Late on Thursday night, while fiddling around on the computer, I turned on the TV set. I stumbled upon a baseball game between the Los Angeles Angels and the Oakland Athletics, and satisfied, left it on to provide a background story that I could drift in and out of.
My back was turned to the game, and when I heard the name Adenhart mentioned a few times, I figured that the broadcasters were talking about Nick Adenhart, the young Angels pitcher who was killed in a car crash on Wednesday night. This took place just a few hours after he had pitched. Driving home with three friends after pitching a great game, he was rammed by a drunk driver who rocketed through a red light. Adenhart and two of his friends were killed, while the other passenger was gravely injured, and is still fighting for his life.
As I listened, it quickly became clear that what was on TV was actually a rebroadcast of Wednesday night’s game. This realization infused the game with a poignant and valedictory tension, and I put aside my work and watched.
The play-by-play guys were incredibly enthusiastic about Adenhart and his potential. “Young Adenhart will probably face a lot of these situations over what it sure to be a long career,” one of them said. And there was the 22 year-old Adenhart on the mound. There was a little bit of scruff on his face, making him look just a tad older than his age, and he wore a red t-shirt, which he probably considered a lucky talisman from home, beneath his Angels jersey.
His teammates played great behind him. They made all the plays they were supposed to, and you could see in them, in the way that they pointed at the pitcher after he did something good, that Adenhart had won their respect.
After the shortstop throws out the batter to end the sixth inning—the pitcher’s last inning-Adenhart walks off the mound to the dugout. He looks beautiful and intelligent, and he moves easily. He has just gotten out of a little bit of jam, and he’s chewing gum like it was no big deal, like he’s done it a million times before, and would do it a million times again.