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Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy has retired from the Dayton Daily News after covering the Cincinnati Reds for 37 years. Hal's blog, though, will continue to be a must-read for Reds fans. He'll share his thoughts on the team this season and will file updates from Great American Ball Park. You also can catch Hal in print every Sunday in his popular Ask Hal columnHome > Blogs > The Real McCoy | Cincinnati Reds baseball news > Archives > 2009 > August > 06
Thursday, August 6, 2009
It’s time to say goodbye
The hammer fell today and it hurts like hell.
They’re putting the ol’ baseball scribe out to pasture and if there are teardrops on your screen, well, that’s from me, just an old softie.
My run is over - 37 years of bliss, doing a job that wasn’t a job. It was pure joy and pure fun.
And I wanted you, all my loyal readers and followers over the past 3 1/2 decades, to be the first to know. The run is nearly over.
The newspaper told me today that it will no longer cover the Cincinnati Reds the same way it has in the past, beginning next season. And don’t blame the paper. It is the economic times and we’re all suffering. They just can’t afford the more than a quarter of a million dollars a year to send me coast-to-coast.
The Dayton Daily News has been nothing but great to me. How many companies would keep a legally blind employee and furnish that employee with a driver and/or a car service to get him to and from games? The paper did that for me and it certainly didn’t have to do it.
The DDN didn’t have to do that, but it did and I’m so forever grateful, just as I am for the 37 years they permitted me to do what I love to do so much.
So it is off to retirement after this season ends. It isn’t early retirement. I’m 68, soon to be 69. But it isn’t something I want to do. I feel like I still have my fastball at the keyboard and can deal with the curves thrown my way.
I feel as if my fingers have been cut off, but the economic times are harsh and I understand and I’m not angry. I just feel as if something good has ended prematurely, something I’m not completely ready to accept, but must.
It was a great run and I thank all of you from the bottom of this decrepit old heart for feeding me the energy to keep doing what I love to do.
I’ll miss the feedback from all of you. I’ll miss going to the ballpark every day, seeing something every week that I never saw before. I’ll miss so many friends I’ve made doing this job. I’ll miss my peers in the press box and the so many people in baseball who have crossed my path and have been so great to me.
I’ll miss sitting down at the laptop every day and reporting on the Reds and major-league baseball. I would list them, but it would longer than George Carlin’s list of words you can’t say on television and even then I’d miss too many people who have been part of my career.
Right now I’m on the back patio, enjoying a Tangueray and tonic with my beautiful and supportive wife, Nadine. I’m sure it is the first of many tonight, so I wanted to get this down before I became incoherent.
My miniature schnauzer, Barkley, is looking at me wondering why his old man is sniffling. Well, it’s time to get out the old scrapbooks and read of better times.
So many times over the year, I’ve dealt with surly ballplayers who never saw hello until it’s time to say goodbye.
I’ll finish the season covering the Reds and baseball, the last hurrah, then say my final goodbyes. They’re putting me out to pasture. I only wish it was center field.
More: Clearing up some misconceptions about my retirement
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