This past Thursday evening the sky was clear and the weather spring-like in small Williamsport, MD, a quiet, country-like city just 90 minutes from our nation’s capitol. As neighbors celebrated Holy Thursday and Passover their discussions turned away from world politics and the economy and onto brighter topics like opening season, the O’s, the Nats, the Frederick Keys and young kids from their hometown in the big leagues.
I spent some quality time in this area as a teenager, playing softball with girls who grew up with a slower pace of life than my suburban Washington, DC years. Every weekend I escaped the local traffic and drove an hour north to Frederick, MD for pitching lessons during the cold, gray winter months. Spring and summer were spent traveling, playing ball and absorbing everything our coaches told us about improving our game. Parents and grandparents, neighbors and friends would come out to watch us during the day and then gather at the Keys games at night. It was as if nothing else mattered but that beat up glove, homemade bat and brand-new pair of shoes…. These people didn’t work to live but lived to work, took pride in their community and cherished the days of times past when MLB games on the radio inspired their imagination and enabled them to re-live their childhood dreams.
For the folks in Williamsport and neighboring towns, their dreams were renewed and then abruptly cut short this past Thursday evening. One of their own rose to the top, pitching the game of his life only to have his bright future cut short a few hours after he left the dugout. The Los Angeles Angels 22 yr old rising star, Williamport’s Nick Adenhart stood on the mound and delivered a stunning performance to beat the Boston Red Sox. His neighbors and friends watched from the other side of the country, cheering on their own, jumping for joy and living vicariously through him. And during those few hours they didn’t have a care in the world. A world where we are constantly digging new grave sites at Arlington National Cemetary to bury our Nation’s young heros, a world where one of our own is held captive by Pirates and a world where everyday we clench onto the hope that everything will turn out alright.
Baseball is America’s past-time. It’s as America as apple pie, the 4th of July and neighborhood picnics. And with the loss of Nick Adenhart that night we didn’t just lose a talented young man, we lost a little bit of that American dream. We lost those days ahead where we could escape our world and imagine what it would be like to be on top of a mound, listening to the crack of the bat as it hits the ball, the smell of our glove’s leather and the feel of smooth rosin on our fingertips. We lost that excitement of having a young boy from the country make it to the big leagues. The drunk driver who took his life that night also took a piece of that hometown hero American dream in all of us.
My thoughts and prayers are with the Adenhart family and friends……