Hillside, New Jersey, is a small town of twenty thousand people, not far from Newark Airport. It was here that Phil and Cora Rizzuto settled in the 1940s to live and raise their family.
The Rizzutos loved their town and were fiercely loyal to the businesses in the area. Everything they needed, they tried to do close to home. When they wanted to get flowers for someone, they would stop by a shop less than a mile away. There were two workers at the florist in particular whom they were fond of, an aunt and her niece.
One day, Phil was talking to the aunt, Marlene Greene, when he noticed that she seemed a bit down. He asked her what was wrong, and she told him that her niece, Allison, was having difficulty with her vision. This was frustrating to them both, and they didn’t know what to do.
Scooter knew.
He said, “I have a friend, Eddie Lucas, who is blind. Maybe he can help lift her spirits. Is it okay if he calls Allison?” She agreed, and I made the call that would start me on a road to lasting joy.
ALLISON PFEIFLE WAS born prematurely, along with her twin sister, Lorrie. For three months they were kept in an incubator. The increased oxygen caused damage to her developing retina cells. Her sister had no ill effects. Allison struggled with her vision throughout childhood and had problems in school. Unlike Jersey City, with its PS 22, her town didn’t offer programs for children with limited sight, so she slipped through the cracks.
Despite the setbacks, Allison was a devoted sports fan and even played catcher on her high school softball team. After graduation, she went on to earn a degree in biology and education at Kean University, then followed that by finishing in the top percentile of her class in nursing school at Seton Hall. It was during a routine eye checkup while working as a nurse that Allison was diagnosed with retinal detachment. Several unsuccessful operations were performed. She was then sent to Dr. Freeman in Boston, one of the best eye doctors in the world. He repaired her torn retinas by attaching buckles, but the vision loss was irreversible and permanent. She could not work as a nurse again.
Allison’s aunt Marlene, whom she lived with, urged her to take the job at the florist. She could use her skills in a productive way without having to worry about a long commute to work, or traveling at night.
When I called, I spoke to Allison about the challenges we both faced. We knew from the first few moments that there was a strong connection between us. As soon as we hung up, we couldn’t wait to speak to each other again.
For three years, from 1988 to 1991, we continued our frequent phone calls, never once meeting in person.
That might seem odd, but we were at a bit of a disadvantage. I lived in Jersey City and she lived thirty miles south. Not much of a distance, but she might as well have lived in Saint Louis, San Francisco, or São Paolo for what it was worth.
I couldn’t just hop in my car to visit Allison, and she couldn’t, either. We made the mutual decision to keep our relationship confined to phone calls, because it would be too heartbreaking to meet each other, then have to endure long stretches of separation.
On June 21, 1991, I decided to bend our little agreement and surprise Allison with a visit to her shop. My friend Carl Holtzberg was taking me to the Yankee game that night. I asked him to make a detour. Allison was cleaning the front of the store when I walked in. She recognized me right away. I didn’t have to say a word. We hugged for what seemed like thirty minutes. I stayed until she closed the shop.
Carl and I got to Yankee Stadium late that night. I didn’t mind at all.
Our phone calls increased in regularity and intimacy.
And then: We were officially a couple.
The very first date that we went on was to the ballpark. Allison was a big Mets fan, so I arranged for us to have four tickets to a game at Shea Stadium versus the Dodgers. Another couple drove us to the game, and we all sat together. Around the sixth inning, one of Allison’s friends leaned over and whispered, “I think Ed really likes you.” She was right. Allison was the perfect woman for me, one who cared more about Shea Stadium than Chez Madeline.
I chose Los Angeles as the opponent for a reason. Allison’s favorite player was my pal Darryl Strawberry, who had collected the signatures for my auction. Darryl was now playing for the Dodgers, and I brought her to meet him after the game. He was very gracious to her, taking a photo with us and signing one of his bats to mark the occasion.
A few weeks later I took Allison to Yankee Stadium. Scooter was thrilled to see us together. Our diminutive matchmaker invited Allison to sit at his table and helped me to show her around the House that Ruth Built.
