Soon to be a major motion picture, Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story is the incredible true tale of a beloved Emmy-winning blind broadcaster who refused to let his disability prevent him from overcoming many challenging obstacles and achieving his dreams.
In 1951, when he was only twelve years old, Ed Lucas was hit between the eyes by a baseball during a sandlot game in Jersey City. He lost his sight forever. To cheer him up, his mother wrote letters to baseball superstars of the day, explaining her son’s condition. Soon Ed was invited into their clubhouses and dugouts, as the players and coaches personally made him feel at home.
Despite the warm reception he got from his heroes, Ed was told repeatedly by others that he would never be able to accomplish anything worthwhile because of his limitations. But Hall-of-Famer Phil Rizzuto became Ed’s mentor and encouraged him to pursue his passion—broadcasting. Ed then overcame hundreds of barriers, big and small, to become a pioneer—the first blind person covering baseball on a regular basis, a career he has successfully continued for six decades
. Ed may have lost his sight, but he never lost his faith, which got him through many pitfalls and dark days. When Ed’s two sons were very young, his wife walked out and left him to raise them all by himself, which he did. Six years later, Ed’s ex-wife returned and sued him for full custody, saying that a blind man shouldn’t have her kids. The judge agreed, tearing Ed's sons away from their father's loving home. Ed fought the heartbreaking decision with appeals all the way up to the highest level of the court system. Eventually, he prevailed, marking the very first time in US history that a disabled person was awarded custody over a non-disabled spouse.
Even in his later years, Ed is still enjoying a remarkably blessed life. In 2006, he married his second wife, Allison, at home plate in old Yankee Stadium, the only time that such a thing ever happened on that iconic spot. Yankee owner George Steinbrenner himself catered the whole affair, which was shown live on national television.
Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story is truly a magical read and a universally uplifting and inspirational tale for everyone, whether or not you happen to be a sports fan. Over his long and amazing life, Ed has collected hundreds of anecdotes from his personal relationships and encounters with everyone, from kings and presidents to movie stars and sports Hall-of-Famers, many of which he shares in this memoir, using his trademark humorous and engaging style, cowritten with his youngest son, Christopher.
ARTICLE ON ED AND CHRISTOPHER LUCAS FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES
When Ed Lucas and his son Christopher were still working on their memoir of Ed’s life as a blind man who reported on Major League Baseball, their agent let them know that “there’s a fellow who’s just getting into publishing, and he wants your book to be one of the first books he publishes,” Mr. Lucas recalled.
It turned out to be Derek Jeter.
“There’s no better person to publish it,” Christopher Lucas said. “Derek Jeter is a shortstop like Phil Rizzuto, who’s so much a part of the story,” he said. “And his family is from Jersey City, from the same neighborhood as my father.”
And Mr. Jeter is not the only person interested in telling Mr. Lucas’s story. There is also a film version of his life in the works. “They did a nice job with the screenplay,” Mr. Lucas, 76, said recently from his home in Union, where he lives with his wife, Allison. He is also happy with the names attached to the film — Elliot Abbott, producer of “A League of Their Own,” is producing, and actors like Stanley Tucci and Bradley Cooper have expressed interest in playing him.
Followers of the New York Yankees might be familiar with Mr. Lucas, a longtime insurance salesman and sports journalist.
Starting in the 1960s, he was a regular fixture in clubhouses and dugouts, where he could be seen schmoozing with the likes of Phil Rizzuto, Yogi Berra and George Steinbrenner. And he still rubs elbows with celebrities like Mr. Jeter and Mariano Rivera. His baseball dispatches have been running in The Jersey Journal since 1977. And for years, Mr. Rizzuto, the shortstop who later became a Yankees announcer, often threw out trivia questions and baseball prognostications posed by Mr. Lucas during broadcasts of games.
“Guys like Phil Rizzuto were good at pushing me, saying, ‘You can’t give up’ when anybody started giving me the business” (about being a blind man who hoped to report on the big leagues), said Mr. Lucas, who was blinded at age 12 in 1951 after being hit between the eyes by a baseball during a neighborhood game in Jersey City.
But baseball isn’t the only reason Mr. Lucas appeals to storytellers like the “Fever Pitch” writers Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz, who started the screenplay in 2006, just after Mr. Lucas married Allison at home plate in old Yankee Stadium. (Mr. Steinbrenner granted permission for that first and only wedding at home plate; he also paid to have the event catered.) When Mr. Lucas’s two sons, Edward and Christopher, were 6 and 4, he and his first wife split up, and the boys lived with him. Six years later, in 1980, she sued him for full custody. She won. Mr. Lucas fought the decision and prevailed; according to Mr. Lucas, it was the first time in American history that a disabled person was awarded custody over a non-disabled spouse.
“My dad has had so many trials and gone through so much, he makes you feel like nothing is impossible,” Christopher Lucas, 46, said during the interview at his father’s house. “That’s why we wanted his story to reach a wider audience.”
But it’s also why, instead of waiting for Mr. Abbott’s production company, Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right, to bring the film to theaters, Christopher Lucas spent a fevered three months in 2014 writing a memoir with his father.
“Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story” will be published April 21 by Jeter Publishing, a new Simon & Schuster imprint in partnership with Mr. Jeter. “I’ve always enjoyed talking to him,” Mr. Jeter said of Mr. Lucas in an email. “He’s one of the most knowledgeable and passionate fans of the game, and he has a knack for going beyond the everyday questions to connect with people.”
The custody battle chapter of Mr. Lucas’s story features more heavily in the screenplay than in the book.
“It’s sort of like ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ meets ‘Forrest Gump,’ “ Christopher said of the movie project.
The “Forrest Gump” sensibility — the intertwining of uplift with an underdog’s tale — also permeates the book. In it are anecdotes about Mr. Lucas’s determined rise through Seton Hall University, where he graduated with a degree in broadcasting in 1972, and his encounters with figures like Willie Mays, Bob Hope, Billy Joel and President George W. Bush.
Among Mr. Lucas’s favorite chapters in the book is one in which a favorite nun from his Jersey City middle school, Holy Family, appears.
Mr. Lucas recalled that he was leaving school and it was snowing. “My father came and he told me to stand up against the wall so he could help me put my galoshes on,” he said. “Sister Rose Magdalene came off the elevator and saw us. She said, ‘Mr. Lucas, what are you doing?’ “ He said that she elbowed his father in the chest. “She said: ‘Look, he’s only blind; he’s not handicapped. You can leave when he can get his galoshes on by himself.’ “ An hour and a half later they left, he said.
That kind of grit in the face of adversity is what defines Mr. Lucas, said Christopher. “I’ve never, ever seen him despair,” he said.
Mr. Lucas said he hoped his positive outlook would rub off on others who come across his story. “The people in baseball always went out of their way to make sure they talked to me as someone who knew the game, not as a blind person,” he said. “I’d like to help other people out, to let them know no matter what the obstacle, they should never give up.”