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Nevertheless, our benefit show was still a big hit. We made more money for Holy Family that year than any other. Herb and I wondered if we could schedule other events, perhaps even with Scooter’s help.
Mr. Rizzuto was one of the greatest advocates of charities for the blind, including Holy Family. Like Russ Hodges in San Francisco, Scooter would use much of his air time to mention them, in between giving play by play and the score. He also donated 100 percent of his fees from speaking engagements and royalties from his books to the school and other worthy causes. Coupled with his long career as a broadcaster and player, this made Scooter one of the most beloved Yankees ever.
The team knew what a treasure they had in Rizzuto. In 1985 they announced that Phil would receive their ultimate honor. His uniform number 10 would be retired, and a plaque featuring his likeness would be added on the wall in Monument Park, Yankee Stadium’s fabled miniversion of the Hall of Fame. The ceremony was set for Sunday, August 4, before a game against the Chicago White Sox.
John Fugazy, the director of special events and promotions for the Yankees, made a very special request of me. He wanted me to be the keynote speaker for Phil Rizzuto Day at the Stadium. The speech would be made during the ceremony, in front of fifty-seven thousand fans and live on TV. I accepted without hesitation. This would be a chance for me to publicly thank Scooter for helping to change my life. I wanted the world to know what a terrific guy Mr. Rizzuto was. Fugazy was giving me the perfect opportunity to do so.
I was asked to put together a two-and-a-half-minute speech describing the unique friendship Mr. Rizzuto and I had developed over thirty-four years. The words came easy to me. I spent months paring them down to a streamlined talk that would fit into the time limit. When I finally had it at the 150-second mark, Fugazy called me again. He realized that WPIX, which would be televising the event to an audience of millions, wanted to add commercial breaks. To accommodate them, I needed to cut thirty seconds from my keynote address.
The solution was simple. I’d originally planned to mention each of Phil’s children by name. If I just omitted that part, since they would probably be mentioned by others anyway, I could shave off the extra time. It worked. I now had a neat and concise two-minute talk.
Bob Diehl was my guide that afternoon. The Stadium was completely sold out. Even the press box was jam-packed. I stood on the field before the game as several Yankee sponsors and teammates presented gifts to Phil, Cora, and their kids. The New York Daily News even gave him a live cow, named Huckleberry. As Phil went to greet his new “pet,” the cow nudged him, promptly knocking him to the ground. Phil, showing the trademark humor that endeared him to his admirers, popped right back up with a huge grin on his face.
Twenty minutes into the ceremony, my name was called by emcee Frank Messer, Phil’s broadcast partner. Bob walked me up to the microphone at home plate. I took a deep breath.
Home plate at Yankee Stadium is hallowed ground. This was the same spot on which Lou Gehrig made his famous “luckiest man on the face of the Earth” speech in 1939. I was following in some huge footsteps. For a moment, I was overwhelmed by the task.
After my initial nervousness disappeared, I began my two-minute speech. I had the cadence and timing practiced to the second. I also made one big error. I hadn’t factored in the feedback that comes from the public address system at cavernous Yankee Stadium. There is a natural delay of a second or two from the time you talk into the microphone until it comes out of the speakers. This causes a weird and jarring echo. Even experienced singers get thrown when they try to perform the National Anthem from that spot. My timing was way off. I abandoned any hope of keeping to the allotted two minutes. Winging it was the best option.
I had a feeling that I might be going over my time limit. Nobody was saying anything to me, so I figured it was okay. What I didn’t know was that the WPIX camera crew was frantically waving at me to finish up. Unlike Howard Danzig, who realized that hand gestures wouldn’t work for me on the stand, these guys had no clue as to how to signal me. I was unwittingly causing agita for the director of the broadcast. Bob Diehl finally put an end to it by walking over, tapping me, and quietly saying, “They want you to finish, Ed.”
The added minutes didn’t ruin things after all. The pregame ceremony finished on time and without a hitch. Phil was delighted and humbled by the day’s tributes. He and Cora took me aside to thank me for being a big part of it. I told them that there was no way I’d ever be able to repay all of the kindness and friendship they’d shown to me. A public speech in his honor was the least I could do.
