Baseball

My apologies for the long silence. I've been busy over at my own blog rather than Michael's, mostly blogging about baseball.

But as I finished up, I thought of Michael. He made it to one of Alex's games last year, but wasn't well enough this year to come. I told him about the games, and he read my updates.

I don't think he got baseball in the same way that I do - he liked it, certainly, and he and Jen enjoyed going to Twins games. But to the best of my knowledge, he never scored a game.

I thought of one of the last text messages I got from him. I'd seen him at the hospital earlier in the day, and then left to get Alex to the game. I was on the field coaching, so Christina had my phone and was sending him updates. She got kind of excited about the game - it was our 4th game of the year, against the only other undefeated team, our long-time rivals the Maplewood Express (seriously, I'm not making this up, you can read about it on my blog if you have the time) and missed his reply to one of her updates.

His message was "Are the Ironpigs still ahead?"

They were; we won that game and all but one of the rest, on the way to finishing in first place.

I told him about the game the next day in the hospital, but he was drifting in and out from the painkillers.

This was a painful, painful summer. I lost a brother who was my friend, and I had to watch him die and know there was nothing I could do about it.

Baseball helped me through that; coaching Alex and his teammates in a magical season was good for my soul.

Baseball season is over. We made it to the championship game and fought it down to the wire, but lost. We went down fighting, though - we had the tying run at the plate when the final out was made.

The Ironpigs are still ahead, bro. They're still ahead.

I miss you.