There’s truth to the claim that baseball operates outside of time. The clock, after all, can’t affect a game’s outcome, and delay is no defense to the ninth-inning rally.

 

But every new season brings with it a little recognized part of the sport that can be as time sensitive as the photo finish.

 

Pulitzer Prize-winning sports writer Red Smith, who followed the last-place Philadelphia Athletics for years as a reporter before coming to fame as a New York columnist, loved covering daily baseball and had little patience for people who asked whether the beat was monotonous.

 

“Only to dull minds,” he would answer. “Today’s game is always different from yesterday’’s game … if you have the perception and wit to express it.”

 

Not to mention the time. And therein lies baseball’s beat-the-clock constraint.

 

Few baseball writers in history (and no two other active writers combined) have been put to the drop-dead news deadline of a game story as often as Hal McCoy, who’s covered the Cincinnati Reds for the Dayton Daily News since 1973.

 

His citation at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (where, along with Smith, he’s among 56 writers to receive top honors) attests to his iron-man status, more than 5,500 regular-season, 900 spring-training, and 500 postseason games covered – a tally that has continued to rise, at the same rate, over the two seasons since.

 

One way to judge the quality of a beat writer’s work is to read the clips from the big games. Take McCoy’s lead from the celebrated Game Six of the 1975 Reds-Red Sox World Series:

 

“BOSTON – Carlton Fisk swung his bat, then froze near the batter’s box to watch the majestic flight of the baseball soaring toward the ugly green Monster that protects Landsdowne St. down the left field line.

 

“His arms were over his head in a prayer to the gods. ‘Stay fair, stay fair. It’s either foul or off the foul pole for a homer. Stay fair, please.”

 

Plenty nice, but a better measure of the craft might come from coverage of less consequential games, the kind that demonstrate the writer’s everyday discipline. One such occurred last August, when the Cincinnati Reds hosted the St. Louis Cardinals (my hometown team).

 

The Reds were 22 games out of first place, all but mathematically eliminated from contention. They faced a formidable Cardinal team that went on to win the National League pennant.

 

McCoy occupied himself during the early innings by keeping score and toying with language for possible leads. Action in the second inning (a solo home run in each half) and the third (the heart of the Cards’ order shut down with two on and no outs) generated some copy. And six strong innings by Reds starter Josh Hancock precipitated a laudatory paragraph, as the pitcher left the game with a 3-2 lead.

 

This pleasingly languid pace belied the deadline pressure to come – no sweat for McCoy, not for a minute, but harrowing indeed to the uninitiated onlooker.

 

Even with the Reds’ one-run lead, McCoy wrote ahead on the assumption the Cardinals would win, as they had in 13 of the teams’ last 16 meetings. Sure enough, St. Louis tied the game, 3-3, in the seventh, which is where things stood into extra innings.

 

The Dayton Daily News, a morning paper, had an 11 p.m. filing deadline that evening, but McCoy’s copy comes in so clean he’d get 15 to 20 minutes grace.

 

The scoreboard clock showed 10:35 when the Reds scored the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning. McCoy’s story, though, was still sketchy, at most 40 percent complete. His laptop’s screen showed a few scattered, serviceable paragraphs – nothing more.

 

Rather than shoring it up and filling it in, McCoy calmly headed for the clubhouse. He secured a quote from Reds Manager Dave Miley (“You can’t ask for more”) by 10:42, and then moved on to the locker room. There, outfielder Darren Bragg modestly described his game-winning hit (“it found a hole”), and the young right-hander, Hancock, explained what had kept the Reds close (a fastball that was “good enough”).

 

The interviews were completed at 10:49, and McCoy, at 6-foot-2, strode back to the press box with the easy manner of an old first baseman moving to the bag for a routine put out. He was seated at his keyboard by 10:55, an unlit cigar clenched in this teeth. The typing was steady but unhurried. He took a quiet minute for proofreading and some fiddling. 

 

The 760-word story was filed at 11:10 p.m.

 

“CINCINNATI – Josh handcock obviously isn’t stone cold frozen stiff at the prospect of facing the toughest group of Cardinals outside the walls of Vatican City.”

 

It’s simple, really. Hal McCoy, now in his 33rd season, can put the clock’s hands on hold.

 

(“Hal McCoy makes time stand still” first appeared as a column by Eddie Roth in the April 30, 2005 edition of the Dayton Daily News)