From Broken Trucks to Miracle Fields: Tyler Bradshaw On Legacy, Humility, Kindness and Loss And Inclusive Baseball

A torn bench seat in a ’92 GMC Sierra. A sleepy, ill-advised midnight sprint to Gulf Shores. A kid who couldn’t hit a tee-ball grows into the voice that keeps a ballpark buzzing—and then into the leader preserving one of Cincinnati's legacies. Tyler Bradshaw joins us to trace the road from humble first drives to the leadership at the Joe Nuxhall Foundation and the Miracle League Fields in Fairfield, where inclusive baseball turns Friday nights into pure electricity.

We explore how scholarships across Butler County, character education through “trading cards,” and big-league touches—video boards, stadium seating, an accessible mini golf course—create a culture where every athlete with special needs belongs. Tyler opens the door to the next chapter: the Hope Center, an indoor facility designed for year-round play, sensory-aware experiences, and a fully inclusive campus. If you’ve ever wondered how sports, community, and smart design can change lives, this is your map.

The conversation deepens as Tyler shares the loss of his father to suicide, the anxiety that followed, and the faith and therapy that helped him keep going. We talk stigma, why “it’s okay not to be okay” needs its second clause—“and not okay to stay that way without help”—and the power of naming feelings so they can be managed. Along the way, we celebrate the enduring warmth of Joe Nuxhall, the storytelling genius of Marty Brennaman, and the small rituals—like a child touching Joe’s statue before a Reds game—that keep legacies alive.

Come for baseball, stay for the courage. Hear how a city rallies around access, dignity, and joy, and why simply sitting in the stands to cheer might change you as much as it changes the players. If this moved you, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find these stories.

Be sure to check out The Joe Nuxhall Miracle League Fields | Disability Recreation and learn how to get involved.

Follow Tyler's blog at Seeya Bub – A Son Learns to Say Goodbye.

Transcript

Opening And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Dan the Road Trip Guy. I'm your host Dan, and each week we'll embark on a new adventure, discovering memory and life lessons of our incredible guests. From everyday travelers to thrill seekers and everyone in between, this podcast is your front road speak to inspiring stories of passion, resilience, and the pursuit of happiness. So buckle up and enjoy the ride. I am always appreciative when a friend introduces me to what becomes a new friend of mine. And that's exactly what happened. I was introduced to my guest today, Tyler Bradshaw by a mutual friend of ours. Tyler is the executive director of the Kuxall Foundation. If you're from Cincinnati, you probably recognize that name, Knuxall, who's a Cincinnati Reds baseball player, and then went on to a long career in broadcasting alongside his broadcast partner, Marty Brennan. But back to Tyler. Tyler leads this organization and is continuing on the legacy of Joe Kuxall in a variety of ways, but most importantly, touching the lives of people in Cincinnati. Tyler and I are going to take a virtual ride around Cincinnati, talk about his life, cars and trips, leading the Kuxall Foundation. He'll also talk about the death of his father by suicide. I hope you enjoy this virtual ride with Tyler. I am very certain you will. Welcome to the show, Tyler. For my listeners who might not know who you are, just take a couple minutes and tell them who is Tyler Bradshaw.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Professionally, I've got the great blessing of being the executive director for the Kuxall Foundation and the Joe Knoxhall Miracle League field. So we carry forward all the legacy projects that were important to Joe Knoxall in his life and career as a Reds player and broadcaster. The biggest project of those is the Joe Knoxhall Miracle League fields. We have a baseball and recreational facility for athletes with special needs. So that's a real passion project of mine and all the people who serve. Growing up in Cincinnati and lived in Cincinnati my entire life, I was a semi, semi, semi-professional sports announcer, very low-level sports announcing stuff. I announced when I was a student at Miami University, and then for the Hamilton Joes, a team named after Joe Nuxall and announced for a few high school teams in the area, uh things of that nature. And my wife and I, uh Paige, we live in in Mason. Uh, I've got two young boys, Jackson and Nolan, and I love spending time with our family taking trips to Disney and just being with one another. So that's a little bit about me.

First Car And Early Road Memories

SPEAKER_00 2:45

We're gonna dive into the details. Yeah, sounds good. But before we get to those details, this is Day on the Road Truck Eye. Tell me about your first car.

