Joe Nuxhall, 79, a left-handed pitcher whose 1944 debut at age 15 with the Cincinnati Reds made him the youngest player in major league history, died Thursday at Mercy Hospital in Fairfield, Ohio. He was 79 and had cancer and heart ailments.
Nuxhall was only a few days removed from pitching for his junior high school team in Hamilton, Ohio, when the Reds offered him a contract to fill a roster depleted when players were called to World War II.
He had an inauspicious performance in his first game, against Stan Musial’s St. Louis Cardinals, and would not appear again in the big leagues for eight years. But he went on to have a solid pitching career and worked for 40 years as a radio broadcaster with the Reds. Nuxhall was beloved in Cincinnati, and a statue depicting him as a 15-year-old pitcher stands outside the Reds’ Great American Ball Park. He was known to fans as “Nuxie” and “the ol’ left-hander.”
He was an all-star in 1955 and 1956 but was released by the Reds in 1960. He missed the Reds’ National League championship season of 1961. He returned to the team in 1962 and the next year had his finest season, with a 15-8 record and an earned run average of 2.61.
He retired in 1966 with 135 career victories and joined the Reds’ radio team the next year. He was paired with Hall of Fame announcer Marty Brennaman from 1974 to 2004.
Ronnie Burns, 72, the son of George Burns and Gracie Allen who appeared occasionally with the comedy team on television in the 1950s, died Wednesday of cancer at his Pacific Palisades, Calif., home, said his wife, Janice Burns.
Burns played himself on “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show,” which ran on CBS from 1950 to 1958, and “The George Burns Show,” which ran for one season after Allen retired from show business in 1958.
He studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and appeared in other TV shows in the ’50s and early 1960s, including “The Honeymooners,” “The Jack Benny Program” and “Playhouse 90” and headlined his own short-lived series, “Happy,” in 1960.
Burns and Allen adopted Ronnie a few months after he was born July 9, 1935, and about a year later they adopted his sister, Sandra.