I owed my career and so much more to the Rizzutos.
I NOW HAD a regular baseball column in the Jersey Journal called “As I See It” and a monthly column in the official scorecard magazine of the Yankees, sold at the ballpark and on newsstands. Twenty-four-hour sports programming on cable TV and talk radio was in its infancy. They would call me on as a guest for local and national TV and radio shows. I enjoyed talking baseball with hosts like Art Rust, Jr., Barry Farber, Ed Randall, Bill Daughtry, Spencer Ross, Richard Neer, and Ann Liguori on stations like Sports Channel, ESPN, WOR, WABC, and WFAN.
WMCA radio, AM 570, gave me a Saturday-afternoon show of my own. I cohosted it with Howie Karpin. Howie was a local guy who knew the rules of baseball inside and out. He now serves as official scorer for both the Yankees and Mets. During our show, Howie and I would take calls from fans, have guests like Mr. Rizzuto, Hall of Famers Richie Ashburn and Ralph Kiner, and play prerecorded interviews. It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had covering the game.
John Sterling also hosted a show on WMCA and would have me in to chat. He had an amazing voice and an almost encyclopedic knowledge of sports. In WMCA’s overnight spot, they had an energetic kid, Chris Russo, fresh out of college. He was dubbed “Mad Dog.” Chris was a fellow Giants fan. He and I bonded right away. He was funny, a breath of fresh air in the sometimes stuffy sports world. I enjoyed his work, and figured he’d get pretty far. “Mad Dog” now has his own channel on Sirius/XM Radio and is one of the most famous broadcasters in the United States. John Sterling went on to become the esteemed voice of the Yankees for a whole new generation of fans. It couldn’t have happened to two nicer guys.
My friend Eddie Dunphy introduced me to Kevin Williams early in the 1980s. Kevin was the station manager at WOBM radio in Toms River, New Jersey. He’d heard my interviews and hired me to cover baseball for the station, which had a large audience in the South Jersey area. I did that for almost twenty years. All-Star pitcher Al Leiter, a Toms River native who came up with the Yankees and was a three-time World Series champion with the Toronto Blue Jays and Florida Marlins, once told me that he loved listening to me on WOBM when he was younger.
In addition to the sports shows on traditional radio, I did work for two stations dedicated to blind listeners. One was called EIES of New Jersey, the other was In Touch Network. I would do interviews with the players like I did for WOBM and WMCA, but these had a different angle. The questions I asked dealt with things that sighted people take for granted.
I would encourage the players to describe what it looked like to enter Yankee Stadium for the first time, or to see a play develop. Some even described their uniforms. It sounds simplistic, but many radio hosts and broadcasters overlook things like that. Michael Kay, who is the face and voice of the Yankees YES Network, is a notable exception. He takes special care to always describe home and visiting uniforms for blind listeners. One of Kay’s most famous on-air phrases is his description of the Yankees’ classic home uniform: “They are wearing their crisp white jerseys, with an interlocking NY and pinstripes and no name on the back . . . of course.”
I’d sometimes take questions from blind listeners on In Touch. They were very incisive. I didn’t lose my sight until I was twelve, so I had an image in my head of what a ballpark looked like. Anyone who was born blind had no sense of this. As a result, I was asked things like, “Is the foul pole thin like a fishing pole or thick like a flagpole?” “Is a dugout actually dug out of the dirt or like a little room on the field?” “Does home plate look like a dinner plate?” I tried my best to answer them all, giving thanks to God that He was allowing me to share what I knew with other fans who couldn’t actually see the game they loved.
When I give banquet, corporate, and after-dinner speeches, the organizers sometimes want me to leave time for questions and answers. It’s at these events that I’ve gotten some interesting inquiries from sighted people, who are curious about what life is like for a blind person and broadcaster.
Here are some of the most frequently asked:
“Are your other senses even stronger? Are you able to feel, taste, and hear things better than us?”