The Overnight Drive To Gulf Shores

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah, my first car was a hand-me-down 1992 GMC Sierra. It was a pickup truck with a single bench. The fabric in the bench had been kind of torn up. There was some exposed foam on the side. I remember no power windows, pretty much no power anything, sometimes not even power to the actual vehicle. I remember one time in in high school being on crutches and it it broke down on me in the middle of Route 4 in between Fairfield High School and and my home and having to try to try to navigate that and uh not not a good situation. Honestly, it was a it was a great first vehicle because it was it was big enough that uh if there was going to be damage done, it probably wasn't to me. I remember on the the first day of school, actually the first day I ever drove to school, I got rear-ended by another classmate in the parking lot. Boy, that was a strong bumper because you couldn't have even you couldn't even tell that thing had been touched. It was it was pretty impressive. But yeah, 19, I think it was a 92 GMC Sierra gray. Yeah, it was a good one. Have any rust on that truck? Oh plenty. More rust than gray. Yeah. It was the wheel wells started to rust out, and it uh yeah, there was always something that felt like something that was working, something that wasn't.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

So growing up or even now as an adult, any epic road trips that you've had in your life or trips, just general trips that stand out, great memory?

SPEAKER_01 4:15

You know, probably the best and simultaneously most dangerous road trip I ever took was my my best friend Chris Beatty. We've we've been friends since we were in second grade. And there was one summer when our our families both vacationed in Gulf Shores, Alabama at the beach, and Chris's family had invited me to come down with Chris and his family to spend a week down with them. And Chris and I thought, you know, seven days on the beach is great, but eight days would be better. Why don't we like drive down overnight? We'll drive all through the night. It's about a 12-hour drive from Cincinnati, and we'll get there a day before everybody else and be able to hang out on the beach. It'll be a blast. So I think we left Cincinnati at like 7 p.m. And I tell you what, Dan, about five hours into that drive, I think we were both done. Like it was just dark. You're driving through parts of Alabama where there's no, there's no street lights, there's no anything. It's just, it's just road and trees. And I remember at one point we had, you know, country music blair, and my friend Chris drove a small little pickup truck as well. And I just remember one point at about three in the morning hearing this bang, bang, bang, bang. And I woke up and kind of jolted. My friend Chris was driving and he was banging his head against the back of the truck, the window tried to stay awake. I'm like, we should probably pull over. But we did make it, and we learned we would never do that again because that was the most miserable day on the beach we've ever had in our entire lives because we got there and it's like we're just too exhausted to even do anything. So on future trips, we didn't drive overnight. We just waited until everybody else did. Didn't opt in for that extra day on the beach. Not worth it. Not worth it by any means. I think we got there, it wasn't even a full day. I think we got there maybe six or seven hours before everybody else did. And it was like this, there's no way this is ever worth it.

Finding A Voice In Sports Announcing

SPEAKER_00 6:02

It's a memory, right? That is, yeah. I'll always remember it. Yeah. So you talked about you work for the Knuxall Foundation, but take us on your journey of how you got there. Uh you mentioned you were a radio announcer, and funny, I was telling you about a mutual friend of ours. He his comment about you was, he has a great radio voice. And I said, Well, we're gonna talk about that a little bit.

