Oct. 3, 1951 has always been one of the most remembered dates in the history of major league baseball. It’s the date that Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants hit the dramatic home run off Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers to give the Giants the National League pennant in a play remembered as "The Shot Heard Round the World."
At the time, Ed Lucas was a 12-year-old boy, living in the Lafayette Gardens in Jersey City. "I remember it like it was yesterday," Lucas recalls. "I just had come home from school and the game was in the eighth inning. My father was a devout Giants fan, and I was both a Yankees fan and a Giants fan. He couldn’t understand how I could root for both."
Although Lucas had already lost sight in one eye by the time the fateful game was played, he remembered sitting down with his father to watch the final innings of the historic game.
"I remember seeing my father, and he was so depressed because the Giants were losing, 4 to 1," Lucas said. "Don Newcombe was pitching a great game against the Giants and we were losing. My father sat by the TV, holding his rosary beads."
Lucas also remembered what followed. "When Thomson hit the home run, my father went crazy," he said. "It was 3:58 in the afternoon. He jumped up, ran to the window and was screaming out the window, ‘The Giants won, the Giants won.’ He started to put the dishes out for dinner, because my mother was working, but then all the dishes fell and broke, so he told me to go outside to play."
Lucas couldn’t know that this playtime would be the last he would play baseball, a sport he loved. "I was pitching in a game with a bunch of guys and a line drive hit me square in the face," Lucas said. "Eventually, that shot cost me my sight."
Born with congenital cataracts, Lucas developed glaucoma and a detached retina because of the blow from the baseball. Soon after, in the winter of 1951, he became totally blind
Last Wednesday, as Thomson and Branca were featured on many different news and sports programs about the 50th anniversary of the "Shot Heard Round the World," Ed Lucas, now 62, celebrated his own 50th anniversary of the day that sparked the loss of his sight but set his life on a positive new course.
"That day absolutely changed my life," said Lucas, the director of development and public education for St. Joseph’s School for the Blind in Jersey City. "I lost my sight, but I gained something as well. I gained the inspiration and determination to pursue a life in baseball. I love the game so much that it’s what I wanted to do."
For the last 40 years, Lucas has reported about that game even though he can’t see it.
"I might not be able to see physically, but I can see more than most people can," he laughs.
Lucas has written for several publications, including the Jersey Journal and the now-defunct Hudson Dispatch, authoring a column, "As I See it." His feature articles have appeared in Yankees Magazine and Baseball Digest. He has also done radio commentary for WOBM Radio in Toms River and been featured on several television shows.
He is widely respected and beloved in all the local clubhouses in New York and has made several friends in the baseball industry, people he calls upon today to help with his fundraising efforts at the school.
"I have so many friends in baseball that it would take up the entire article," Lucas said. "People think it’s a handicap to be blind. I just think it’s an inconvenience."
After becoming blind, Lucas enrolled at St. Joseph’s. The move changed his life and gave him the impetus to continue.
"When I first became blind, I saw myself sitting on a street corner with a cup and a cane, selling pencils," Lucas said. "That was my biggest fear. I didn’t want that. When I came to St. Joseph’s, the nuns saw to that. I don’t think I would be anywhere right now without the nuns being so strict with me."
Lucas recalls the first days of trying to feel his way around the school.
"I was walking with my hands out, feeling my way around, when a nun, Sister Anthony Marie, slapped my hands and said, ‘Mr. Lucas, we don’t walk with our hands in front of us. We walk with them by our sides.’ She would smack my hands all the time and tell me to learn like everyone else. Eventually, I did."
After leaving St. Joseph’s, Lucas attended high school at the Institute for the Sight Impaired in Manhattan. It was there that he was inspired to pursue a career in sports journalism.
"I started a group called the ‘Diamond Dusters,’ and I wrote a letter to Alvin Dark of the Giants, to ask him if he could come to visit our school," Lucas said. "I figured that most of the kids in the school had never been to a ball game. Alvin Dark couldn’t make it, but Lindy McDaniel did. Later on, Jackie Robinson came."
Lucas added, "When I wrote to Leo Durocher, he wrote back to my mother and told her to have me outside the Giants locker room two hours before the game. That was June 14, 1952 at the Polo Grounds. I went into Durocher’s office to meet him and then he had the players come into his office to meet me."
One of those players was Bobby Thomson.
"My hero back then was Sal Yvars," Lucas said. "Now, they’re all friends of mine."
Around the same time, Lucas wanted to meet Phil Rizzuto of the Yankees.
"He was selling clothes in the off-season at American Shops in Newark," Lucas said. "So my mother took me to meet him. That was 1952. He took an interest in me and we’ve been friends ever since."
Rizzuto is the chairman of the St. Joseph’s School’s annual golf outing and he is also featured on Lucas’ voice message answering machine at the school.
Lucas was undaunted in his pursuit to become a journalist. He attended Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J. and became the school’s first-ever blind graduate. He had to convince media outlets that he could report on a game, despite not being able to see it.
"No one believed a blind person could do it, but I was determined to prove it," Lucas said. "The more they told me I couldn’t do it, the more I wanted it. I kept on writing for newspapers for free until I got a chance."
Lucas said that he can hear where the ball has been hit and how hard by the crack of the bat and the way the ball travels.
"I listen to the crack of the bat to tell where the ball is hit," Lucas said. "I just know."
Lucas said that he has been kidded about that ability and even tested by some major leaguers to see how accurate he is.
He said that he has special relationships with certain ballplayers, like Don Mattingly, Al Leiter, former Mets manager Jeff Torborg and former Met outfielder Ron Swoboda.
"Swoboda was the first one to describe Shea Stadium to me," Lucas said. "He took me out and let me feel the grass, feel the outfield wall. He told me about the colors of the seats and the stadium. Years later, when he was a sportscaster, he did the same thing for me in Fenway Park. It meant a lot to me."
Lucas also said that he has become friendly with both Thomson and Branca over the years, the other people who celebrated a 50th anniversary last week.
"Sure, my life changed forever on that day, but I don’t have any regrets," Lucas said. "I’ve had a wonderful life. I have two wonderful sons [Eddie and Chris] and a grandson [Edward James]. If my life was different, who knows if I would have the same interest that I have. St. Joseph’s School meant so much to me and now I can give back to our students, with our golf outing, with all the relationships I’ve made through the years."