CINCINNATI - If you read Hal McCoy in Friday morning's DaytonDaily News, you learned about some of the Cincinnati Reds' bestefforts the night before when they edged the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-2, in extra innings:
There were the two big plays of Reds' transportable outfielderJose Guillen. Playing right, he threw out the Dodgers' Brian Jordanat the plate in the sixth inning. Moved to left, he crashed into thewall making a run-saving catch in the 10th. And then there was thegame-winning hit to right by Reggie Taylor in the 11th.
Yet, if you really wanted the big league play of the game - thenight's truly clutch performance - you had to turn your attentionfrom the field at Great American Ball Park to the press box.
That's where you found McCoy, sitting in his front-row seat wherethe usual game props that surround him - his cell phone, media guidesand those Dominican-rolled Padron Executive cigars he chews - nowinclude a flashlight, big-print computer screen, an over-size, easy-to-write-in score book and a much-used magnifying glass.
Although the general rule of thumb in the newspaper business is toreport the story, not become it, McCoy's own showing Thursdayeclipsed anything about which he wrote. All those outfield plays heput to prose - he didn't fully see a one of them.
That's because Hal McCoy is now legally blind.
He doesn't see a baseball hit into the outfield, can't make out afamiliar face from 10 feet away and often needs that magnifying glassjust to read the box score he's holding in his hand.
Two years ago, he lost much of the sight in his right eye. 'I waswalking to my seat before a game in St. Louis, and all of a suddenthe eye just got blurry,' he said. With a visit to anophthalmologist, he discovered the optic nerve had been damaged by astroke. The official term was ischemic optic neuropathy.
Although much of his field of vision was obliterated, McCoylearned to compensate and figured the worst was behind him. Afterall, doctors told him there was only a 15 percent chance his othereye would be stricken.
Then came the day this past January when McCoy said - in a voicesuddenly soft and not quite able to mask the hurt - he 'hit thelottery.'
'January 23rd - I'll never forget the date,' he said. 'I woke upin the morning, started down the stairs, and everything was blurryand fuzzy. I opened the newspaper at the table and couldn't read it.The lines ran together, the words ran together. Total panic set in.If I couldn't read, I couldn't work.
'I told my wife, 'Honey, it's here. It's happened.' Nadine said,'What? What happened?' I told her my sight was gone. Then I juststarted to cry.'
Nadine could follow the tracks of his tears. They ran from their home north of Dayton right back to baseball. 'It's not his job, it'shis life,' she said. 'And he thought he'd just lost it all. Baseballis everything in the world to Hal.'
The 62-year-old McCoy is one of the best-known baseball writers inthe business. The dean of big league press boxes, he's covered theReds for 31 years straight, which equates to more than 6,000 games.Winner of the prestigious J.G. Taylor Spink Award for baseballwriting, this July - in what should be the most glorious year of hisprofessional career - he'll become just the ninth Reds' media memberto be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
But his Cooperstown enshrinement is not due just to his length ofservice; it's because of the consistent caliber of his work.
'Hal does as complete a job as any beat writer in any sportanywhere,' said Reds' broadcaster and fellow Hall of Famer, MartyBrennaman. 'Nobody has his longevity, his level of excellence. He's adinosaur. Being a baseball beat writer was once the most prestigiousjob you could have. It's not that way now because a lot of guys thinkit's just too much work. Hal, though, has never wavered. That's whatmakes him so amazing and why everybody respects him.'
Rob Butcher, the Reds' Director of Media Relations, knows therigors of the job: 'Think of it. Doing this 31 seasons means he'sliterally spent 15 years on the road.'
Not only has McCoy spent season after season trekking back andforth across the country, but covering home games entails more thantwo-hours' travel round trip from home. And a baseball beat writershows up some four hours before the game to work the clubhouse andfield, then interviews and writes long after the game is done.
Yet, McCoy doesn't see it as a grind: 'I truly love it. I love thegame, the writing and the banter and camaraderie, especially in thepress box.'
Fearing he was about to lose that daily ebb and flow - afterdoctors confirmed another stroke had left his left eye permanentlydamaged and not treatable - McCoy and his wife came to see DaytonDaily News sports editor Frank Corsoe.
'When Hal gave Frank his test results, he was afraid the paperwould tell him he can't cover the Reds any more,' Nadine said. 'Butthe next thing I know, the two of them are sitting there just cryingand crying. By then, I was pretty much cried out, but I was in shock.It was something to see his boss crying for him. Frank told him thepaper would stand by him and that he didn't want Hal giving anythingup unless he wanted to.'
Regardless of the assurances, McCoy faced a daily array ofstruggles. Two days after he lost the sight in his left eye, he wasscheduled to speak at the Agonis Club, the raucous sports group wherehe knows most of the members. But when he walked into the gathering,distant faces were blurs and that brought added angst.
'I was afraid people would think that because I'd made the Hall ofFame, I thought I was too big to say hello,' he said.
