Nick Adenhart, R.I.P (Hal Cohen)

  April 11, 2009 (World News Trust) -- I am a huge baseball fan.  More accurately, I am a huge New York Mets fan.  However, I do love baseball.  I also have a reputation, neither earned nor deserved, for knowing a lot about baseball.  I personally never claimed this supposed massive knowledge of the sport, but I do know who Nick Adenhart was.

  Contrary to my friends’ opinions, I do not obsess about baseball.  I’ll watch a game regardless of participants if its on.  I play fantasy baseball.  I am more than happy to call on my fantasy league opponents to attest to my actual lack of knowledge about players -- but I do know who Nick Adenhart was.

  Whenever people ask me a question about baseball, and sometimes I’ll walk into a bar to, “Oh good, Hal’s here.  He can settle this,” I know the answer.  This is not due to my intense passion for the game, but rather due to a perverse reverse Murphy’s Law where people only ask me questions that I happen to know the answer to.  No one’s asked, and yet I do know who Nick Adenhart was.

  Without Google, I feel confident that I could name the Mets current 25-man active roster, but not the 40 man roster.  I could probably name the Yankees starting lineup and most of the starting rotation.  I know the names of most of the Aces (for the uninformed, that’s #1 starting pitchers for each team), but I might not be able to place them on the correct team.  Be that as it is, I still know who former Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher Nick Adenhart was.

  At this point, you may be wondering who Nick Adenhart is and why I continue to mention that I know who he was.  Well, the only reason I know who he was is because he’s dead.  A mere hours after his 4th Major League start, he, along with two of his friends were killed when a drunk driver ran a red light in Fullerton, CA.  So often, when we hear about drunk driving and professional athletes, it’s the athlete that is drunk.

  We do not know whether Nick Adenhart was drunk or not, and for once it doesn’t matter, because he was not driving.  Wednesday night, several hours before Nick Adenhart was to take the mound for his 4th ever Major League start, I was sitting down to a Passover Seder with my family.  This year, Passover coincided with a holiday that occurs every 28 years.  This rarely occurring day celebrates the Sun, Earth, and Moon in the exact positions they were in when they were created.

  Passover specifically celebrates the liberation of Israelites from Egyptian slavery.  Easter which is always celebrated near Passover acknowledges Jesus rising.  Both holidays are in effect a celebration of rebirth.  Indeed that is what spring is all about -- a reaffirmation of life.

  In pre-historic times, this time of year was celebrated.  In Washington D.C we will be hearing about the Cherry Blossoms any day now.  Life springs up all around us.  Baseball has always served as notice that life begins anew.  Not for Nick Adenhart.  We do not get to appreciate his life.  Just as his bud appeared on the branch that branch got pruned. 

  I find myself crying for a person I never even knew existed.  But, I’m not crying just for him.  Two friends of his were killed in the same crash.  They may not have been professional baseball players, but they were young people just budding as well.  I don’t know their names.

  The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim will no doubt memorialize Nick Adenhart on their uniforms for the rest of the season, as well they should.  We should also remember and memorialize his friends.  My heart and condolences go out to those three young people who had so much life to look forward to.  Given a choice, I would gladly give up my hopes for Mets playoffs if it meant that there was a different reason to know who Nick Adenhart was.

  Hal Cohen is editor and publisher of Mollynyc.com