Pitcher Roy Halladay’s Widow Gives Emotional Hall of Fame Speech During Posthumous Induction

Brandy Halliday gave an emotional speech at her late husband Roy Halliday’s National Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony Sunday afternoon, telling the estimated crowd of 55,000 in Cooperstown, New York with a wavering voice that “this is not my speech to give.”

She thanked Hall of Fame officials, the Philadelphia Phillies and the Toronto Blue Jays organizations for their support since Halladay’s death in November 2017. The Cy Young award winner was 40 years old when the plane he was piloting crashed into the Gulf of Mexico near his home in Odessa, Florida.

“I say it a lot, but it takes a village, and we truly have a great one,” Brandy said in her speech, explaining that both organizations meant so much to the family that it decided not to have a logo on Halladay’s cap. “They came together as one to celebrate Roy, and that means the world to me.”

Brandy’s speech came amid a new article from Sports Illustrated that disclosed Halladay’s apparent struggle with depression and addiction to painkillers; it also recounted his erratic flight pattern the day he died. Although Brandy did not raise those issues Sunday, nor did she cooperate with the SI article, she did speak about the joy Halladay took from coaching their sons in baseball, and she ended by speaking to his work ethic.

“I think that Roy would want everyone to know that people are not perfect,” she said of the MLB player. “We are all imperfect and flawed in one way or another. We all struggle. But with hard work, humility and dedication, imperfect people can still have perfect moments. Roy was blessed with his life and in his career to have some perfect moments, but I believe that they were only possible because of the man he strived to be, the teammate that he was and the people he was so blessed to be on the field with.”

Later on, while on a podium with their son Braden and fellow inductee Edgar Martinez, she said that “Roy was a very normal person with a very exceptionally amazing job. So these men who were up here that are doing these outstanding things, they’re still real people, they still have feelings, they still have families, they still struggle.

“And so many of the guys that I’ve known in my life through baseball, they work so hard to hide that. I know Roy did, and Roy struggled — a lot. Sometimes it’s hard to present the image that you know everybody wants to see. It’s also hard to be judged by the image people expect of you. It’s a perception and an idea, and I think it’s important that we don’t sensationalize or idealize what a baseball player is but really look at the man and the human that’s doing such an amazing thing. That’s all I wanted to say there — real people doing really great things.”

Braden, an aspiring pitcher who will be a freshman at Penn State this fall, said, “My mom, she’s a rock. She gets through everything, so I didn’t even have to think twice about if she’d be nervous or anything like that. She’s always been well-prepared.”

Halladay won 203 games and won two Cy Young awards before hanging up his baseball spikes in 2013. He was one of six players inducted into the Hall of Fame, alongside Martinez, Yankees closer Mariano Rivera, Orioles and Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina, Cubs and Cardinals closer Lee Smith and White Sox designated hitter Harold Baines.

Halladay, who was selected to two All-Star games with the Phillies, is one of six pitchers to with the Cy Young award in both the American and National Leagues and finished with a 3.38 ERA.

Photo credit: Jim McIsaac / Stringer / Getty