The Art Of Baseball On Radio

Enter The Nuxhall Foundation

Scholarships And Character Education

Miracle League Fields And Inclusive Design

SPEAKER_01 6:26

I will take that. Yeah, I um, you know, Dan it was funny. I I grew up loving sports, but I was a horrible athlete. From and and it was one of those things you never wanna you never want to throw in the towel early, but I mean I could tell from an early age, like I was the bad kid on the t-ball team. Like I didn't even know that was possible. Everybody gets a hit, everybody gets a run, and and I was the guy who didn't. I was just no matter what sport I tried, I just was not uh a good athlete, which is ironic because my wife is a uh she played soccer in college, very you know, four-year athlete, and could not have been more opposite in terms of our athletic ability, but always loved sports, particularly loved baseball. Knew I wanted to stay involved in athletics. And and really sports announcing was kind of my way in. I grew up listening to Marty Brennerman and Joe Knoxall every single night. Uh, that was just kind of the soundtrack of summer for me and so many other Cincinnatians. And I grew up idolizing them because I knew that's the only way I'm ever gonna be able to stay relevant in in sports would be to be as an announcer. But I was also terrified of public speaking in high school, which is not a good combination for a guy who wants to go this route. Yeah. When I got to college, I was a student at Miami Hamilton, and I'll never forget there was a day I was walking down on the stairwell in in Mosler Hall, and there was a flyer that said they were looking for a sports announcer, the next voice of the Harriers. It was a really flashy title. And there was a little ticket you could tear off. So I took the ticket, called the athletic director, and and went in. And not a very thorough vetting process. He sat me down on the on the couch in his office. He handed me a script for a hot dog advertisement. And it was completely made up. We didn't even have a sponsorship, but it was Oscar Meyer, the official hot dog of the Miami Hamilton Harriers, and he said, Okay, you got the job. I started announcing volleyball, basketball, and baseball games at Miami Hamilton and just really fell in love with it from the the start, from the moment I started doing it. Now, was this announcing on the radio or announcing just in the Started out as a public address announcer, so I I love the theatrical element of that. You really fed off the crowd, you fed off the game. It was fun to be right there next to the bench where the the players were, especially during basketball. I mean, I've got some unbelievable memories, you know, some good and some bad of games and and interactions with coaches that uh I couldn't have got in any other in any other place on the court. And then when I started announcing for the Hamilton Joes, which that team formed right as I graduated college, it was a summer Woodbat baseball team uh that was named after Joe Knuxall. Ironically, it was a really a tribute to him. That's when I started doing some play-by-play broadcasting. So I would go on the road with the team and do games, and then at home I would I would do the public address announcing. So I got a little bit of everything and and loved them all. The public address announcing is fun because, like I said, that's a bit more of a um, I think a responsive performance is probably the best way to describe it. You, you know, you would you would do something or say something and you would feel the crowd cheer differently, or you would hear them laugh about, you know, we used to do the uh I would uh one of my favorite things we ever did is I would come over the PA in a really solemn voice, uh, you know, and I would say, ladies and gentlemen, we're looking for the owner of a a red Honda license plate GMH 7738, and I'd pause and then I'd you know say, you know, your car's been selected as the dirtiest car in the parking lot, and your prize is a free car wash, compliments of our sponsors. I think it was splash and dash auto wash is what it was. So I loved that because every night you could hear people laugh and it was fun. But the radio broadcasting was a lot of fun because there was a storytelling element to that that was really beautiful. You know, I do that's what I've always told people. Radio broadcasting is an art form with any sport, but particularly a beautiful art form with the game of baseball because it's a three-hour game and there's a lot of there's a lot of dead air. And that's what I loved about Marty and Joe was that their relationship was so special that you didn't just listen to a game and feel like, okay, I got the game. You felt like you understood something about their friendship. You heard them talk about gardening and tomatoes and golf and dinners that they had eaten on the road and funny stories and all these things. And Marty Brenneman, in my mind, is the best, the best play-by-play announcer that has ever called uh the game of baseball or any other sport. He will always be my favorite. And the relationship that he had with Joe was just absolutely second to none. So that was an inspiration to me and and fun that I got to announce for a team that had Joe Kuxall's name on it. And that's really how I got to know the Kuxall family and got involved with uh the work they're doing. Why don't you tell people what it is? The Nuxhall Foundation. So Joe was, aside from being a tremendous player and a tremendous broadcaster, I think the thing that people remember most about Joe is the way he treated other people and his heart and and how he cared for other people. And Joe had some legacy projects that uh were really important to him. Probably the thing that was most important to him, we we call it Joe's baby now to this day, was uh the Joe Knoxall Gall founding and the scholarship fund that it supported. So Joe started a scholarship fund back in 1985 where he wanted to give uh$2,000 in scholarship money to all 14 Butler County High Schools. So kind of an unusual scholarship. You know, most people start a scholarship fund at their school, and it's this is going to my high school, that sort of thing. Joe wanted to spread it throughout the community. So believe it or not, we are in the 41st year. We will have the 41st year of Joe's golf outing this upcoming summer. And thanks to the people who support that golf outing, we will cross the million dollar mark in scholarship money awarded to student athletes in our community. It's amazing to see a golf outing carry on as long as it has, but to grow and to get bigger, we're actually going to be increasing the amount of scholarship money that we hand out. We're gonna jump to$42,000 overall this coming year. So there's the scholarship fund. The character education fund is another important facet of the Kuxall Foundation. Joe's son, Kim Kuxall, who's our volunteer board chairman and president, very involved in every single thing that we're doing. Kim was an elementary education teacher, a phys ed teacher for 32 years. And about halfway through his career, he really experienced a transformation in how he approached education. Instead of being a phys ed teacher, he started to see himself as a character education teacher. And he completely flipped the way he taught to be modeled around character development and the teaching of important virtues and values, things like termination and grit and hardware, kindness, and loyalty. So we have a number of character education projects. Probably the most popular one that you'll see from us, we uh produce character cards. So they're baseball cards or trading cards of athletes that we think are great role models for young individuals in our community. So we've done these with Brent Souter, who did pitch for the Reds and is now with the Los Angeles Angels, Ellie De La Cruz, Hunter Green, Teddy Kramer, the Reds Bat Boy with Down syndrome, um, Sean Casey, local 12 Sheila Gray, number of different people. And we hand those out for free to schools and sports teams as a way to just drive home a character message. But the the biggest part of what we do is the the Joe Knox All Miracle League fields, which is a baseball and recreational facility for athletes with special needs. So we have a really simple belief that every individual with every challenge deserves every chance to play the game of baseball, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, regardless of their age. We have players as young as the age of four. Our oldest player was actually 80 years old. Um he passed away two years ago, but he was playing baseball up until the age of 80, which is an incredible thing to witness. Those two rubberized baseball fields, it's an environment unlike any other. And we try to give them big league-level experiences. So we have video boards and stadium seating, our own mascot, concession stands. We've we've built out the facility since uh it opened 13 years ago. We now have an 18-hole wheelchair and walker accessible mini golf course. We've got a bocce ball court, accessible playground equipment. And then the the next dream on the horizon is we're currently raising money to build an indoor facility so our athletes can have year-round opportunities, and that facility will be called the Hope Center. Good news is we've raised about$6.6 million for that project, which is incredible. We need about another five and a half million to finish it and to open the door. So if any of your listeners out there are looking to get rid of a little extra money, we'll be happy to talk with them. You never know. But uh, they can sell off a couple cars, right? And that's right. Yeah, we just believe that individuals with special needs really deserve their own place and their own opportunities to participate, to belong, and to grow. So that's that's primarily what we do there.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

