The time Joe got Marty

Given the reaction to the new “Ol’ Lefthander” exhibit at the Reds Hall of Fame & Museum -- the display has drawn rave reviews from everybody’s who’s seen it – a moment in “Marty & Joe” lore is worth remembering.
Monday night in Sarasota, Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman breezed through the pressbox at tired ol’ Ed Smith Stadium to create his unique brand of controlled mayhem with one of the Reds employees.
Afterward, we asked Brennaman about the time in the late 1970s, when iron-fisted, front-office boss Dick Wagner caught wind of the fact that Brennaman had been reading a non-baseball book in the radio booth during a Reds game.
“If that ever happens again,” Wagner told Brennaman, “you’re gone.”
A few weeks later, Nuxhall asked Brennaman at the opening of an inning, “That book looked good you were reading at the end of the last inning, Marty. What’s it about?”
Brennaman thought for sure he was finished.
Turns out the engineer who had cued Marty and Joe that the broadcast of the inning was just beginning, was actually in cahoots with Joe. The broadcast hadn’t yet gone on the air.
“It’s the only time Joe got me – and he got me good,” Brennaman recalled. “He loved telling that story.”