April 2015 marked my sixtieth straight appearance on Opening Day at Yankee Stadium covering the team. A career that I wasn’t sure would ever begin has now spanned the eras from Rizzuto to Jeter. It feels odd being one of the elder statesmen, but I’m always glad to give advice to any of the new reporters, broadcasters, or bloggers who ask, though as a guy raised on typewriters and twenty-four-hour lags between composing a story and having it appear in print, I’m still amazed by the speed at which blogs get posted.
When my grandchildren, E.J., Adam, and Sean, were studying Helen Keller and Louis Braille in school, their teachers would ask me to come by to speak to the class about life as a blind person. Inevitably, the kids would ask me a lot of questions that often got right to the heart of things.
“If there was an operation now that could help you see,” one of the kids would invariably ask, “would you have it?”
To their surprise, my answer would always be, “No.”
At this point, I’ve lived six times more of my life as a blind man than as a boy with sight. It would be too much of a shock now for me to return. The only thing I say I wish is for just five minutes of sight, five minutes so I could see my sons, Eddie and Chris, my wife, Allison, and my grandsons, all for the very first time with my own eyes.
One of the kids might also ask me this: “If you weren’t blind, would you still be involved in baseball?”
Surprisingly, my answer would be no to that, too.
When I put some thought into the way my life might have turned out if I didn’t get hit between the eyes with a baseball in October 1951, causing me to lose my sight, I realized that I probably would have gone into some kind of science.
Baseball was definitely my career choice at twelve years old, as it is for many kids who love sports, but then life and reality set in. Like most, I’m sure I would have eventually sought a safer, more traditional profession.
The accident actually left me frozen in time. I was scared that my life was over at twelve, and baseball became an exciting escape route out of that crippling fear. I put my full focus on that, ruling out every other option. I gave myself nothing to fall back on. Happily, it all worked out.
Though I didn’t realize it then, God graced me with a wonderful gift: When He took the use of my eyes away, He allowed me to gain an even better vision of the world than I might have ever known.
When you can’t see, you are only able to judge people by their character and integrity, not by the color of their skin, or by how they look and dress. What’s inside a person’s heart became my measuring stick. I can hear their hearts in their voices. Nobody can hide that from me.
I don’t ever feel pity for myself for being struck blind. I’ve been given an opportunity to live a life without visual prejudices and with greater empathy for the struggles of others.
This has driven me to work harder to properly honor the Good Lord, who generously chose to bless me with such an abundance of family, friends, moments, and memories. I am determined to give back, to use those same gifts and opportunities to help others overcome any obstacles in their lives, just as I learned to do.
I will cherish these gifts forever, and I am overwhelmingly grateful to God for them.