Ed Lucas, Blind Baseball Chronicler, Is Dead at 82

“I knew I was a good father,” he told The Record of Hackensack, N.J., in 1980. “Truth prevails as far as I’m concerned.”

Mr. Lucas did most of his baseball work at Yankee Stadium, where on opening day in 1976 DiMaggio sat next to him in the press box, told him to put away the transistor radio and headset he needed to follow games, and delivered a personal play-by-play.

Thirty years later, the Yankees owner, George M. Steinbrenner, gave his approval when Mr. Lucas asked that he be allowed to marry Allison Pfeifle on the field of Yankee Stadium a month before opening day. Mr. Steinbrenner paid for a dinner reception for 350 people at the stadium.

“To paraphrase Mr. Gehrig,” Ms. Lucas said at a news conference after the ceremony, “I truly do consider ourselves the luckiest two people on the face of the earth.”

In addition to his son Christopher, Mr. Lucas is survived by his wife, his other son, Eddie, and three grandsons.

One day in 1965, Mr. Lucas was interviewing Ron Swoboda, then a rookie outfielder for the Mets, who asked him how he had lost his sight.

“When I told him about my boyhood accident,” Mr. Lucas wrote in his autobiography, “he followed by asking me if anyone had ever taken me around a major league ballpark to describe it up close. I said no. I spent the next 45 minutes walking with Ron as he helped me better visualize Shea by running my hand along the outfield wall, touching the bases, and traveling the length of the warning track.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/sports/ed-lucas-dead.html