The baseball world received a terrible piece of news yesterday night, as Oscar Taveras died in a car accident at age of 22. His girlfriend, Edilia Arvelo, also passed away. My thoughts go out to both families. May they find peace.
Baseball is a game that I, among many others at this site, have a passion for. To me, baseball is not just a sport, but an escape. We can lose ourselves for a few hours, listening to old friends like Len Kasper or Pat Hughes, and not worry about a tough day at work. We can listen while we clean the house. We can reminisce with friends about how were this close, and how this could be the year. We can share the highs and the lows with our brothers.
Baseball is also a regional game. I can meet a complete stranger, but if he’s wearing a Cubs shirt, I know we have at least one thing in common (poor taste). I’m a Cubs fan chiefly due to the fact that I lived an hour away from Wrigley Field. If I lived four hours east, I’d be an Indians fan. Our biggest rivalry is not with them on the South Side, but the team on the Deep South Side. For almost no other reason than geography, Cardinal red and Cubs red just don’t get along.
But not today.
Today, we are all Cardinals fans.
Oscar Taveras was a great young player. By all accounts, he was a great young person as well. For being so young, he also accomplished so much! For a time, there was no denying that he was one of the best thousand or so baseball players in the world. If you are in the top .001% of anything in your entire life, that is something to be proud of. While Taveras was still 5 years away from the millions of dollars he would have surely made in free agency, Taveras still made enough to provide for his family. More importantly, he made Puerto Plata proud. In his last game, in the NLCS, he went 1-1. In the game before, he hit a home run. Still, there is no other emotion I can feel right now other than sadness.
When my grandfather passed away a few years ago, I was sad, but he lived a full life. He passed away in his 80s. He had children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. He served in the Armed Forces, and then served his family well. He had his faults and his strengths, his highs and his lows, but at least he had them. With Oscar and his family, he did so much, but he had so much more left to do.
As I said before, baseball isn’t just a game. It’s a way to escape the banality and sadness of everyday life, and it’s a way to have a bond with a complete stranger.
Today, we can use both.
Today, we are all Cardinals fans.