The one time McCoy tried to drive - when he went to Huber Heightsto ship some belongings to spring training - he crashed his car. Hesaid he never even saw the other driver. When he tried working on hiscomputer, he couldn't find the cursor - a problem he still struggleswith today.
As spring training neared, he called Cincinnati Post beat writerTony Jackson and asked if he could catch a daily ride with him fromhis Sarasota condo to the ball park. Jackson agreed, so McCoy headedoff into the hazy unknown.
'I took him to the airport, and he was scared to death,' Nadinesaid. 'He didn't know if he could do it, and the thing is, stressmakes his vision worse. I told him, 'You've got to go try it, and ifyou can't do it, then come back home.' He needed to be convinced, butmostly he needed to convince himself. He's a tough old goat, he justhad to remember that.'
To help him, Nadine tied a white cloth around his suitcase handleso he could spot it on the baggage carousel. McCoy said it didn'thelp: 'Everything was dark and blurry and all the bags looked thesame. My stuff must have gone around three or four times.'
He took a cab to the ball park, stepped into the clubhouse andsaid everything was still out of focus. 'Eventually Aaron Boone cameover and asked what was wrong. I told him he was probably seeing mefor the last time, that I just couldn't do it anymore. He pointed meto a chair and he gave me a lecture. He said 'Don't use the wordquit. You can adjust and we'll help you.' '
The Reds' third baseman remembers the conversation: 'I told him'No way. That's not a good enough reason for quitting something youlove, something you're good at.' Hal's good people. He's respected inthis clubhouse, and I knew everybody would feel like I did.'
Boone was right, and McCoy found he has a 'great supporting cast,'to use Butcher's words: 'Hal doesn't hurt people in print. He doesn'tdig just to get a story at someone's expense. And it works. He stillgets more information than anybody. He's not just liked, he's prettymuch loved here.'
Players like Scott Sullivan, Danny Graves and Ken Griffey Jr. lookout for McCoy, as do sportswriters like Columbus Dispatch beat writerJim Massie, who has never forgotten how McCoy took him under hiswing. When Johnny Bench was giving the fledgling Massie only one-word answers one day, McCoy stepped in, asked the questions Massieneeded and got a conversation going. 'He saved me, just like he hasso many other guys,' Massie said. 'Whatever I can do now, I stillcan't repay him.'
So now Massie and the others sometimes whisper the name of anapproaching player so McCoy can avoid long-distance confusion. AndThe Dayton Daily News, McCoy said, has been 'wonderful,' evenproviding someone to drive him to the ball park and take him backhome every day.
Yet McCoy still has to do the job on his own, and this season, asalways, no one is doing it better. Using that flashlight to findanything he drops - the bottom of his vision field is gone - and thejumbo score book he designed and got printed at Kinko's to track thegame, he goes about his work. He has four stories in today's paper.
Yet, the image of McCoy as the workhorse was never more indeliblethan when you saw him standing all alone outside the ballpark at thecorner of Pete Rose Way and Broadway some 30 minutes past midnightThursday. He was waiting for his ride to come pick him up so he couldend another 12-hour day.
And Thursday had been especially tough. The remaining vision inhis right eye had seemed to blur even more, and that had left himshaken, though the only person he shared it with was Nadine, whom hequietly called from the press box.
'I could tell from his voice he was scared,' Nadine said. 'I toldhim it might just be tired from staring at the computer screen allday.'
Friday, as he talked about his wife, McCoy's voice began to quiverand soon his eyes glistened: 'She's a saint - the best thing thatever happened to me. She's such a rock. Every time I'm down, I callher and she always knows just what to say. She doesn't baby me, shepushes me. And without her, I wouldn't be able to do this. Now, morethan ever, I realize what she means to me.'
That's a lesson he's learned on many fronts. As word spread aboutMcCoy's condition, sports writers from across the country havecalled, e-mailed or sought him in person. So have ballplayers likeformer Red Dmitri Young of the Tigers, who made a special trip toSarasota to visit him.
'I've always known there are a lot of good people in baseball, butI'm seeing a side I've never seen before,' McCoy said. 'I've hadgrown men - some of 'em real hard boiled guys - tell me they love meand they're praying for me. People have really shown me what they'remade of.'
Jackson agreed, though he said no one has shown his core more thanMcCoy himself:
'There may have been 99 voices inside him telling him to give up,that this was too much to ask, but he listened to the one voice thattold him to fight it. And to tell the truth, he made this the mostenjoyable spring training I ever had. Riding together every day,there was more than the camaraderie. He was someone to bounce myideas off. I'd make observations at the park - I'd think I'd seensomething - but then I wasn't sure if I'd really seen it. I'd tellHal and he'd reassure me. He'd say, 'I saw the same thing.' And inthe end, he was right.'
Writers, readers and Reds alike, they all now see that while HalMcCoy has lost much of his sight, his vision has never been better.
