Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy still doesn’t sound ready to leave the game behind.
For McCoy, the offseason isn’t a welcome break so much as an interruption. Even after a rough Cincinnati Reds season, he says baseball never really stops being the thing that matters most.
“Never. Even after a horrible season like the Cincinnati Reds produced this year, I never want to see baseball end.
Baseball and writing about it is my life, has been for half a century. Even a bad team has good things to write about, like Elly De La Cruz, Sal Stewart and Chase Burns.
Fortunately, when baseball does end I get to cover my second love for a website, University of Dayton basketball. I’ll soon be 86 and people ask me when I’ll stop writing and I tell them, “When my head hits my laptop.””
McCoy also weighed in on the Reds’ handling of personnel and the front office, including the contrast between Wayne Krivsky’s firing in 2008 and Nick Krall’s current status. He said he and Marty Brennaman pushed hard to get Krivsky hired, and McCoy credited Krivsky with two key trades that brought Bronson Arroyo and Brandon Phillips to Cincinnati for practically nothing.
He added that after a slow start that season, Walt Jocketty got into Bob Castellini’s ear and got Krivsky fired and Jocketty got the job. McCoy also recalled asking Castellini at the press conference when the franchise would show some stability, only to hear, “We just aren’t going to lose any more.”
He followed that with a pointed question: How’s that worked out?
On pitching, McCoy said shutting down young arms late in the year is about injury prevention, and he used Chase Burns as the example. Burns had already thrown more innings by September than he had at any other point in his life, McCoy noted, and the Reds limited him to three-inning starts to reduce the risk of Tommy John surgery.
McCoy said that approach meant Burns could not win a game, and he argued the Reds should have let him work the middle three or last three innings so he could qualify for a win. He said Burns deserved more chances after winning 15 games, though he added the Reds probably wouldn’t have provided the late runs he would have needed anyway.
McCoy also pushed back on the idea that player development follows a clean script. In discussing Zach Cozart, Devin Mesoraco and Jesse Winker, he said their rise and fall is part of the sport’s natural messiness.
Players dominate Triple-A, get to the majors and fade. Sometimes injuries are involved.
Sometimes the opposite happens, with low draft picks or non-prospects turning into stars. His point was simple: “The game is played by human beings, not robots (yet).
Who will make it and who won’t is not science, it’s just baseball.”
Asked whether Hunter Greene will pitch again for the Reds, McCoy said Greene won’t throw a single pitch for anybody in 2027 while recovering from his second Tommy John surgery. He acknowledged fan frustration with Greene’s injury history but said Greene should be back with the Reds in 2028.
McCoy also said fans hope Greene never needs a third operation, adding that not many pitchers survive three TJs. TeJay Antone, he said, is an outlier.
When asked about his favorite season to cover, McCoy pointed to all 53 of them and said he looks forward to his 54th. Still, he singled out the 1990 wire-to-wire Reds, a team that was not expected to win but never fell out of first place and then swept Oakland in the World Series as heavy underdogs. He credited the Nasty Boys bullpen and manager Lou Piniella, saying his off-the-field time with Piniella was priceless.
The question of Joey Votto as general manager drew a playful but telling response. McCoy said Votto has made it clear he would like to be a GM and that he will be a Cincinnati Red forever.
In McCoy’s view, the decision now sits with Bob Castellini, though Castellini has already indicated Krall will be back. McCoy’s answer: “Hey, Bob, pick up the phone.”
He also took a swipe at the Reds’ broadcast music, saying he hates the repeated refrain played on the channel before game coverage begins and would rather hear a cat screech. As for the team’s overall vibe, he said a funeral dirge fit this year’s Reds.
McCoy finished by recalling the hotels he liked best on the road. He said most rooms blur together by September, when it becomes hard to remember what city he’s in, so he judged hotels by ambience.
He favored old properties with big lobbies, shops, bars and restaurants, naming the Palace in San Francisco, the Shoreham in Washington, D.C., and the Chase Park Plaza in St. Louis.
His favorite, though, was The Inn at the Ballpark in Houston, which he described as completely baseball-themed, with a library of baseball books in the lobby, baseball art in the rooms, banisters shaped like bats and lobby music built entirely around baseball songs.
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