It's amazing Joe's legacy continues to live on.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Yes. Honestly, Dan, I am shocked that uh Joe has been gone now for 18 years, and I still, to this day, will interact with folks at, you know, the Miracle League fields, at Reds Games, at Reds Fest, and they'll come up and they'll they'll tell us stories or interactions that they had with Joe, and the memories are so vivid and so fresh, it's like they happened yesterday. And in some cases, they're talking about I remember when I played in a Little League game against Joe Nuxaul when he was 12 years old or whatever it may be. But I think it's because the way Joe treated people with such kindness, never turned down an autograph, never turned down an opportunity to interact with a fan, um, really gave his life to this community and to making it a better place. I think that that's why those 40, 50, 60-year-old memories are so vivid in our community is because they're the highlight of some people's lives. It was those peak moments that that they'll always remember. And that's what Joe uh he he just had an innate ability to do that, an innate ability to care about people, to make them feel loved. And if I can, if I can end, you know, I I've still got a long way to go, but if I can end my career just carrying that forward into future generations to make sure that, you know, people younger than me who didn't get the honor of listening to Marty and Joe know who he is, know what they were about, know what he stood for. That's that's really what I want to try to do because his story was one that is unlike any other I've ever heard and and made a real impact on all of Cincinnati.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

In addition to building fields and and doing all these other things that you do, it's basically keeping that legacy alive.

Funding The Hope Center

SPEAKER_01 17:00

It is, yeah. And there's it's fun to watch it happen. I think one of the one of the highlights for me personally, last summer we actually took our our young sons to our um to their first Reds game to see them go up in the front of the ballpark and walk, you know, in the middle of the concourse and they see Joe's statue and they walk up and they touch it and they and they look at it, and now that's become a tradition. Every time we've gone back, my oldest son Jackson, in particular, he says, I want to go see Joe. He won't go in the ballpark without going to see that statue. The superstitious guy in me like loves that. I love the routine and things like that. But it's just special to know that there's a generation of young people now who didn't get the opportunity to listen to Marty and Joe. They may have never got the opportunity to interact with Joe, yet his story still has an impact on the way they live their lives. That's it's an incredible thing. And it's not easy to have that happen, but that's just the caliber of life that that Joe lived. And I think people are going to be talking about Joe long after I'm gone, and it's a reflection of all the things happening in his name that I think make that possible.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

We hope you can raise those funds. We're making making great progress. Where is the miracle field?

