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A tip of a cap to a true pro, Hal McCoy

Ron Alvey Hal McCoy and his reflection as he sits in the press box of Great American Ball Park.

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By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer Updated 10:11 AM Thursday, September 17, 2009

I’ve been in this business 36 years, covered all kinds of events, several different beats and plenty of challenging assignments, and I can tell you this: There is no tougher day-to-day job in sportswriting than covering baseball.

That’s why I appreciate Hal McCoy. He’s handled his job — covering the Cincinnati Reds — like a pro for 37 years.

The readers see his stories in the newspaper and on the Web site — often three and four a day — and yet that’s just the finished product, and they don’t really tell you what all went into each piece.

If you could pull back the curtain, you’d see a guy making 5 a.m. trips to the airport after just a few hours sleep following the game the night before in Cincinnati, canceled flights, lost luggage and middle seats between two row mates the size of the Bengals’ Andre Smith.

Then there are the clubhouses he’s worked his way through every day of every season. Baseball players — more so than pro football and basketball players — are an insular lot. And when a team is losing — which the Reds have done more than not for quite a while now — that old saying “familiarity breeds contempt” can become oh so true. Or, at the very least, it can make for some lousy quotes.

Finally, there’s the constant pressure of deadline. A night baseball game can meander on until you are five minutes away from having to send in your story if you have any hope of it getting into the next day’s paper. You think you have a handle on the piece that you’ve been patch-working together all game, then a pitcher suddenly finds himself in trouble, runners get on base, and a guy hits a walk-off home run.

Instantly, everything changes — the outcome, the tenor of your story and especially your blood pressure.

Hal handled all this game after game after game. Year after year. For an entire career. And the reader never saw the behind-the-scenes fingerprints on the story. That’s a hall-of-fame job.

Retiring at the end of the season, he’s being honored at Great American Ball Park tonight, Sept. 16, before the Reds play the Houston Astros.

He deserves a tip of the cap today from every sportswriter in the business, every ballplayer whose story he’s told, and especially all of the readers he took along for the ride each and every day.

Hal McCoy Night

When: Tonight, Sept. 16
Where: Great American Ball Park
Festivities: Hal McCoy will sign autographs at the Reds Hall of Fame from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. An on-field ceremony honoring McCoy will begin at 6:45. Prior to the Astros-Reds game (7:10 start), McCoy will throw out first pitch.
Tickets: reds.com/halmccoy (half price, courtesy of the Dayton Daily News)

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