Amir Garrett is going to be coming out to the mound. The tying run is on base, the go-ahead run at the plate. David Bell has made it to the first-base foul line and he’s already signaled to the bullpen. So Iglesias, not equal to the task today, leaves and now they’ll go to the bullpen again following Jared Hughes, Zach Duke and Raisel Iglesias. It’s going to be Amir Garrett who enters stage right with two on and one out. We’ll be back in just a moment.”
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Even a pitching change tells you all you need to know about the game and what’s going on and what has happened before. Garrett comes in and strikes out Frazier, the left-handed leadoff man.
“A long look by the left-hander,” he says. “He winds up and comes with the 1-2 pitch and strike three is called.”
As the crowd goes wild in the background, Bell comes out of the dugout again to bring in David Hernandez.
“Another pitching change,” he says. “Another break in the action.”
Then, even after the broadcast has gone to commercial, he adds, “nice job, son,” to Garrett, who can’t hear him.
Hernandez walks the first batter he faces, Pablo Reyes, to bring up Corey Dickerson.
Somewhere in the 12-pitch, seven-minute, 14-second at-bat between Dickerson and Hernandez he notes, “I would imagine if you’d ask Clint Hurdle who he’d like to have at the plate in a situation like this, that’s the guy he’d pick.”
“The Reds are in a particular situation of their own doing,” a phrasing that is strikingly Marty – honest, blunt and accurate.
And Hernandez reading the 2-2 pitch, the 12th of the at-bat, a 92.5-mph fastball.
“Now the pitch,” he says. “And a ground ball to second, up with it is Peraza to first – AND THIS ONE BELONGS TO THE REDS!”
Marty’s signature call is something that’s never taken for granted by those listening, it’s a staple of summers in Cincinnati and something that many people can’t recall not hearing at the end of a game. But today, it’s something different. It’s endangered. Every win this season will be a sad reminder that this one may belong to the Reds for now, but it won’t forever.
Just another game for Marty, even if it’s not for the rest of us.
(Top image by C. Trent Rosecrans/The Athletic)