1960-1965

Russ Nixon spent more than half a century in baseball. A catcher who played 12 years for the Red Sox, Indians, and Twins, he went on to coach and manage at levels from rookie ball to the major leagues, with five seasons as a big-league manager.    

He and identical twin brother Roy were born on February 19, 1935, in Cleves, Ohio. Roy, a first baseman, played minor-league ball for five seasons in the Cleveland Indians system, from 1953 through 1957, reaching as high as A-level ball at Reading. 

He graduated from Cincinnati’s Western Hills High School in 1953, the same school that Pete Rose later attended. In all, 11 big leaguers came through the school. The 1951 high school team won the Ohio state championship. The Nixons had also attracted attention in 1951 as part of the American Legion Junior team from Cincinnati that made it to the finals and finished third.

In September 1952, both Roy and Russ were on the Robert E. Bentley Post No. 50 team from Cincinnati that won the national championship in Denver. Russ was co-captain of the team, hit .500 in the title series, and was unanimously voted Player of the Year.

In June 1953, both Nixons were invited to Cleveland and signed right out of high school, and assigned to Corning in the PONY League. Both were sent to Green Bay in the Class-D Wisconsin State League. 

The two brothers continued in tandem in 1954, assigned to the Jacksonville Beach Sea Birds (Class-D Florida State League.) From that point forward, their career paths diverged. In 1955, Roy played in Class C but Russ was advanced to Class B where he played in the Three-I league for Keokuk and excelled again. In 1956, Russ was jumped to Triple-A Indianapolis, and there he hit .319.

Catching duties for the 1957 Indians were more or less equally shared by Nixon (62 games), Hegan (58), and Hal Naragon(57). Nixon got significantly more plate appearances and his .281 batting average was substantially more than the others. Nixon became the regular catcher in 1958, appearing in 113 games. It was his best season, with a .301 batting average. 

There was such turnover on the Tribe at the time, that when Nixon was in Tucson for his fourth spring training, in February 1959 and turned 24 years old, he was one of the veterans on the team. Only seven others in camp were older. He had spent the off-season working on the loading dock of a Cincinnati trucking company where brother Roy worked, to help provide for his wife and two children. Roy was driving trucks in Cincinnati for the Hudepoel Brewing Company, eventually becoming its traffic manager.

In 1959, Nixon slumped badly at the plate. After an August groin injury sidelined him for a couple of weeks, he came back and finished with a strong September which saw him pull his average up to .240 by season’s end. 

In 1960, he was traded him to the Boston Red Sox in mid-March for established catcher, Sammy White and first baseman/outfielder It turned out that White did not like the trade and refused to report to Cleveland. On March 19th, he announced his retirement instead. It needed to be determined whether White was retiring from the Indians or retiring from the Red Sox. Acrimony developed between the two teams. Nine days after the trade, Commissioner Ford Frick voided the deal and sent Nixon back to the Indians. He didn’t want to go, and worked out with the Red Sox for another day before returning to the Indians. The Red Sox had signed him to a new contract, up to $15,000 from his $11,000 Indians salary, and on March 30th Nixon asked Frick for a ruling as to what salary he would be paid

In June he was batting .244 and was again traded to the Red Sox with Carroll Hardy, Ted Bowsfield and Marty Keough. Nixon was disgusted and happy to be out of Cleveland. For the rest of the year, despite a ball striking him in the mouth, a virus, and a brief knee injury, he hit like he was happy again, nearly matching his 1958 output with a .298 batting average in 80 games for the Red Sox.

In 1961, Nixon was the principal backup for catcher Jim Pagliaroni, platooning against right-handed pitchers (though he was not a pull hitter and tended to hit better to left and center fields). He appeared in 87 games, with 263 plate appearances, and hit for a .289 average but only managed a meager 19 RBIs, down from 33 the year before. 

In 1962 the number of games in which he appeared dropped to 65; he missed more than five weeks from May 20 to June 27 due to a fractured right hand, struck by a foul tip. Mike Higgins also favored Pagliaroni and Bob Tillman when the Sox were in Fenway

In November, Pagliaroni was traded to the Pirates. That elevated Nixon from the #3 catcher to one of the top two. Working under manager Johnny Pesky, Nixon’s 1963 totals reflect the most games (98) in a season over the seven seasons he spent with the Red Sox. 

Other clubs were making deals for catchers on the market, though, and by January 1964, Pesky let it be known that Nixon was his #1 catcher for the year to come. He was used often as a pinch-hitter and was batting .400 at the end of May. In mid-July, he went into a prolonged slump, and he never quite recovered. His batting average for the season fell off significantly to .233.

