Standardbred driving legend David Miller was delighted to spend fifteen minutes between races with Hal McCoy last week at Miami Valley Raceway: “I’m a big Reds fan,” said Miller. “And yes, I know who Hal McCoy is.” (Press Pros Feature Photos)
His new-found beat sleuthing around barns and racetracks has brought baseball hall-of-famer Hal McCoy a new audience, and new respect to a career that was hardly needing to be recognized.
Barely 24 hours following Hal McCoy’s posting of last Friday’s column on hall-of-fame Standardbred racing icon David Miller, a daily reader of Press Pros from Indianapolis contacted us for clarification.
“Let me get this right,” Pat Montgomery wrote. “What’s Hal McCoy doing writing about horse racing? Holy Big Red Machine. How old is Hal now, and what else is he going to write before he rounds third and heads for home?”
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Montgomery was being respectful, because he, like many of us, are rounding third and heading for home, the old Joe Nuxhall line used to close his Star of The Game post-game shows when he did Reds broadcasts with Marty Brennaman.
Publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA and Ohio State sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
And, Montgomery is a professed life-long Reds fan, which is exciting again as they occupy first place in the National League Central Division under second-year manager Terry Francona. His preferred beat source? Hal’s daily soup du jour that he writes from game broadcasts in his man cave (garage) somewhere in Englewood.
And while 85 years old (he’ll be 86 in October), and having been declared legally blind (two decades ago) prevents him from stalking the grounds of GABP and Riverfront Stadium as he once did for 47 years at the Dayton Daily News, his instinct for the game, his insights, and his ability to call attention to the daily deficiencies on the field and off have never been sharper. Hal McCoy now, at Lebanon Raceway, at Scioto Downs, at the Little Brown Jug, and at your local county fair come summer, is just branching out – finding new turf in a fabled writing career that saw him enshrined at Cooperstown 23 years ago!
“I’m enjoying it,” says McCoy, who is one of the charter Press Pros writers from our inaugural year in 2010, along with Chick Ludwig, Dale Meggas, and outdoors columnist Jim Morris.
At his current pace, he’ll threaten actor William H. Macy for his role as racing scribe Tick Tock McGlaughlin in the 2002 movie, Seabiscuit.
Still the people’s choice…Hal is welcomed back by a UD Flyers basketball fan after recovering from a broken hip in 2020.
“I like it because of the people. Unlike the rest of today’s sports world, they seem to enjoy the interview time spent and the attention. And the OHHA people (Executive Director Frank Fraas, Brett Merkle, and others) could not be better or more helpful. Writing about horse racing is enjoyable.”
And writing any sport, whether baseball, football and basketball (McCoy has covered the University of Dayton for years, and currently for Press Pros), or the NBA Cincinnati Royals in his beginning days with the Dayton papers, has been a competitive endeavor for the country’s oldest tenured baseball beat writer.
“He’s always been competitive with everything he does,” said former Press Pros colleague, and long-time writer for the Cincinnati Post and Enquirer, Greg Hoard. Hoard passed away a year ago, in February, after writing Reds baseball opposite McCoy for nearly two decades.
“Hal and I played tennis together almost every day when we were on the road. And let me assure you…that we had some ‘spy vs. spy’ moments together trying to outdo the other in breaking a story that was going to get you read first. Damn, it’s hard to do that for 50 years. Hal is a survivor.”
And a survivor beyond the comprehension of the average fan.
Ask him and he’ll tell you about surviving the Dick Wagner and Jim Bowden years of Reds baseball…of being banned from the media lunch room by Marge Schott…arguments with Pete Rose and Joe Morgan which resulted in decades of radio silence between parties…the loss of his eyesight…two broken hips in five years, and yet Hal McCoy rides (or writes) on.
At spring training in 2003, McCoy had suffered strokes in both optic nerves, making him legally blind. And he was preparing to quit covering the Cincinnati Reds because he could no longer see the field clearly or recognize faces in the clubhouse. It was then-third baseman, and now Yankees manager, Aaron Boone who told him he had to get back on the horse and keep doing what he loves.
Two for the books….Hal McCoy met with Troy’s Mike Polhamus at last summer’s Miami County Fair, in Troy.
“He told me that I couldn’t quit,” says McCoy, his voice occasionally cracking as he shares his confrontation with Boone that day in a deserted clubhouse. “He said, ‘You’re not going to retire.'”
So call it ironic, one supposes, that a quarter century later Hal is now stalking the paddocks and barns, seeking out the legends of a different game, and getting back on a different horse.
“I had no idea that Hal McCoy was writing about horse racing,” said Ohio governor Mike DeWine at last September’s Little Brown Jug race in Delaware. DeWine and McCoy are long-time friends through DeWine being a Reds fan and part-owner of the Asheville Tourists minor league team in the Carolina League (Houston Astros A-Ball affiliate). DeWine, of course, asked for and received time with his friend, talking baseball, no doubt.
And when Miami County owner and trainer Mike Polhamus was approached last summer for interview time, he was hesitant. Media attention is not a priority for the long-recognized Troy icon of Ohio racing. But Polhamus smiled and said sure to talking with Hal McCoy. A little attention was just fine.
Hal McCoy is #1…said Ohio governor Mike DeWine at last September’s Little Brown Jug meeting with McCoy.
And more attention is on the priority list for Press Pros racing coverage in 2026, as readership grows and more appreciation like that from Pat Montgomery come with the passing days and weeks.
“There’s nothing that you guys post that I like better than the racing stories,” says long-time Shelby County resident Steve Partington, now living in the Fort Myers area.
“Love the way you guys do it,” added another reader from central Ohio who wrote this week to comment on our story with driver Luke Hanners.
People who love the attention…for a sport starved for recognition so richly deserved in comparison to that given the thoroughbreds on this Kentucky Derby weekend.
Hal is on it.
Not the horse, just the story!
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