In 1994, Mr. Rizzuto got an interesting phone call of his own. After years of being passed over, he was told that the National Baseball Hall of Fame would be including him in its class of inductees that year. Fans all over the country cheered the news of this long overdue honor. Allison and I booked a trip to Cooperstown for the July ceremony as soon as we heard.
The amazing coincidence of that summer was that Leo Durocher was posthumously chosen to go into the Hall of Fame alongside Scooter. I would be there with my girlfriend to watch the two men who gave me a huge lift when I needed it receive their well-deserved rewards.
Phil retired from the Yankees two years after that, ending a seven-decade run that he was told would be impossible for a little guy like him.
My dog Tommy passed away around that time, the longest-serving Seeing Eye dog I ever had.
I did not return to Morristown for another Seeing Eye dog. Chris and Eddie were old enough to help me get around. I wasn’t commuting to Meadowview anymore, so Tommy was basically a stay-at-home dog by the end.
Baseball also changed a bit in the 1990s. Clubhouses were no longer the raucous, freewheeling places that I was accustomed to. Things were more businesslike. Players still joked around, but there wasn’t as much horseplay with the media. Nobody would be throwing towels or giving hotfoots anymore.
A new crop of Yankees came up in the 1990s: Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and Jorge Posada were four of the players who helped Gene Michael and Buck Showalter build the core of a dynasty. They were all very open to the media, and behaved in a classy manner that fit the hallowed uniforms they were wearing.
IN 1995, AN overseas magazine was doing a story about my life and wanted pictures of me and Allison on the field at Yankee Stadium. They couldn’t send a photographer, so we had to bring our own camera. The problem was that we had nobody to take the pictures. Allison happened to be talking about our dilemma when the Yankees rookie shortstop, Derek Jeter, heard her.
Derek came over and said, “Would you like me to take some pictures of you, Mr. Lucas?” He then took the camera from Allison and proceeded to spend the next few minutes snapping shots.
This was no ordinary Yankee rookie.
The poise, grace, decency, and composure that I sensed in Derek Jeter early on was reminiscent of guys like Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Thurman Munson. Like them, he had the qualities of a leader and classic exemplary role model, both on and off the field. It was quite clear that his future would be a bright one with the Yankees.
In the twenty years that followed, I got to know Derek better. I discovered that we had many things in common. Though he was raised in Michigan, Derek’s mother’s side of his family was also made up of Irish Catholics from Jersey City. Derek’s maternal grandfather, Sonny Connors, is actually a Hudson County legend. One of the biggest high school gyms in the county is named for Sonny. Derek used to come back to visit New Jersey during the summer in the 1980s, when he was a boy. His grandmother loved the Yankees, and he would watch the games on TV with her. Derek grew up listening to Phil Rizzuto and told everyone that he was going to be the Yankees’ shortstop one day, just like Scooter had been.
The part of Derek’s story I identified with the most, though, was the love and dedication shown by his parents, Dorothy and Charles. Early on, they taught Derek and his younger sister, Sharlee, that goals in life could be achieved, but there was a price. Nothing would happen without hard work, dedication, and respect for themselves and others. Dorothy and Charles, who has a Ph.D. in psychology, drew up contracts for their children to sign, which set in writing what was expected of them. Derek once told me that his parents always saw great potential in him, thanks to the gifts that God had blessed him with, even during the rare times when he lost sight of that himself.
That sounds a lot like my own parents.
Like Munson before him, Derek led his team to a two-decade, almost uninterrupted string of postseason appearances and championships. Jeter was named Yankee captain in 2003. Thanks to Derek and to the other young players who came up with him, the Yankees were once again the biggest team in sports. Their success even allowed the Yankees to replace the eighty-five-year-old Yankee Stadium with a twenty-first-century streamlined version in 2009.
I’m still getting used to it.
The Yankees also started their own television network, called YES. I participated in many programs on Yankee history and was hired to report on the last few seasons of old Yankee Stadium. I even won an Emmy Award for my work. Ernie Harwell, who, like Scooter, was nearing his own retirement after sixty years, saw me on one of his last trips into New York with the Tigers. He embraced me and said, “I knew you could do it, Ed. I’m glad you stuck with it.”
