Adenhart Reminds Us – It’s Only A Game

Columns — By Ian Collier on April 10, 2009 12:09 am

I didn’t know Nick Adenhart on a personal level whatsoever. Never spoke to him. Never saw him in person. My knowledge of Nick Adenhart is and was completely limited to what I read in places like Baseball America, who considered him to be one of the brightest prospects in all of baseball. In fact, I saw Nick Adenhart pitch only once.

That was last night.

It was about 11pm Eastern time. I had been working late, one eye on my computer monitor and the other on the television, watching Chien-Ming Wang struggle and the Yankees lose. I was dejected, upset about the loss and upset about the work that had been thrust upon me. I don’t take losses well, as anyone close to me will tell you without hesitation. When I was younger, I kicked holes in walls, threw things, slammed doors when the Yankees lost. I’ve learned to control my temper a great deal since then, but things can still get ugly. Baseball has made me cry. Baseball has made me violent. Baseball has alienated me from girlfriends and loved ones. No one understands what baseball means to me; I’m completely sure of that. No one ever will. I’ve often thought that I’ll never be able to love anything or anyone as much as I love the New York Yankees, and that’s a completely horrifying but not far-fetched notion.

So it’s 11 o’clock. I walk in the door. I open the fridge, ready to reheat some pizza. Turns out my roommate came home drunk and ate it. In short, I’m having a bad day.

There’s one thing I can always count on in that case to cheer me up. One person, actually. Vin Scully.

I’m used to working late and consequently I’m a bit of a night owl. Because of this, it’s entirely possible I see more west coast baseball throughout any given season than I see of my favorite team. But Vin Scully, the man is God’s gift to baseball. His love of the game is so apparent in every utterance. He’s still completely in love with baseball after all these years, still amazed by what can happen in any given at bat. So I fire up MLB.tv and turn on the Dodgers/Padres tilt. With the neat little picture-in-picture function they’ve added this year, I add the Angels/Athletics to the top right-hand corner of my screen.

The Dodgers game is boring me a little bit. The Padres are such an unwatchable team – their offense is anemic, their pitching wouldn’t even contend for the Governor’s Cup, and that ballpark…it’s just oppressive. Plus they sent Chris Britton to AA and that just isn’t sitting well with me. The guy throwing for the Padres is behind every hitter, he’s nibbling, and it’s driving me nuts. Not even Mr. Scully can keep me from dozing. So I swap games and decide to check out the Angels, maybe catch a glimpse of Bobby Abreu or Jason Giambi in a new uniform. But what’s catching my attention is the Angels pitcher – a 22 year-old rookie who’s more than holding his own. He’s got a nasty breaking ball and good sink and life on his fastball. I catch the name on the back of the jersey – Adenhart. Nick Adenhart. I know the name; his reputation as a prospect precedes him.

Nick Adenhart pitched six shutout innings and made me forget all about what a crummy day I’d had.

Today, at about 1:30, I logged on to MLB.com to get Gameday running for the Yankees game while I’m at work. The first thing I see is “1986 – 2009″. It doesn’t register with me at first. But there’s Nick’s name in the headline, and suddenly I can’t believe what I’m reading. I stared at the screen for several minutes, reading and re-reading the headline. Not Nick Adenhart. How is it possible? I watched him pitch and I went to sleep and now he’s dead? I’m finding it difficult to breathe and I need to step outside and suddenly I’m dizzy and I’m shaken. Nick Adenhart, 22 years old, should be celebrating the best start of his brief, all too brief, major league career. He should be talking to his parents, and they should be telling him how proud they are of him, how happy he’s made him. He should be on the phone with friends, receiving congratulations and retelling the story of his six shutout innings against the Oakland A’s. But instead he’s dead. Someone ran a red light and Nick Adenhart is dead.

And it’s so stupid that this needed to happen. It’s stupid that this needed to happen for me to realize that a completely unhealthy amount of my happiness is derived from the outcome of a stupid baseball game. I hope I don’t forget the lesson Nick Adenhart taught me. There are far worse things in life than missing the playoffs, losing two games to open the season, or striking out with a runner on third and one out. I only watched Nick Adenhart pitch once but it might have changed my life in some small way. So thank you and rest in peace.

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