Over the winter, there was little doubt that the Red Sox had him on the trading block, but they were never able to pull together a satisfactory deal. After four failed pinch-hitting attempts to kick off the 1965 season, he was placed on waivers and no team claimed him, despite the fact that he was a career .276 hitter. As an eight-year veteran, he could have refused assignment to the minors, but he agreed to go to Triple-A. He spent 31 early-season games with Toronto.

He was brought back to Boston in June. Used less often (59 games) in 1965, he boosted his average back up to .270 for the year, but only drove in 11 runs in 147 times at the plate.  Nonetheless, it was evident the Red Sox were again trying to move him over the winter, as much as anything to make room for the up-and-coming Mike Ryan. Late in spring training 1966, he was packaged in an April trade, sending him and Chuck Schilling to the Minnesota Twins, for left-handed pitcher Dick Stigman

He was a backup catcher again for the Twins, behind Earl Battey. The 1967 Twins, eliminated from the pennant race by the Impossible Dream Red Sox in the final game of the season, saw a more productive Russ Nixon. In another deal late in spring training, the Twins released him outright in early April 1968, and he was promptly signed to a minor-league contract as a free agent by the Red Sox, basically for insurance purposes. It proved to be his last season as a player in the big leagues.

He began the season as a catcher/coach with Pittsfield in the Eastern League.  When Elston Howard suffered a sore elbow, Nixon was called back up to the Red Sox. He was only used in 29 games, all but one in July and August. For Boston he hit .153. After the season, his contract was assigned to Louisville.

Though drafted by the White Sox in December and signed to a White Sox contract for 1969, Nixon was released on March 30th and was out of baseball for the year.

On February, 1970, the Cincinnati Reds announced that they had hired him as a minor-league catching instructor. For the five seasons after that, 1971 through 1975, Nixon managed the Single-A Tampa Tarpons of the Florida State League. In December 1975, while he was managing in Mexican winter league ball, he was named as a coach of the Cincinnati Reds.

Nixon continued to coach for the Reds through 1981, and into the 1982 season through July, when he was named to take over for manager John McNamara, fired from the 34-58 team, the second-worst record in baseball at the time. The team only did marginally better with a .386 wins percentage as opposed to .369. Just before the season was over, Nixon was hired again for 1983. As the Reds changed top management, Nixon was also let go at the end of the season, returning to his 52-acre farm where he raised Arabian horses.

Three days later he was hired to coach for the Montreal Expos. Nonetheless, it hadn’t been an easy experience being fired. He was the third-base coach for the Expos for all of 1984 and into May 1985. He remained on the coaching staff through the full 1985 season and was asked to stay on as hitting instructor for 1986, but elected to decline the offer. 

In 1986 and 1987 he coached for the Braves, but his ambition to manage again was obvious. In October, 1987 he decided to leave the club. He had been offered a job managing in Greenville of the Double-A Southern League, a big step backwards. It was at first thought he would decline the position, but he accepted and Greenville got off to a very good start, in first place by mid-May.

After 39 games in 1988 (12-27), Chuck Tanner was fired in Atlanta and Bobby Cox hired Nixon to take his place beginning on May 23rd. Sixty-five games into the 1990 season, with the team at 25-40 (.385), he was fired.

Nixon had scattered work from this time forward. In 1991 he managed for the Portland Beavers in the Pacific Coast League. In 1992 he was the bench coach for the Seattle Mariners. In October manager Bill Plummer and his whole staff were fired. In 1994 he managed the Las Vegas Stars in the PCL for one season.

From 1995 through 1997, he was the director of minor-league instruction for the San Diego Padres, the Director of Player Development the latter two years. He was back with the Cincinnati Reds organization from 1998 through 2000, serving as a catching instructor and also manager of the Billings Mustangs in the rookie-level Pioneer League. In 2001 and 2002 he was catching instructor in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization.

He next managed for three years in the Houston Astros chain, in 2003 for Lexington, Kentucky, in 2004 for Salem, Virginia, and in 2005 for the Greeneville Astros in Tennessee. That last assignment was in the rookie Appalachian League. He worked as a minor-league catching advisor for the Texas Rangers from 2008 to 2011, working mostly with minor-league catchers at the Rangers’ Arizona complex. 

In 2012, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and stayed at home until 2015. In the fall, his family found a place close to where they lived, that was very good, one of the group home things. All of a sudden, within a week in 2016, Nixon just went downhill and got a lung infection. He died in Las Vegas on November 9th.