I flashed back to the day in 1952 when he had me as his guest in the broadcast booth and gave me advice that I carried with me throughout my career. I was happy to share this moment with him.
That same year, I was inducted into the Irish-American Baseball Hall of Fame. This officially recognized branch of Cooperstown is located in Manhattan, at Foley’s on Thirty-Third Street. My fellow honorees were Vin Scully and Walter O’Malley, two Dodger legends.
It meant a lot, because they were not only honoring me, but my dad, my mom, and all of the Irish men and women in the Lucas and Furey families who preceded me.
At that induction, a reporter said to me, “Ed, you’ve been pretty lucky in life, how do you feel about that?” The answer that came to mind was a quote that Father Kerry had shared with our class at Seton Hall years before.
It was from Seneca the Younger, a Roman theologian and friend of Saint Paul. He said, way back in the first century, that “luck is just hard work meeting opportunity.” I’ve lived by that ever since.
God placed people and events in my life that helped me to succeed, but if I hadn’t been totally prepared, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, those opportunities would have passed me right by. You have to keep yourself ready and in position to receive the blessings. As Dr. Charles Jeter always pointed out to his son, nothing comes easy; hard work is always the biggest key to the equation. The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.
It took some hard work for Allison and me to keep our relationship going. We hit some rough patches, but we hung in there.
In the early 2000s I had a skin cancer scare. Allison was right there with me as I recovered from my operation. By this time, I was living alone in the house on Union Street. My mother had passed away in 1999, Maureen five years later, and Eddie and Chris left to start their own families. Allison’s Aunt Marlene died the same year as my mother, so she was alone in her house, too.
The time was right for us to get together permanently.
On Thanksgiving morning 2005, I asked Allison to marry me. She said yes.
My next question was, “Would you like to get married at home plate at Yankee Stadium?” She said yes to that, too.
Neither of us had any idea whether such a thing was even possible. Turns out it wasn’t. Nobody had ever been married at home plate.
We began looking into other options when Rick Cerrone, the Yankees media relations director, called us. I’d known Rick for years, from the days when he ran his own national baseball magazine. He asked if we were the ones who put in the wedding request. When I said yes, he said, “I want you to call Gina Chindemi, who organizes our Stadium events.”
I phoned her the next day. She said, “I have to meet you.” I was curious why. “Mr. Steinbrenner gave me strict orders never to allow anyone to get married at home plate. I was going to say no to you, too, but the Boss told me to say yes. I asked him why, and he said, ‘It’s because Ed Lucas is part of our family.’ ”
We decided to have a small service in a chapel on the campus at Seton Hall, where we would be married by a priest, but the main event would be in front of a large crowd in the Bronx at the Stadium known worldwide as the Cathedral of Baseball.
Allison and I spent the next few months planning our wedding, which was scheduled for Friday, March 10, 2006. We invited more than 150 guests. Phil and Cora weren’t feeling well enough to make it, but Mrs. Rizzuto gave Allison her fur coat to wear, just in case the March winds made the Stadium too chilly.
Chris wrote a letter to Steve Rushin at Sports Illustrated telling him about my life and upcoming wedding. Rushin wrote a full-page article that appeared in the February 27 issue of the magazine.
That story opened the media floodgates. Suddenly, my phone started ringing with calls from reporters asking to cover our wedding. Rick was getting the calls, too, at the Yankee spring training camp in Tampa. Once word got out that this would be the first-ever wedding at home plate in Yankee Stadium, it became a newsworthy event.
Rick took the pressure off Allison and me by running all requests through the Yankee PR office. There would now be more reporters at the wedding than guests. Cerrone set up a post-wedding press conference in the Yankee media room with the Yankee banner behind us, just like the players and managers have after their games are over. All three network morning shows wanted an exclusive interview and coverage of the wedding itself. Bob Dotson of NBC’s Today Show had always been one of our favorites, so we went with him.
A few days before the wedding, Dotson and his crew set up an interview in Mr. Steinbrenner’s private box. It was freezing. There was snow all over the Yankee Stadium field.
