Pennsylvania native Nick Krall may be a Northern Kentuckian now, but the Reds President of Baseball Operations got a good lesson about his adopted community Wednesday as the guest speaker for the final induction of the year for the Northern Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame.
The lesson could not be more obvious: Everybody in Northern Kentucky sports is connected to everybody else in one fashion or other.
Krall, for example, is the son-in-law of the late Buster Petty, a renowned teacher and coach at Highlands High School. Petty, inducted into the NKSHOF in 1991, was a colleague and basketball assistant to NKSHOF VP Kenney Shields – as well as head baseball coach with Shields as his assistant. And all six of Shields’ children had Petty as a biology teacher.
As for Krall, he lives on a street next to Thomas More and Summit Hills. Wait, you stop him, I think that’s where my aunt and uncle lived for decades. Turns out it is, and Krall’s neighbor is Raph Landrum, who made Northern Kentucky proud with his PGA Tour career over the years. The same Ralph Landrum yours truly got to cover back in the day at a number of US Opens, the Canadian Open, and a player this sportswriter caddied for at the British Open qualifying and the Doral Open.
While we’re talking, Doug Martin comes up to show Krall a photo he took with him in Pittsburgh. And there’s former Major League umpire Randy Marsh, who invited Krall here months ago for the last meeting before Randy takes over as president, succeeding the much-lauded 20-year term of Joe Brennan.
Behind the scenes unveiling the plaques and awards on what would become something of a “Ludlow Day” at the NKSHOF, there was basketballer Dick Maile, whom Krall saluted as the other LSU guy in the room after Krall was “the last guy cut trying to walk on with LSUs national champions baseball team in 2000.”
As for Ludlow, with two of the new honorees from the little town on the river, three of Ludlow’s best ever – 91-year-old Jack Aynes, the NKISHOF Golf Outing guru; 92-year-old former mayor Buddy Waite and 93-year-old Jack Hatter, still playing tennis three times a week — were all a part of the overflow crowd here early for the annual Christmas Holiday Party.
Just a cool way to finish the year. Here are some of the best takes:
• Nick Krall: “My father-in-law was indebted to this Hall of Fame, he loved being a part of this . . . when I moved here, I didn’t realize how big sports was here.” Krall talked of his journey from York, Pa., to Baton Rouge to New Jersey and Visalia, California, in the minor leagues and working for $500 a summer and then going from the A’s to the Reds 20 years ago, where he has been in all phases of scouting and how proud he was of the fact that 26 of the Reds’ international players have earned their high school diplomas since he’s been here. With all the first- and second-year talent the Reds have – you know their names, “developing that is a huge part of where we are as an organization,” Krall says. As for Elly de la Cruz, all Krall wants to see is that he goes back to where he was in Louisville where his walks equaled his strikeouts.
• Jay and Mike Zang, whose family owns four Skyline restaurants with the one in Erlanger. Mike talked of how he got started as a sponsor when the legendary broadcaster Dale McMillen, who had also become a girls’ softball coach at Lloyd Memorial, came by to ask for support at a time when girls’ sports were not all that established. That Lloyd team won a state championship, gave Mike a jersey to hang up in the store and he and his brother have been hooked sponsoring, coaching and promoting for a quarter-century. Jay echoed Krall’s comments: “What Nick said about coaching, it’s really nice to be able to help people.”
• Charles Margolen: “This is a great honor . . . Ludlow is a small town, we all knew each other, we all played all sports,” he said, after doing just that at Ludlow High as the Urbana College graduate nears retirement after 46 years at Cincinnati Bell.
• Mike Caple: It was the second Hall of Fame induction this fall (also the Athletic Directors’ Hall of Fame) for the late all-sports star and product of Ludlow’s greatest family of athletes – dad Harold, uncles Clarence and Charlie, aunt Dorothy and brothers Denny and Danny, who also resurrected the Ludlow Youth Football program. Two generations of the Caple family were here to accept for Mike.