This is the biggest misconception about blind people. The comic-book hero Daredevil has these powers, not me. The only thing that I can honestly say increased a bit after my accident was my sense of audio perception. It’s what helps me to identify which direction baseballs are headed just by the crack of the bat. It also comes in handy when trying to differentiate voices. Some people say, “I’m better with faces than names.” I don’t have that option. I can remember others only by their voice.
Bob Sheppard was sitting in the Yankee dining room when he called me over to his table to solve a dilemma for him. NBC had hired two sportscasters who were identical twins, Doug and Don Gould. Try as he might, Sheppard just couldn’t tell them apart. He asked me over to decipher which brother was which. It wasn’t that hard for me, but others were relying on their visual cues. Their voices were as different to me as a redhead would be from a brunette for sighted people.
Speaking of colors, knowing the difference between them comes naturally to most sighted people. It’s one of the hardest concepts to get across to the blind. There is just no way to describe colors. Think about it. If I asked you to tell me what “yellow” looks like using only words, it would be impossible.
I can conceive of colors because I saw what they looked like, but my palette is limited to the primary ones. When a player tells me his uniform includes teal, burnt orange, or metallic purple, I’m clueless. The only baseball “colors” I’m familiar with are Red Schoendienst, Vida Blue, and Dallas Green.
Another question I get often: “Do you have to feel someone’s face to know what they look like?”
This is a popular myth about blind people, perpetuated by Hollywood. You know the scene I’m referring to. Someone without sight reaches out, puts his hands all over another person’s face, and then miraculously knows exactly what he looks like. Not only is that unsanitary, it’s just not true. I rely on something I call “mental mapping” to see people. It’s their voices that give me an image of their faces. My idea probably doesn’t match reality, but it doesn’t have to. It’s unique to me.
Reggie Jackson once asked me what I thought he looked like. My description made him seem larger than life, like a mythical hero, à la Paul Bunyan. He liked that better than the reality.
On Old-Timers Day one year, I asked Mickey Mantle to take a picture with me. Like Thurman, he joked about a blind person wanting a photograph. “You can’t even see the photo, Eddie,” Mickey said with a chuckle, “how do you know I won’t be making faces at you the whole time?”
I told Mantle that he looked the same to me as he did on his rookie baseball card in 1951, before I lost my sight. I still pictured him with a full head of shining blond hair, a chiseled body, and a thousand-watt grin.
Mickey grabbed me and shouted, “I like the way you think, kid! Let’s do it!”
I use the mental mapping to build actual maps in my head, too. Long before everyone’s car was giving them directions via GPS, I was able to get around with my own internal system. I think that my aptitude for math and simple geometry helped.
I’d committed so many streets, highways, and shortcuts to memory that I could usually help my escorts get around detours or traffic.
One of my guides knew that I’d memorized several shortcuts to the Stadium, so he had a friend of his call me for directions. I walked him through it step by step over the phone. Later that year, I was at a Lions event when I was introduced to a member of a club from South Jersey. He said, “Your name is Ed Lucas? That’s so funny. I took directions to Yankee Stadium from a guy with that name who drives his car over there all the time. Do you know him?” I laughed. “Know him? He’s standing right in front of you!” The guy was left speechless.
It works indoors, too.
There was a blackout at Yankee Stadium during a game. It only lasted for about fifteen minutes. While we were waiting for the lights to come back on, one of the reporters said aloud, “This is terrible. I have to use the bathroom really bad, but it’s too dark for me to see anything. I have no idea how to get from here all the way over there.”
Blind guy to the rescue!
I didn’t need lights, of course, so I spent the next few minutes helping my fellow broadcasters make their way back and forth from the press box restroom until the power returned. There’s no line in the box score for “bladders saved” but if there were, my name would be listed with a few of them that night.
The strangest question I ever got was, “Do you hang out with guys like Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and Ronnie Milsap?” It’s like they think we have a little club of blind people that has secret meetings. I respect these guys for their tremendous talent and use of their gifts, but I’ve never actually met them. We have our blindness in common, but I’m no more connected to them than I am to people like Bruce Springsteen, Queen Latifah, and Bon Jovi because we all happen to be from New Jersey.
