Hal McCoy's run is ending...

i can't see mlb.com not hiring him in some capacity, probably with him writing national columns from home, making it to the park when he can get a ride.

 

If he was a radio announcer, a la Ernie Harwell, there probably would be an outcry among fans, but given that he worked out of Dayton, and that the paper, not the Reds, made this call, it'll be much easier for most people outside the business not to care.
It's ludicrous that he can't at least go to as many home games as he wants and do a weekly column or something. But this generation of newspaper execs are like a flesh-eating virus, and that's why if you're of a certain age and have the chance, you should really jump ship.

 

I could see MLB itself doing something with him like they did with Jerome Holtzman.

 

Being a Reds fan from at least a thousand miles away, I used to think the Cincinnati Post had better Reds coverage than the Enquirer. Then the Post went out of business. I always read Hal McCoy's Reds stuff in "The Sporting News" back when it was mainly a baseball publication and before it became ESPN The Magazine Lite. I turned more and more to Hal McCoy and the Dayton Daily News, and now this. I watch the Reds because I subscribe to MLB.com, but the moment the game ends, it's off the air. As a member of a dying way of life, it's not the same like getting print reaction and analysis. Many things in life are taken for granted until they are lost. Do we have to see the end of all the Hal McCoys (yeah, I know there really is just one) and all newspapers before people wake up to what has been lost.

 

What I admire about Hal is that he truly enjoys, in every sense of the word, covering baseball, even after all these years. When I first started covering, Hal could not have been nicer. I never saw him "big-league" anybody. When he got into the Hall of Fame, I wrote a note about it in my baseball column. When the Reds came to town, Hal came up to me and said, "I saw what you wrote; I appreciate that." He then reached into his travel humidor and handed me a nice cigar.

 

I seem to remember that when Hal lost his vision, he was going to quit and the Reds players convinced him not to. And there was something about one of the Boone brothers being a big help to him in dealing with the loss of eyesight.

 

Know Mr. McCoy only through reputation.
But a very good friend of mine — not in the business — is a huge Reds fan and thought it was great that he got a picture with Hal McCoy one spring training and said McCoy couldn't have been nicer to him.
Good enough for me.

 

Hal is an institution in Dayton. I'm in my 30s, just old enough for when Hal hit his stride as a beat writer. As a precocious youngster, I would visit my grandparents during the afternoons in the summer, just in time for the Dayton Daily News to arrive. I often sat on my grandpa's lap and he would read Hal's stories to me while helping me sound out words. I literally learned to read from Hal McCoy and there are many in Dayton who did the same.

It's something I was hoping to do with my child, but alas an ever shrinking business became too small for one of the giants. An end to an epoch.

 

One of the dot coms should pick him up or heck maybe even the team could pick him up. On a side note, after dealing with Marge Schott all those years, he deserves to write as long as he wants. I hope looking at her fugliness all those years is not one of the causes of his vision defects.

 

Not for nothing Crim, but financially having this game covered by a staff guy doesn't make sense, especially since live coverage isn't necessary. You're looking at what, 500 miles round trip? at 30 cents a mile, that's $150 in mileage alone. You can get a stringer to cover that "live" for half that. Couldn't the kid just have gone through the team's PR guy and done a phone interview?