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Where is it located? Yes, we're located in Fairfield. If you're familiar with the area, we're we're kind of tucked back there on Grow Lane, and the the Hope Center will actually be built right there next to the currently existing field. Okay. So the beautiful part about that, it will create this year-round campus for athletes with special needs where they can come for outdoor programming, indoor programming, or you know, sometimes maybe it'll be a combination of the two. Uh, it's really gonna create what we think will be the world's most inclusive campus for athletes with special needs right there in one site.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Thank you for everything you're doing.

Joe Nuxhall’s Lasting Impact

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Happy to do it. And if any of your listeners, the thing I always encourage people to do, just stop out and experience a game. Our youth league athletes will play on Saturday mornings, our adult league athletes will play on Friday nights. We we kick off the year with a big opening day parade, and I I have to tell you, there are few things as moving as seeing parents and families pushing children in wheelchairs and walkers along a mile and a half parade route and having people in the community come out who don't know them, who don't know their names, but to just cheer for them and to go crazy. And that's truly one of the easiest ways to get involved, but yet one of the most impactful, is for you to come out on a Friday night or a Saturday morning to sit in the stands and go crazy for our players. They feed off that energy and and ultimately, we hear this every single week. The lives of the people who come and watch the games are changed just as much as the people who play out on the field. It's a great place to get some perspective and to have your heart warmed as well. I'll have to do that myself this year. Yeah, yeah. Well, you're welcome anytime.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Let's switch gears a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about a personal thing. Your dad committed suicide. Um, I think you told me when you were 26. Tell my listeners, because I'm sure there are people listening who have experienced this type of call it trauma, if you want. How did you deal with that?