This was shaping up to be a very chilly wedding indeed.
On the morning of the wedding, we woke up to an unexpected weather forecast of sunny and seventy-five degrees. It was an amazing day, unseasonably warm for early March.
But an even bigger surprise occurred when we arrived at the Stadium. What had been snow-covered and dormant a few days before was now vibrant and fresh. Mr. Steinbrenner asked his grounds crew to make the Stadium look just like it would for Opening Day, even though that was almost a month away.
The wedding itself was like a fairy tale. A judge from the Bronx presided. Eddie read the familiar passage about the virtues of love from Corinthians, chapter thirteen. Chris read a poem about life and baseball written by former pitcher Jim “Mudcat” Grant. Irish tenor Ciaran Sheehan, who starred in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, sang “Always,” Irving Berlin’s famous love song in 1942’s Pride of the Yankees.
Finally, Allison and I got to say “I do” on the very same spot where so many of our heroes had their own memorable days in the sun.
As soon as the wedding was over, we were rushed to the press room for interviews. There was standing room only. It felt weird to be on this side of the interview table.
Someone asked Allison why I picked Yankee Stadium for a wedding venue and she said, “Because he wanted to give me the biggest diamond possible.”
Eddie thought ahead and brought two bats, a ball, and a glove as props for wedding photos. They brought us back out to the pristine field, with the red, white, and blue bunting and the scoreboard that said CONGRATULATIONS ED AND ALLISON ON YOUR SPECIAL DAY! We posed with the bats over our shoulders. I held a light-colored stick, and Allison had a dark one, which contrasted nicely with my black tuxedo and her white wedding dress. The next day, several newspapers ran that photo with the headline BRIDE OF THE YANKEES.
The reception was held upstairs in the private Yankee club. Allison and I sat in a booth shaped like a gigantic catcher’s mitt as well-wishers came over to talk to us. The room was adorned with pictures of the Yankee players and their greatest moments. It felt like just the right place to celebrate. Actress and film director Penny Marshall was there, along with producer Elliot Abbott. They had made A League of Their Own and were interested in learning more about my story. We were happy to have them among our guests.
Toward the end of the evening, one last surprise from Mr. Steinbrenner was announced. He couldn’t be there himself, so the Boss sent a congratulatory note, which was read aloud by Chris. George was returning the check that Allison and I had written to cover the cost of the wedding. He was taking care of the whole tab himself. It wasn’t a small amount. He insisted that family members should not pay for the use of their own house.
As he had so many times before, Mr. Steinbrenner left me in awe of his generosity.
I hope George doesn’t mind that I just told more than two people about it.
I SAW MR. Steinbrenner for the final time at the All Star Game in Yankee Stadium in 2008. It was the last year at the old Stadium and they were using the pregame ceremonies to honor all of the legends who played there. I happened to be in the Monument Park area out by the bullpen in left center. Chris was my guide that night.
Toward the end of the introductions, George was brought to the bullpen gate in a golf cart. They were going to ride him around the perimeter of the Stadium to hear cheers from the fans in honor of the six championships he’d helped to deliver them. He was right next to us. When Chris told me he was there, I leaned over and said, “Thanks for everything, Boss. I love you.” George looked over at me. Unable to speak, he gave a thumbs-up and nodded. I couldn’t see this gesture, but I could feel the warmth that came my way from him.
Two years later, I was at the All Star Game in Anaheim, California, with Chris when we got an early morning phone call that Mr. Steinbrenner had passed away. It was a sad day, but it also made me happy that people were finally lifting his self-imposed moratorium on stories about his generosity. The Boss didn’t want to ruin the public image of himself as a stern taskmaster prone to firing and rehiring managers, players, and employees. He asked everyone to keep quiet about his charitable works until he was gone.
The world would now know the George Steinbrenner I had known for years.
GOING TO ALL Star Games and Hall of Fame inductions gives me a chance to catch up with players I might not ordinarily get to see on a regular basis. When Goose Gossage was put in the Hall in 2008, I was in Cooperstown to cheer him on. The president of the Hall, Jeff Idelson, invited me and Chris to be his guests at the gala party the night before. Most of the living Hall of Famers were there.
