I have to be at my office by 8 on some Saturday mornings. Those are Saturday mornings that might otherwise be filled with sleeping in and lazy breakfasts and reading the box score from Friday night where my team wins …

Nope. 

Look! Virginia beat #1 ranked Miami last night. How about that!

But, when I’m up and out early on Saturday, I get to listen to the sports program Only A Game on National Public Radio during my drive to the studio.

Almost every week I hear a story and think, “I really wish you could hear this.” And, by “you,” I really do mean you – whoever you are. I mean “you” … everybody.

Today’s show deserves your ears.

Ed Lucas has interviewed ballplayers since the 1950s.  And, as Only A Game explains: “Ed has been completely blind since October 3, 1951. He lost his sight after taking a line drive to the head on the same day his beloved New York Giants won the pennant.”

Only A Game

Ed Lucas Interviewing Willie Mays in 1957.

“Friendships between writers and ballplayers aren’t common,” Only A Game notes, “but in baseball broadcaster Ed Lucas, players saw someone who had struggled as hard as they had — if not harder — to get to where he was.”

Ed Lucas’ story is a story of … how, as a small boy and newly blind, he met Yankee Phil Rizzuto, who took him under his wing … how Leo Durocher opened the Giants’ clubhouse doors to him, as a favor to Ed’s mom who thought a visit with baseball players would cheer him up … and of how his life blossomed despite blindness. It is a story of baseball and of family.  It is beautiful.

You can listen to, or download, the story here.