Visiting The Statue And Family Traditions

Invitation To Experience A Game

Losing A Father To Suicide

Anxiety, Faith, And Finding Support

SPEAKER_01 20:02

It was so difficult because my dad, Scott Bradshaw, was he was the type of guy who was like so outwardly friendly, happy, seemed joy-filled all the time. I mean, he was the guy who was constantly the life of the party. He was the kind of guy who wanted to be around other people. And and I think stereotypically in my mind, he was not the kind of person that I would envision suffered from mental illness or would experience suicidal ideations. I didn't know about my father's depression until I was a junior in high school. I came home one day and my mom was at the house, my my grandpa was at the house, and my dad's boss. Never a good combination when your dad's employer comes over to the house. They they told me, they said, Tyler, we we don't know where your dad is. And they ended up telling me at that point that my dad, for nearly all of his adult life, had struggled with depression and that his way of dealing with it was that he would just take off. Didn't know where he would go. And truthfully, Dan, I I didn't believe it. I said, like, my dad's the guy who he's that guy who's so happy all the time. His happiness is actually a little bit annoying to me, right? Like him get mad about stuff and things. That's not my dad. But that Thursday night, my dad did not come home. That Friday night, he did not come home Saturday morning, though he did come home. A police officer found him at a rest stop, I believe, in Indiana, brought him home to us. And I'll never forget um we all have those moments in our life where we would like to hit the reset button. And uh this moment was the one because the night that my dad came home, you know, he tried to talk to me. I I lashed out with quite a bit of anger, told him I I didn't want to speak to him, refused to hug him, stormed up the stairs. Um, and and I was I was furious. But, you know, eventually things softened and we we got back to the point where we could talk and and get to, you know, really get back to our relationship. But the the biggest change, honestly, for me that I started to suffer from mental illness myself. So I suffered from clinical anxiety. Uh So different from my dad in some respects, the same in others, but mine came from a pretty traumatic hospital stay I had shortly after I graduated from college. Kind of threw me into a place in life where I was constantly fearful that I had some kind of illness the doctors couldn't explain and that I was gonna, you know, die. That was kind of my my wake up every day having that thought, go to bed, and still have that thought. As much as I would not want to go through that experience again, I have to tell you that that softened my heart towards my dad's mental illness because I started to think of my dad like my dad was the guy who could fix anything. Uh, you know, anytime that truck he gave me would break down, we didn't have to pay a mechanic because my dad could fix it. And he built, you know, additions to our house and a deck around our pool, things like that. Like he was a he was a fixer. And I started to think if my dad can't fix this, it's gotta be more powerful than what I'm giving it credit for. And my dad had seasons of life where he dealt with his depression really well, other seasons when he did not. And on the day that that he he passed from suicide, he was 50 years old. And I thank God, Dan, that I had gone to speak with him that morning. And rather than lashing out at him as I had done all those years ago, I told him that I loved him. I told him that it was okay that he felt the way he did, and at the end of that conversation, I gave him a hug. It's heartbreaking to know that about an hour later, um, you know, I got a call letting me know that I needed to come home. And when I turned the corner, I saw police lights and EMTs and I knew that things were bad. But I do thank God that that last interaction was one of love and not one of anger or hate. Um, it'll be 13 years this summer that my dad has been gone. And I'll tell you, every season of life brings different, different challenges, right? When I when I got married, there was such happiness because I I love my wife and I married way out of my league, which is awesome. I recommend that to anybody. Like, but my wife is incredible. But there was a sadness in knowing that my dad never got to meet Paige because they would have loved each other. Of course, when we had our sons, my dad would have been an incredible grandfather. So with each high in life, there is that element of sadness. When I got the job with the Kuxhall Foundation, you know, I just wanted to call my dad and tell him. And I the common thread for me though, Dan, in all of this has just been my faith in God, my belief in Jesus Christ, that I will see my dad again, um, that I will get an opportunity to talk with him in a place where all the pain I experienced as a result of the way his life ended will be a forgotten memory. And I I hold strong to that. The thing that I've often told people, because I get that question a lot, how do you deal with something like that? The bigger question for me is truthfully, how do people who don't know Jesus, how do they deal with things like this when it happens? Because I just can't envision a world where I'm able to process and respond to the grief I've felt without my faith in God. That has restored me. Don't get me wrong, there have been dark nights in the soul where I just want to, I I just been confused by the people who say, well, you can't question God. I don't question that he's in charge, but I can ask him questions, right? Like I I could ask him, why, why did this happen? What's the purpose behind this? I can I can express my frustration that God, I just, you know, of all the paths you could have chosen for me, why this one? But even in those questions for me, those questions still acknowledge that he's in control, right? That he's because if if if I didn't think he was in control, I wouldn't even ask the question, right? The fact that I'm asking them, I think, acknowledges it. I had some really godly, faithful men that that walked alongside me throughout this Kim Kuxall being being one of them. I mean, he he truly, you know, nobody ever replaced my dad, but all these different people in my life came around me that that represented and reflected little elements of my dad's personality in his life. And Kim Nuxall was that loving, caring, thoughtful side of my dad that that I missed. And and I thank God that we became friends, that I got to know him more, and now that I get to to work with him on a daily basis, it's been a real blessing. But I've also been pretty empowered by the fact that I wanted to do something about my dad's death. I started a blog and I I haven't done much writing lately, but for many years I wrote at a a blog called See Abub and I told my dad's story. And for me, that was helpful in that I could reach other people who might be struggling with mental illness themselves, or maybe they lost a loved one to suicide and that would be comforting to them. But at the same time, there was a there was a self-serving element to all of that. Every day that I woke up and would forget something about my dad, it felt like I was losing him again. And I wanted to hold on to that. I didn't want to let that go. So part of writing the blog was a bit selfish in that I wanted to capture these human stories of my dad and the life he led so that he wouldn't be defined by the way he died, but then that I could remember him, that my sons would know who he is, those sorts of things. And that has helped to carry me through, I think, what what could be a a really, you know, difficult chapter of life. But there's not a a day that goes by that I don't miss him. Um he was the guy. I was I always joked with people, I was the only sports announcer in America whose parents came to every game. It's like, well, you don't even get to see me do anything. You just get to hear it like it's not that exciting, but my dad He loved coming to Hamilton Joe's games. He he loved I I I went back after after he died, and I remember just looking down from the press box at the spot in the stands where he always sat, and and I really felt him there with me, uh, and still do in in so many things that I do in my life. So those are some of the things that have carried me through that.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Thank you for sharing that. I know that's very personal, and we don't usually do a lot of that on day-on-the-road trip guide, but people with depression sometimes those of us without depression could say, well, just pull your bootstraps up and get moving. And and that is not the right answer.

