Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story: A Blind Broadcaster%E2%80%99s Story of Overcoming Life%E2%80%99s Greatest Obstacles

It would be tempting to dismiss this sports memoir as a saccharine, feel-good tale, but the authors elevate it into a courageous story of an Emmy-winning sightless sportscaster who triumphed over all challenges to fashion a career lasting nearly 60 years. Without sounding like a victim, Ed Lucas recalls that dark day in October 1951 when he was a 12-year-old playing baseball in New Jersey and a baseball struck him between his eyes, rendering him blind. He was subject to vision treatments that are now outmoded, and a grim diagnosis. YES Radio Network veteran Lucas's has an admirable and irresistible capacity for genuine introspection, and his inviting, straightforward narrative, written with his son, shows a fearful teen who thought his life was over evolving into a young man who views his blindness as "not a handicap [but] an inconvenience" with unstinting family support. Bittersweet baseball memories of the greats of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees fill the book, contrasting with the more personal stories of Lucas's messy first marriage, which results in him raising two boys by himself after a hard-fought custody case, and his satisfying second union. For the fans of America's favorite pastime, this book, soon to be a film, will only enhance the legacy of one of the broadcasting pioneers of the sport. (Apr.)