• Newport High’s Ron Parry won a Knothole national championship for the Newport Yankees, started three years for Newport High and then Western Kentucky University football where he was a teammate of the late Jim “Eefie” Vorhees on both teams. Eefie, who was an all-state football player for Highlands, was also my next-door neighbor in Ludlow, proving once again what a small, connected world sports here can be. Ron said he wanted to thank another lawyer, Phil Taliaferro, who nominated him and asked the trial attorney “to keep my remarks to a half-hour.” Said this was “quite an honor” to receive this award since “I know a lot of the members growing up in Northern Kentucky.” And continuing the connected theme, “Randy Marsh’s wife was my secretary.”
• Special honors went to a pair of long-time Board of Director members, Denny Bowman and Jack Aynes. Bowman said that he would go against his “30 years as a politician” and make it brief. Said he’d like to accept his award for 13 years on the Board and for rounding up so many sponsors for the annual golf outing by making it brief: “I’d like to accept this award for the entire Board of Directors. I’m honored to receive this.” And then you knew it was coming, Denny nodded to the Zang’s with this connected comment: “Jay is married to my beautiful daughter.”
Aynes’ long service to the Board was recognized with his starting the major fundraiser – the golf outing – and as a driving force for the college scholarships awarded. “I’ve seen a lot of guys come and go,” Jack, 91, dead-panned to laughter, “this is the end of the day, I guess.” Then his Ludlow High backfield mate Waite recalled a game in 90-degree weather when Buddy called Jack’s number 13 straight plays, down to the three-yard line. Waite recalled Aynes saying to him before the next play: “If you call my number one more time, I’m going to kill you.” So Buddy called his own number “and walked into the end zone. A true story,” Buddy said.
• And finally, this was the swan song for Joe Brennan’s two decades as president. He opened his final meeting presiding with the awarding of $2,000 checks to the Behringer-Crawford Museum, that has cooperated with the NKSHOF in a number of programs and displays and whose existence goes back to Joe’s stopping a move to demolish the Devou Park landmark and put in under an independent board of trustees when he was a Covington City commissioner.
A tumultuous time, the way Dr. Jim Claypool, historian and author described it, of the way Joe was subpoenaed to Frankfort after just two months on the Commission and he arrived without a lawyer. Legendary Northern Kentucky lawyer Howell Vincent stopped him before he went into the grand jury room and asked Joe if he had a lawyer. Joe asked why would he need one, he’d only been on the Commission for two months. Vincent said he’d soon find out but before answering the first question, to come back out and talk to him. The question: Had he ever seen gambling in Northern Kentucky?
Born at “11th and Madison, of course I had,” Joe said. “There were three bookies within the block.” But as the lone commissioner called in, Joe knew he’d better talk to Vincent who advised him “to take the Fifth,” avoiding having to name who he’d seen with the possibility of perjury whichever way that went. So he did take it, but even though grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, by the time Joe got back to Covington, his testimony was everywhere, especially in The Kentucky Post. “You’d have thought I was Al Capone,” Joe said.
It’s been an eventful life for Joe, a career railroad exec who also worked out of town on assignments but always saw to it that he could be home in Northern Kentucky. Joe figures that of his more than 60 years of marriage to wife, Jeanine, he’s been home maybe 40 of those years. “We’ve got this thing going,” Joe said of where the NKSHOF is right now, “Randy will take care of us.” Marsh’s response: “I’ll do my best to keep up.”
A series of honors came Joe’s way from the designating of Wednesday as “Joe Brennan Day” by the Kenton County Fiscal Court to the Behringer-Crawford Museum awarding him a lifetime pass. “It’s good for at least a year,” said the museum’s Jason French.
In final tribute, Jim Claypool said Joe Brennan’s life was a takeoff on that old Doc Rusk commercial: “If you need something done, call Joe Brennan.”
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.