I turned 25 the summer that Marty Brennaman came to Cincinnati. Waite Hoyt was the guy I listened to calling Reds games as I grew up. His voice filled the air at backyard family gatherings, in the car on the way there and back, or whispering from the small table radio in the bedroom late at night in those pre-transistor days. When Hoyt left the radio booth after the 1965 season due to a change in the sponsorship contract, I experienced many of the same emotions expressed about Marty’s retirement this week.
However, in the interim between Hoyt and Marty Brennaman I came to very much enjoy the work first of Jim McIntyre then Al Michaels as the Reds primary radio voices even as I occasionally missed Waite’s rainy day stories.