We're going to miss reading Hal Mccoy's scribbles

In the month and change that we were on a hiatus, the world around us did not stop. One of the big things that we wanted to make sure we mentioned upon any type of return was Hal Mccoy. For over three decades Hal Mccoy has been covering the Cincinnati Reds and baseball in a Hall of Fame manner. Only recently did we discover his writing, especially last season reading the online version of Mccoy’s blog, The Real Mccoy; and often we’d link his story that went with a particular game we were talking about.

For every sports franchise, there’s an opinion you want to read about that coincides with every game, every pitch, every transaction. For the Cleveland Browns, it’d be Terry Pluto. In New York, it’s that jackass Mike Lupica at times. For the Cincinnati Reds, there’s no doubt that it’s Hal Mccoy.

Mccoy anounced that his run of covering the Reds for the Dayton Daily News was coming to an end, and with the economic downturn it’s no surprise that a small paper like that cannot afford to fly Mccoy all over the country to cover baseball. Mccoy says that himself.

Just because we stopped writing about baseball for a while didn’t mean we stopped reading about it. We still made daily stops to Mccoy’s blog to see what he thought about the daily state of turmoil our organization was faced with. The things you have to love about the guy are the intricate details he provides you with. Since we’ve read his stuff we’ve realized that he has a gift for picking up on small things that the normal writer does not realize around the ballpark. He is so good at this that you often can smell the peanuts, beer, and hot dogs just by reading his stuff–if you are a die hard fan that is–of which Mccoy definitely is. He has a real passion for the game and we respect that.

We’re gonna miss you in 2010 Hal. But you left your footprint on this world. Maybe the Redlegs will do something worthy of a surprise encore from you in the near future. If not, thanks for getting us through the tough times with honesty and strong coverage in all areas.


The Hammer Fell Today [The Real Mccoy]