Writing To Remember: The Blog

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Yeah, and that and that's truthfully the the first time I I heard that my dad dealt with with this, that's exactly my response. I thought, flip the switch, let's go. You gotta you gotta pick yourself up out of this. And it is so much more complicated than we ever give it credit for. The I do some speaking in in local schools about losing my dad and mental illness, and the the refrain I always say to them is that it's okay for you to not be okay, but it is not okay for you to stay that way. Meaning, um, if you're suffering from any mental illness, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, whatever it may be, it is not your fault that that happened. You didn't bring this upon yourself. But it's not okay for you to stay in that place where you let that control you, meaning there there are places you can go get help. One of the hardest parts in all of this, you know, my dad grew up in an age and an era where there was really just a massive, massive stigma that still exists to a certain extent, but it's lower about mental illness, about being open with what you're dealing with and going to seek help. And my dad, God love him, would not go speak with a therapist, would not go, he, you know, he took medication, but even our doctors tried to push him, like, you know, you need to go speak with somebody who who really works in this realm on a daily basis. So I try as a way to make sure this doesn't happen to other families, I try to talk about my dad's story and my story openly because I don't want people to feel ashamed if they need to go help. I mean, I I go see a therapist once a month, and some months we we don't have anything to talk about but baseball. Everything's great and and it's good, and then other months things are heavy and we need to talk and we need to process things. And there's sometimes I have to go more than than once a month. But I I just want to get to a point where the shame that my dad felt were suffering from depression isn't a thing anymore. And I know that in my lifetime I may never see that disappear, but gosh, if I can drive back the clock, you know, a little bit at a time, it's scary. In the United States, there's somebody who who passes from suicide on average every 11 minutes. That's a scary, frightening statistic. And I I just hope if I can if I can get to the end of the road and that clock's been pushed back to, you know, 13, 14, 15, 20 minutes. I mean, those are tangible lives that that have been impacted and saved. So more than anything, I think that has kept me going and want to make sure that that this this is you know fought against as best we can.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Thank you for impacting your impacting professionally and uh personally, so keep it up. Well we'll switch to uh a little maybe a little more lighthearted. Imagine for a moment that you could take a road trip with anyone, living or deceased. Who would it be? Where would you go? What would you talk about?

SPEAKER_01 30:50

How big is a car? Can I fit a couple guys in the middle?

SPEAKER_00 30:52

You know, I just had a guest on who decided it was going to be a minivan.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

You know, it could be a bus.

Stigma, Therapy, And Speaking Up

SPEAKER_01 30:59

We might have to fill a couple rows. So I mean, I have to say, and this is probably no surprise to anybody, to be in a in a car with Marty and Joe together, I think would be just and I've heard some stories of them in the car together on road trips and they're a riot. But one of the blessings in the job I'm in has been getting to know Marty. I think I'll ever not be starstruck by Marty. He's sure he's that guy for me. I would love, though, to be on the road with Marty and Joe to hear them rib each other and prank each other and just see that, see that up close and personal. Um, I'm also a a huge Disney fan. I I've been an admirer of Walt Disney since the time I was little. So Walt Disney would have to be in the car. I want to talk to him about anything and everything. And David Letterman. I am I am a huge David Letterman fan. I think he was one of the most entertaining broadcasters of all time. And I would love to have him in the car as well. That's a pretty good combination.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Uh that would be an interesting trip for sure.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

It would be. It would be. And actually, people don't know. Joe, Joe was actually going to be on on David Letterman's show. Uh Letterman grew up in Indianapolis and and they ended up having somebody else on the show. But gosh, I wish that would have happened because I would have loved to have have seen them, seen them together. That that would have been something for the ages.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Well, thank you for sharing that. That would be a fun trip.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

Yes, it would.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

Yeah, and I'm I'm good to go anywhere. We'll say Disney World. So you were an announcer. I I was thinking about asking you what's on your bucket list. I would hope uh going down and announcing a game at with the Reds would be on your bucket list. That's definitely there.

