After a year’s absence from being a daily contributor to Press Pros, Bruce Hooley returns to add to his list of media accomplishments – Buckeye beat reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, beat reporter for the Miami Dolphins, ESPN on-air personality…and now, cancer survivor.
I’m usually not much for Hall-of-Fame speeches, since most have a certain same-ness to them. Not that there’s anything wrong with the sentiment expressed, so long as brevity and humility are among the adjectives that can be fairly applied at the finish.
Such was one I heard recently from my long-time friend, Tom Hamilton, the play-by-play voice of the Cleveland Indians (forever and always, the Indians, to me).
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And while it wasn’t a Hall-of-Fame speech, the recent story here from Sonny Fulks about PressProsMagazine.com veterans who have passed on also resonated with me.
Veteran columnist Bruce Hooley writes OHSAA sports and sports at large for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Jim Morris, this site’s former outdoors writer, hired me at the Troy Daily News in 1983 at a weekly salary of $220. I still have the rejection letter Big Mo sent me after my interview, expressing regret that they just couldn’t match my salary requirements.
My desire to write sports and nothing but sports motivated me to call Big Mo and inquire if the TDN could come up from $200 a week to $220. That was still a $40 weekly pay cut from what I was making – before taxes – at the Bellefontaine Examiner, where I covered the police and courthouse beats and lived rent-free with my parents in my hometown of West Liberty, eight miles away.
Taking that $160 monthly haircut – while having to pay for my own apartment – tells you all you need to know about a 22-year-old’s itch to be a full-time sports writer after his last assignment in Bellefontaine, which we’ll get to momentarily.
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My first assignment there was to interview the recipient of a local service club’s monthly award for having the most beautiful yard. I showed up on time and took no particular note of the van parked in the driveway.
Just as I knocked, an attendant wheeling a stretcher with a body on it, covered head-to-toe in a white sheet, backed out the exact second my fist hit the door frame. A grieving daughter, awash in tears, explained to me that her father had just gone to that big lawn service in the sky, having apparently put a bit too much effort into beautifying the premises.
Fast forward a few years to the finish of my time in Bellefontaine, covering a murder trial. Eventually convicted, and none too happy about being ratted out by his accomplice, the bad guy left the courtroom cursing and vowing revenge.
I didn’t think his invectives were meant for me, but I will never forget the April night in 1993 when I heard that same chilling voice come over the radio as a concession to Lucasville prison rioters who wanted their grievances aired state-wide.
By then, I was living in Upper Arlington and covering Ohio State for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Thankfully, my three years in Troy and the next 18 months at The Miami News had set me on a career path where I would associate only with those whose most serious offense was the occasional murder of the language…like the coach who took issue with an inquiry too general for his liking by responding, “If you axe me a pacific question, I’ll give you a pacific answer.”
I thought I’d hit the big-time in Miami in 1986, covering the Hurricanes under Jimmy Johnson, still for my money the greatest college football team never to win a national championship. Don’t bring me your 1998 or 2015 Ohio State Buckeyes. They’d have been fed sand and made to like it by Vinny Testaverde, Michael Irvin, Benny Blades, Jerome Brown and Alonzo Highsmith.
Despite dying my hair blonde (does anyone remember, Sun In) and having the use of a colleague’s white Porsche whenever I wanted it, South Beach and me never hit it off. I might have looked a little like Sonny Crockett back then (yes, I have the pictures…and, no, you can’t see them), but there was a lot too much vice in Miami for this small-town Ohio boy.
Thankfully, after what seemed an eternity of having only a weekly phone call with my parents and an occasional hang-in-there letter from Jim Morris back in Troy – no cell phones, kids, and ask your parents about long-distance charges – I landed my dream job covering OSU.
A Wisconsin farm boy, every time long-time friend Tom Hamilton knocked back a cold one he’d say, “Aaaah. That’s a good batch.”
