Blindly Covering Baseball

Photo Courtesy www.athomeplate.com

Stuck on the subway today I flipped through the pages of The New York Post. You never know what you'll find. There below a photo captioned " Kiss That Baby Hello!" I read about radio baseball reporter Ed Lucas, 67, getting married. He's legally blind.

Equipped with an inner sense for baseball, www.athomeplate.com says Lucas "does not do the play by play although he does have the uncanny ability to determine where a hit ball will go just by the sound it makes coming off of the bat

Pretty amazing, wouldn't you say? We all have our stories to tell and figure out how to use the right media to do so.

You may be asking yourself how does a blind man report on baseball games. Ed hasn’t always been blind. Even though he was born with a congenital eye disease he was able to see. He had a love of baseball from a very young age, as both of his parents were fans of the Giants – that is the NY Giants, prior to their move west. As a matter of fact the last game that Ed saw was the 1951 thriller in which Bobby Thomson hit the “shot heard ‘round the world”.

He was twelve years old. He came home from school and watched it on TV with his family. After the game he went outside to play baseball in the nearby sandlot and was hit between the eyes with a baseball. Shortly afterwards, he lost his sight – partially due to the eye disease that he was born with, although doctors believe that being hit in the head with a baseball may have also contributed in the loss.

So, how does he do it? He does not do the play by play although he does have the uncanny ability to determine where a hit ball will go just by the sound it makes coming off of the bat. Ed’s method is this – he sits in the press box and listens to the local radio broadcast of the game. Then after the game he goes to the field or the locker room or press area and interviews players about what happened during the game – perhaps an extraordinary play or call or any incident that may have been out of the ordinary. He adds his notes to the tape and sends it in to someone that types and submits it for him. He has had articles published in many newspapers and magazines.
www.athomeplate.com

Yesterday Yankee Stadium become the wedding chapel for Lucas and his bride, 51-year-old Allison Pheifle, a major baseball fan who is also legally blind. Yankee legend Phil Rizzuto introduced the two several years back.

Congratulations.