A Lighter Turn: Dream Road Trip Crew

SPEAKER_01 32:39

I got close. So when when I announced for the the Joes, they they played their all-star. There was one year they played it at Great American Ballpark. The Reds were out of town. The Reds agreed to let us use it. And I did get to a and not a not a Reds game, but I got to announce a game in Great American Ballpark. I got to go up and sit in the spot where Joe and Marty had sat in the radio booth. And that that was a lifelong memory. But truthfully, I um one of my bucket list things, I just love visiting ballparks. So, you know, it's it's not a an unique thing. I know a lot of people want to do this, but I I do kind of have that bucket list of wanting to see uh a baseball game in all, you know, 30 or 32 Major League Baseball Stadiums at some point. I still have a long way to go. I think I've only been to eight or nine, but it's a pretty good start. You got a while. Yeah. And hopefully I can drive to most of those. Gosh, I have a friend years ago who actually he he visited in two months. He did all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums and he drove everywhere. He mapped it out, he slept in his car, he did did all kinds of incredible stuff. It was it was a moment to behold, and now he's a I think he's a truck driver, so pretty, pretty fitting that he went that route.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Tyler, I can't thank you enough for doing this, and I'm so so happy. But before we leave, get out of our little virtual road trip here, leave my listeners with some life advice. You've already given a lot. What is one nugget you could leave them with?

Bucket List Ballparks And Broadcasting Moments

SPEAKER_01 34:04

I think for me, it's always the other guy I might add in on that road trip, and this will this will lead me to that point, which having him in the same car as the crew I mentioned would be pretty interesting, is Mr. Rogers. I I've always been a lifelong admirer of Fred Rogers and the way that he treated people. And I think that the thing, especially after losing my dad, there was a there was a Fred Rogers quote that said, if feelings are mentionable, then they're manageable. And I always came back to that because I think that I grew up not being very open with my feelings and being kind of a shy, reserved kid. And the more I got into sports broadcasting, the more I got involved with the Miracle League field and seeing what that meant to special needs athletes, and then especially after losing my dad, I think the common thread in all of it, hopefully, is that I became a little bit more of a vulnerable person. I was willing to talk about my own feelings, I was willing to listen to the feelings of other people and to be empathetic. I think our world just needs so much more of that right now, being able to mention how we feel, to manage those feelings in a way that's productive and that's not lashing out. So I just keep coming coming back to that Fred Rogers comment. If feelings are mentionable, then they're manageable. And I think that's the tip that you know I would give to your listeners, but also that I have to remind myself of on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_00 35:25

As you talked through everything, Joe, yourself, your dad, the word that just kept coming to my mind was empathy. And I imagine these guys just and yourself just loaded with empathy.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Yeah, I'm lucky to be surrounded by a lot of great role models who just drove that home on a daily basis, that empathy was the the differentiator in in what you know makes people able to love and and to be lovable. It was empathy, was kind of that that common ingredient. And some days I'm good at it, some days I'm not. You know, I believe that that God has maybe given me that challenge to work on, and and I'm gonna keep working on it as long as He'll let me.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

There you go. Thank you. Well, hey, before we uh end this, how do people find you or the Nuxall Foundation or the Miracle Field, whatever you want to leave us with.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

Or that blog, or that blog you wrote about your dad, which could be helpful to somebody.

Life Advice: Fred Rogers And Vulnerability

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Yeah, well we have a long list, right, in the show notes. So if you want to learn more about the Nuxall Foundation or the Miracle League, just go to NuxallMiracleLeague.org. Also find us on Facebook. We share lots of great stories about our athletes and families and people that we serve. You can learn more about the Hope Center as well there and the project that we're working on to build that indoor recreational facility. And then the blog that I mentioned is cabub.com. So that's S-E-E-Y-A-B-U-B. My dad always called me Bub. That was his nickname for me. That felt like a fitting tribute because that that blog is really my way of saying goodbye to him. I'm I'm getting back into a season of writing, you know, my wife and I aren't up as much at 3 a.m. in the morning as we were in some of those initial early years of our son's life. So I'm I'm finding that itch to write a little bit more to preserve some more of these stories. So hopefully you'll see some some new stories there. But you know, I just want to thank you for the opportunity to share my story, Dan, what you're you're doing and capturing the stories of other people and getting those out to your listeners. That's uh that's a gift, and we're we're thankful for you.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

I appreciate that. Hopefully, uh I'll see you somewhere at a ball field.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

We'll have a hot dog and a Coca-Cola ready for you. All right. Thank you for tuning in to Dan the Road Trip Guy. I hope you enjoyed our journey today and the stories that were shared. If you have any thoughts or questions or stories of your own, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to me anytime. Don't forget to share this podcast with your friends and family and help us to spread the joy of road trips and great conversations. Until next time, keep driving, keep exploring, and keep having those amazing conversations. Safe travels. And remember, you can find me on the internet at dayontheroadtripguy.com.