Chris was in the corner chatting with Reggie Jackson when both of them noticed Willie Mays enter the room. Chris came to get me. We approached the “Say Hey Kid.” Willie was losing his sight and was moving a bit slower, but he was still as sharp as ever. He greeted me with a cheery, “Hey, Eddie, how you doin’, man?”
We talked about old times at the Polo Grounds and my very first interview, in 1957. I told him that I still had the photo of it that Uncle Eugene snapped. There were others waiting to talk to Mays, so I said good-bye. Before I had a chance to walk away, Willie grabbed my arm and said, “How ’bout another picture?” With that, he and I did our best to try to re-create the pose from fifty-one years earlier.
Herb Miller was with me at the All Star Game in Boston in 1999. They introduced a special “Team of the Century” before the game. Fenway Park erupted in cheers for ten minutes when Ted Williams was brought out. He was the greatest Red Sox player of them all and was taking a long-overdue bow. Herb made sure that I got to see Ted before he left the park. Williams rarely appeared away from his Florida home, and I wanted to thank him for all he’d done for me.
As soon as we got close, Ted snapped to attention. “There you are, Eddie! I see you over there. Where’s Kay? How come you didn’t bring her?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell Mr. Williams that Kay would have been almost thirty years old in human years at that point. He shook my hand, said hello to Herb, and left with a big grin.
It was a magical night.
The Celebrity Golf Classic had been running smoothly for two decades. Herb and Scooter made sure that the students at Holy Family, and blind children all across New Jersey and throughout the United States, got as much funding as they possibly could, thanks to our tournament.
Unfortunately, we suffered two major losses in rapid succession.
Herb Miller died suddenly in October 2005. It was a shock. He was relatively young and in good health. Other than the stress of running the school and constantly seeking new methods of fund-raising, he was a carefree guy. My heart broke for Zinnia and their children.
Holy Family was never the same after Herb’s death. The nuns shut the doors to the building completely a few years later, and it was eventually demolished. The school that I lived in and loved was gone forever.
And then Phil Rizzuto passed away in 2007. He had been in ill health for years, but it was still a crushing blow. Allison and I got to see him a few times toward the end at his assisted-living facility. He was still the same old Phil. Though his voice was weaker and he was confined to his room, the spirit of the little man whose heart was as big as all of Yankee Stadium shone through.
I AM CONSTANTLY inspired by such things as Derek Jeter’s Turn 2 Foundation, Don Imus’s Ranch for Children with Cancer, Curtis Granderson’s Grand Kids, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the David Ortiz Fund for Children, Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Foundation, Danny and Marlo Thomas’s Saint Jude’s Children’s Hospital, and other examples of celebrities leveraging their fame to give back to their communities, helping thousands of worthy causes in the process. The Yankees have also continued George’s philanthropic endeavors. Thanks to Media Relations Director Jason Zillo and George’s children, Jennifer, Hank, Jessica, and Hal, the team instituted an annual event called HOPE Week. Not only do the Yankees donate to these charities, they highlight them for an entire week at the ballpark and on television, encouraging fans to be supporters.
It’s an organization using the power of its brand for good.
To emulate all of these inspiring examples, Allison and I began the Ed Lucas Foundation in 2012. It’s meant to provide support and guidance to blind and disabled people and the organizations that assist and serve them throughout the United States and the world. Bob Diehl passed away in 2010, but his fellow Lion, Herb Bodensiek, was a man cut from the same cloth. He had lots of experience setting up foundations, and gave me excellent guidance. Several other people, like Tim Courtney, Rich Cutter, and Joe DiDio, and old friends like Gene and Karen Mehl, and the five Dunphy siblings (Eileen, Ann, Eddie, Mary, and Regina), were instrumental, along with Mr. Bodensiek, in helping me and Allison get the foundation up and running.
