Final words that you don’t get the chance to share with people that mean the most to you personally. How our friend Greg Hoard left so many with broken hearts…and a smile.
We formally said goodbye to Greg Hoard Saturday at a public celebration of his life, held at the Aston Oaks Golf Club, near his home on the west side of Cincinnati.
I’m not gonna’ lie…it was hard. Hard for long-time associate and hall of fame Reds writer Hal McCoy and me to absorb, reflecting upon the loss of a relationship so hard to replace. Hoard and Hal had written competing Reds coverage for years in Cincinnati and Dayton for their respective papers.
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Hard, of course, for Greg’s wife Cindy and their three children…because you only get one set of parents in life and when you lose one there is that sense of suddenly being alone.
Editor/publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA and Ohio State baseball for Press Pros Magazine.
As I’ve shared previously, Greg and I met during the winter of 2014 through an introduction by Chick Ludwig, who said, “You’ve got to meet Greg Hoard. I think he’d really like to contribute to your website.”
That he was even interested was a shock, because Hoard came from an illustrious background of having covered Big Ten basketball for the Indiana Hoosiers. He was a friend of Bob Knight. He wrote Reds baseball for years for both the Cincinnati Post and the Enquirer. And he was a published author. He wrote Joe Nuxhall’s autobiography, a great read.
Not knowing what to expect, Hal McCoy and I met him at a Skyline Chili, in Franklin, on an icy January evening. As memory serves, Hoard simply said he was bored and would like something (writing) to occupy his time and create a little income. I offered that the Big Ten baseball season was coming up. He said it might be a perfect solution to his cabin fever. And as it turned out, it was.
For those who’ve questioned why we prioritize Ohio State baseball so highly…you can recognize Hoard for that. He was the one who walked in to Bill Davis Stadium that spring and said to Greg Beals (coach at the time)…”This is too cool not to have anyone know about it.” End of discussion.
So, he began writing Buckeye baseball with the same passion and priority that others committed to Ohio State football. He developed relationships with players, coaches, and shared their profile online for the next seven years. Having played college baseball, himself, at Hanover (in Indiana), he understood the learning curve and transition from “hot shot high schooler to the next ‘I-thought-I-was-better-than-that.”
“It’s like eating at a better restaurant,” he wrote about the move from high school to college competition. “Are you prepared to pay the price?”
There was no such thing as a player being taken for granted by Hoard, like former Buckeye outfielder Tim Wetzel, who played left field back in those days and came to bat with a tennis racquet. Wetzel was in med school and Hoard became enamored with his tireless energy for both books and baseball (nothing but straight A’s) to fulfill a higher purpose after baseball. He referred to him as ‘Dr. Wetzel’ in his columns, and once wrote, “If my life is on the line I want to look up and see Dr. Wetzel, not the Buckeyes’ leftfielder.”
Wetzel, 33, is currently an emergency room physician in Cary, North Carolina.
At the time I had been doing Buckeyes baseball by myself, the day-to-day stories of a program building under Beals, kind of languishing below the surface in the Big Ten. Hoard picked up on my work, immediately.
“This (college baseball) is where you learn if you want added responsibility…without it costing you so much if you learn you don’t.” (Press Pros Feature Photos)
“You write like someone who played here,” he said to me one day. “There’s no accountability with what you write. Write what you see, good or bad.
“It’s not that bad,” he would needle, soothingly. “It’s just not something you’d want to read…unless you’re family.”
He took an interest in me as a writer. He was a ‘wordsmith’, and labored for hours after the game to give his own story just the right ‘leverage’…and leverage was the word he used. “You ease people into the truth without p–sing them off,” he said. “Write to make someone see it for themself. But always tell the truth.”
His columns about major leaguers he’d met along the way were both classic and unique – Stan Musial, Al Kaline, Mantle and Mays. No one for years, except Hal McCoy, had written anything like it. And his relationships with former Reds players were obviously genuine and mutual. Second baseman Tommy Helms nicknamed him, ‘Cool Breeze’.
He actually wrote a two-part story that made the Reds look foolish for the way they handled the firing of Tony Perez as manager (https://pressprosmagazine.com/2020/05/30/greg-hoard-doggies-departure/) that illustrated his skills as a master writer as well as anything he’d ever done. And he did it on a tiny, independent website, and did it proudly. His work got shared liberally, and before long people were contacting us for more of his unique nostalgia – on Orlando Cepeda, Rocky Colavito, Tommy LaSorda, Bill Mazeroski, and others too numerable to list.
He built relationships for Buckeyes baseball with alumni and the reading public, here sharing time with players at Vero Beach, Florida, in 2014.
In the meantime he was helping to build an online constituency for Ohio State baseball, as well. People identified with him for his time with the Reds, and appreciated his humility for respecting the college game, proportionately.
“These are kids learning tough life lessons because they hung a curveball,” he once wrote.
He said in another column about college baseball, “This is where you learn whether you want added responsibility…without it costing you so much if you learn you don’t.”
He wasn’t just funny, he was hilarious with stories about being mistaken in Los Angeles for comedian David Brenner
For calling actress Florence Henderson ‘Mrs. Brady’ when they were introduced in Lasorda’s office after a Dodgers’ game.
For sharing that Pete Rose’s early roommates with the Reds would put his shoes in the hotel hallway at night…for odorous reasons.
For picking up the phone and calling Bob Costas to argue over who should have paid the check in a St. Louis restaurant twenty years ago!
Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda mistook Hoard for comedian David Brenner.
His idiosyncrasies…the man still collected baseball cards and major league hats in his 70s!
His self-deprecation…”I’m just your average over-educated southern Indiana red-neck sportswriter,” he’d say. And he wasn’t trying to be funny. He meant it. His favorite restaurant, without exception, was Waffle House.
Thankfully, the mind and the heart are so wonderful in preserving relationships and memories. Those who knew him will always have ‘Hoardie’, even in his physical absence.
And I’m sure, somewhere, he’s making someone laugh with the Stan Musial story. Look it up on Press Pros, if you question (https://pressprosmagazine.com/2022/07/11/how-i-met-stan-the-man/).
You’ll see why he meant so much…to so many of us.
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