Living in Columbus, that’s where I met Tom Hamilton, who then was the morning sports man on 1460 AM, the precursor of 97.1 The Fan. Hammy had a big dream to be a Major League Baseball broadcaster, such that he’d work late nights doing an inning or two of Columbus Clippers’ games and be up bright and early for the 6 a.m. sports report the following – or often, the same – morning.
I would say Tom and I hit it off because I was an Ohio farm boy and he was a Wisconsin farm boy, but I don’t know anybody who’s ever met Hammy and not liked him. You simply will not meet a more convivial sort. He could charm the hair extensions off Jasmine Crockett.
Every time he’d knock back a cold one, Tom would crack me up by saying, “Aaaah. That’s a good batch.”
I remember taking him to a cookout with my family one time and, amid casual conversation, Hammy remarking that he liked to eat peaches straight off the tree. My dad said, “With all that fuzz on the outside? That’s like eating a mouse.”
I’m pretty sure Gayler Hooley ruined peaches for Tom in perpetuity.
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To tell you the kind of guy Tom Hamilton is, one night before an Ohio State basketball game at St. John Arena in 1990 he pulled me aside and asked if we could chat. He took me out of the press room where others might overhear and shared the news of his imminent hiring in Cleveland.
I was euphoric for him, but Hammy seemed oddly subdued. I asked why, and he said that he hadn’t yet shared his good news with the main play-by-play voice of the Clippers, who also desired a big-league job.
In that moment, with his lifelong dream about to be realized, Tom’s chief concern was for a colleague who hadn’t yet – but later would – get the same big-league call-up.
That character, kindness and concern for his fellow man – more than any home-run call – is what made Tom Hamilton a Hall-of-Famer long before his induction to Cooperstown.
Hall of fame writer Hal McCoy (above), could not have been nicer, or more helpful…..
“….and Enquirer Reds writer Greg Hoard always took the time to help a kid from the sticks.
Hammy, of course, joins Press Pros’ own Hal McCoy, who I had the great fortune of getting to know while covering the Reds during the Pete Rose hit chase in 1985.
That’s what was great about the TDN under Jim Morris’ stewardship. Big events like Rose chasing Ty Cobb’s record merited coverage whether in the budget or not, so I embarked to St. Louis and Chicago with the Reds before Pete eventually broke the mark at Riverfront on my 25th birthday.
Much like Tom Hamilton would prove to me years later, Hal McCoy and Greg Hoard, the Cincinnati Enquirer Reds’ writer then and another PressPros’ veteran gone too soon, could not have been nicer or more helpful to this kid from the sticks that they easily could have high-hatted.
Fully on brand with the man he is, Hammy’s induction speech talked much more about his wife, Wendy, and their children than he did anything within a hemisphere of self-promotion or ego.
Those are the qualities that make a man memorable, no matter how extensive his career accomplishments or sterling his resume.
By God’s grace I’m back from this, on the pages of Press Pros, and looking forward to seeing all of you out there….!
I’ve covered some all-time greats in my 40 years, some who personified that old saying, “There is no ‘I’ in team.” And, I’ve also covered a few of whom I’ve said, “While there is no ‘I’ in team, there are two in, idiot.”
With the fall sports season around the corner, and another year of high school sports ahead of us, I want you all to know that I’m still kicking and feeling as great as I did on my birthday two years ago when a doctor hesitatingly told me, “Mr. Hooley, you have a large brain tumor and you’re not leaving this hospital until we take it out.”
Chemo and radiation are in my rear-view mirror and a few more bylines on this site thankfully lie ahead of me. I can’t wait to get to know the new players whose achievements are just as impressive to me as any professional or NIL-enriched (and entitled) college player.
It’s nice to have folks appreciate you showing up to tell their son’s or daughter’s story and it’s doubly rewarding to watch coaches who understand that there’s nothing wrong with setting expectations, ingraining work ethic, and elevating sacrifice in pursuit of a shared goal. All the while, never once lowering their players’ self-esteem.
I look forward to seeing you out there.
I’ll be the guy with the ugly scar on his head and no hair…blonde or otherwise.
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