One of the events that directly led to the Ed Lucas Foundation was Strikeouts for Scholarships, a partnership created by David Nussbaum between WCBS Radio, Seton Hall, and the New York Yankees. For three seasons, beginning in 2008, ten dollars was donated for each strikeout thrown by a Yankee to a special fund set up to help disabled students at Seton Hall. The public was encouraged to match donations. It was very successful, but limited to one school. Allison and I wanted to expand it to benefit students from any college, as well as any disabled children, adults, or senior citizens facing their own uphill battles.
Many people wondered what would happen to the golf tournament after Phil’s death and the closing of the school. Gene Michael, who was largely responsible for putting together the Yankee team that won all those World Series championships in the late 1990s, stepped in to fill the large void left by Scooter. He wasn’t replacing Mr. Rizzuto, just carrying on his legacy. Thanks to Gene, the Golf Classic, renamed in his honor, is still going strong.
In the years to come, I hope to expand the reach and scope of the Ed Lucas Foundation, following the pattern set by Derek and the others. More and more people each day are left facing a life of blindness and disability due to injury, disease, or aging. We would like to be a beacon for them.
If you’d like to learn more about what we do at the Ed Lucas Foundation, I invite you to visit us at www.EdLucasBook.com. There’s even a link there where I will send you a bunch of gifts to help you get started on making a difference in your own community.
I have been blessed many times over, and it has humbled me. Whenever there were moments that I could have thrown in the towel and completely given up, God placed people in my life to lift me up and to keep me moving forward. You can be that person for someone, too.
Several of the people I encountered in my journey just happened to be Hall of Famers. It’s a special title, given to those who excel in a certain area. That seems like an unreachable goal for many, one reserved for icons and immortals. Nothing could be further from the truth. Each and every one of you has the opportunity to be a Hall of Famer in the eyes of someone in your life, in a quiet and meaningful way. It’s easy to do.
My obstacle just happens to be blindness, but everyone has his or her own mountain to climb. Whether it’s physical, psychological, financial, emotional, or otherwise, we all face battles at several points in our lives. If you just take the time to recognize and empathize with those who are going through rough waters, reach out to them and lend them support in your own way, you will be a Hall of Famer to them.
My passion just happens to be baseball, but if you follow your own passion and live it to the fullest, you will quickly discover the rewards that come from it. Doing that helped me to carve out a successful career in sports despite my limitations, but it just as easily could have been law, education, science, entertainment, or dozens of other vocations if that’s where my heart took me. It was more about the drive than the journey. By following your own passion and working hard at it, you are enriching not only your own life, but those of others who are watching, especially your children and family members. Once they see you proving that anything is possible if you set your mind to it, no matter what the naysayers claim, you will be a Hall of Famer to them.
My faith just happens to be Roman Catholic Christianity, but if you look to a higher power, no matter what your denomination or creed, it can help bring you comfort in times of crisis. This has always worked for me and my family, putting into action the lessons from the Good Book we heard from the pulpit. When you shift your focus from yourself onto others, treating them as you’d like to be treated—the central tenet of almost every religion—your life will improve in the process. It seems like a contradiction, but I’ve discovered that the more I do for others, the happier my own life becomes. If you take some time out of your busy day to perform an act of kindness for a friend, or even a complete stranger, you will be a Hall of Famer to them.
My service organization just happens to be the Lions International, but I encourage you to join a club in your local area. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Lions, Kiwanis, Rotary, B’nai B’rith, the Knights of Columbus, the Elks, or other similar clubs, they are all outstanding organizations that gather like-minded people to give back to their communities while offering opportunities for personal growth and networking. By joining a local service club and becoming an active volunteer in helping those in your community who need it the most, you will be a Hall of Famer to them.
So many wonderful things have happened to me in my life that I feel it’s my duty to give back, to comfort others and to help them realize their dreams. I encourage you to do the same. We are all on a journey home; it’s how you treat others along the path that makes the difference.
Always be there for other people. Be the shoulder to cry on, the ears to listen sympathetically, the eyes to recognize suffering, and the arms to hold someone tight when that person is hurting. Do all of these things, and I promise you that when you round the bases for the final time, you will be welcomed home at the end of the game with love by God, who will surely include your name on the list of life’s Hall of Famers.