When Jersey City natives Ed and Christopher Lucas sat down together to put Ed Lucas’ incredible journey in life in a book, they never realized where the book would take them.
“I had no idea where we would end up,” said Ed Lucas, who lost his sight as a young boy after getting hit in the head with a baseball, yet overcame his blindness to become a successful sportscaster and sportswriter.
“It’s my Dad who is getting all the attention,” Christopher Lucas said. “But it has been a whirlwind. That’s the perfect description for what’s happened. We’ve had a lot happen compressed in just a few months.”
A few years ago, the elder Lucas decided that his story was a good one to tell, so he sat down with his son to pen his autobiography.
“I was flattered by it,” Christopher Lucas said. “I had never written a major book before. But Dad insisted that I was the one who wrote it with him. He stuck to his guns even when they told him that he needed to get a name writer.”
The two would just take the time to sit and allow Ed to tell Chris the story of his life.
“Christopher was the one who knew how these books were done,” Ed Lucas said. “We would take an hour or two, a couple of nights per week. Chris did a lot of research before we sat down.”
The younger Lucas knew that he wanted to make his father’s memoirs into a positive and uplifting retrospective.
“I wanted to try to make the book as positive as possible,” Chris Lucas said. “I didn’t want to do a baseball book. I had an audience in mind. I thought of some 58-year-old woman in Omaha who didn’t know a thing about baseball, who never heard of Derek Jeter, who didn’t know about Jersey City and Hudson County. My goal was to have people take the book to bed, read a few chapters, and they can’t put the book down until they fall asleep.”
The end result was “Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story,” the first book published by former Yankee great Jeter’s new publishing company, which was released in April and is currently in all book stores courtesy of Simon and Schuster.
The story tells of how Lucas, at age 12, lost his sight when he was struck in the head with a baseball on the same day (October 3, 1951) that Bobby Thomson hit a fastball from Brooklyn Dodgers reliever Ralph Branca into the left field bleachers in the Polo Grounds, giving the New York Giants the National League pennant in “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”
After listening to Thomson hit the homer, Lucas went outside his Jersey City home with his friends to play baseball and the fateful accident took place.
A lot of other kids might have despised the game of baseball because of what took place, but Lucas was determined to make a career out of the national pastime.
The book details Lucas’ plight and growing up in Jersey City. It tells the tale of Lucas’ incredible parents, who took the time to get their son the education he needed at St. Joseph’s School for the Blind in Jersey City and eventually Seton Hall University.
It also recalls Lucas’ mother writing letters to baseball players in order to get cards and correspondence that would cheer him up.
Lucas continued that trend through his adolescence into college. While attending high school, Lucas started a baseball-related group of fellow sight impaired students, Lucas reached out to players to see if they would be willing to speak to the students. All-time greats like Jackie Robinson and Mickey Mantle came to Lucas’ class to speak.
As a youngster, Lucas developed a relationship with Yankees Hall of Fame shortstop Phil Rizzuto, a friendship that carried through the ages until Rizzuto’s death in 2007. Lucas met Rizzuto in a men’s clothing store in Newark, took a liking to Lucas and the two became very close.
Lucas’ saga of overcoming his disability and eventually becoming an Emmy Award-winning sportscaster and sportswriter is such an uplifting and thrilling story. The book, as told by father to son, really did a lot to their relationship.
“It’s been such a great experience,” Chris Lucas said. “I learned things about my father that I didn’t know. I wanted to describe the Jersey City area. It could have easily been a baseball book, but it’s a book about life.”
Ever since the book was published, Ed and Christopher Lucas have traveled the country doing book signings and appearances. They went to the MLB All-Star game in Cincinnati and a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. They went to Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi.
“I had a private tour of Helen Keller’s home in Alabama,” Ed Lucas said. “They let me feel the table where she sat. We went to Elvis’ home in Mississippi. We went to Arkansas. These are places I never been to before. We had a signing in Kentucky and a priest from Indiana wanted us to go there, so we did. It has been a wonderful tour so far.”
Just last week, the Lucas writing duo had a program at the Yogi Berra Museum in Little Falls.
“They sold out all the books they had,” Ed Lucas said.
Lucas can’t believe the summer he has enjoyed.
“We’ve been all over,” Lucas said. “I threw out a first pitch at a game in Alabama and I heard the pitch hit the catcher’s glove. As I was coming off the field, all the players from both teams came to shake my hand.”
“He has a lot more energy than I do,” Chris Lucas said. “He’s 76 years old now. When we got back from the first trip, I thought to myself, ‘How many times does a guy get to spend so much time traveling with his father? I just spent a week driving all over the country with Dad, just talking baseball. That’s the part of the process I’ve enjoyed more than anything. I’ve spent time with Dad.”
“Chris has been doing such a great job promoting the book,” Ed Lucas said. “I think the whole thing has been wonderful.”
“Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story” is a wonderful book, a journey through 50-plus years of a young man dealing with the incredible adversity of being blind and overcoming that obstacle to become a respected sports journalist. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Ed for more than 30 years. In reading the book, I even learned things about Ed that I didn’t know.
Thanks to the efforts of Lucas’ wife Allison, Lucas’ big event, the Gene Michael Celebrity Golf Classic and Dinner, will be held on Monday, August 24, at the Brooklake Country Club in Florham Park. There is still room for the dinner and for golfers to participate in the event.
Some of the celebrities invited to the event include Michael, Tommy John, Rick Cerone, Willie Randolph and others. There will be a memorabilia auction that evening as well. All of the proceeds of the event go to the Ed Lucas Foundation, which has been helping the blind and disabled gain independence since 1990.
For more information about the upcoming golf classic, log onto www.edlucasfoundation.org.
The book is available in all major book stores and on amazon.com
Jim Hague can be reached at OGSMAR@aol.com.
You can also read Jim’s blog at www.jimhaguesports.blogspot.com.