José Feliciano, the Grammy-winning blind singer of “Feliz Navidad” fame, was introduced to me when he sang the National Anthem at Yankee Stadium. He told me that he admired my work, and I repaid the compliment. One of his escorts wondered why I didn’t wear dark sunglasses as Feliciano, Charles, Wonder, and other blind people did.
Unless it’s a sunny day that calls for it, I’ve never worn sunglasses. This is something that I feel strongly about. It stems from seeing the beggar on the streets when I was young. He was wearing dark glasses. As with the cup and cane he had, I always associated those glasses with helplessness. I realize that’s not the case with most blind people. They wear their glasses to cover their eyes or to protect them. But I don’t need them, and try hard not to get pigeonholed into other people’s image of what a blind person should look and act like.
Sometimes stereotypes about the blind can be used for humorous purposes.
I was at a party with Bowie Kuhn when I decided to have a little fun with him. I walked over and said, with as straight a face as I could manage, “Mr. Commissioner, I believe there’s a job in baseball that I’m extremely qualified for. I’d like to apply right now.” Kuhn, who was with a large crowd of reporters, was puzzled. He politely replied, “What job is that, Ed?” My answer, “Umpire,” brought the house down.
The umpiring job wasn’t offered, but lots of other opportunities were pouring in. A Japanese company had developed a new kind of baseball that was dimpled. They claimed it would help avoid injuries to young players. I was hired by them to do endorsements in the United States and Japan.
Speaking engagements were also becoming more frequent. After much inner debate, I decided to leave Meadowview County Hospital to pursue these other interests, and broadcasting, full-time.
I established a company called No Cup or Cane to handle all of the requests for my time. Exiting Meadowview also gave me the opportunity to devote more energy to fund-raising for charities dear to my heart.
Herb had some excellent high-profile ideas to support the children at Holy Family. One of them was to have an auction featuring items from the Yankees and Mets.
I’d been visiting Shea Stadium and the Mets more often since they hired Jay Horwitz, one of the best PR men in the business. Jay treated me very well, and helped me get access to some of the star players on the Mets as they began their incredible rise to championship status in the mid-1980s. I became close friends with catcher Gary Carter, pitcher Dwight Gooden, and outfielder Darryl Strawberry.
When Darryl heard I was having an auction, he personally went around the clubhouse collecting autographed items from his fellow Mets superstars for me.
The Sisters of Saint Joseph offered their beautiful residential facility on the cliffs overlooking the Hudson River for the auction. We set a date for late August, on a Saturday evening following a Yankee day game. Scooter came to help auction some items from the Yankee old-timers. Jay Johnstone, the eccentric former player who was then a Yankee broadcaster, acted as master of ceremonies. Yankee catcher Bob Geren showed up to represent the team and to mingle with fans at the auction.
It was a smash hit.
Thousands were raised for Holy Family that night. Herb was ecstatic. Even so, Mr. Rizzuto proposed a bigger, bolder, idea. He wanted to have a celebrity golf tournament.
This would be a massive undertaking. Celebrity tournaments were a lot of work. I told Scooter that I had no idea where to start. He assured me and Herb that we could do it.
He was right.
After a few bumps and a steep learning curve, we were able to build the Phil Rizzuto Celebrity Golf Classic into an annual highlight of the New Jersey fund-raising calendar. Not only did we get golfers and companies from all over the state and beyond on board as supporters, celebrities flocked to be involved with Mr. Rizzuto and to spend the day hanging out with him. We had his buddies, like Yogi, Mickey, and Whitey, of course, but stars from every arena also joined the fun. Meat Loaf, Jerry Orbach, Dick Vitale, Mick Foley, Rod Gilbert, Phil Simms, Pat Cooper, Gary Carter, and Tony Lo Bianco were just a few of the luminaries who pitched in to help.
Over the course of twenty years, we raised millions for Holy Family. Herb was astute enough to use the prominence of Scooter’s tournament to bring even more awareness in Trenton and in Washington, D.C., to the needs of blind people in New Jersey and around the country. He did more than almost anyone else for the cause.
