Way Too Soon

I would be lying if I said I knew of Nick Adenhart before his death early Thursday morning. Getting the chance to watch his final game was an honor. I don't thank Directv ever, but this time they did something right for me, without even knowing it. Directv allows us baseball fans with no money to preview their MLB package for the first two weeks of the season. While watching their game-mix, you get the opprotunity to watch 8 games at once. So, I got home late from work Wednesday night, there were only a few games for my viewing at 10:00. One of the games was the Athletics/Angels game. I saw this kid pitching that I didn't know for a couple innings absolutely owning the A's. And I thought "wow", this kid is pretty impressive. To that I had enough and was getting tired and work at 7:00 am was in the back of my mind. So I turned off the television, not knowing that live on tv, Nick Adenhart was pitching the last game of his life. The 22-year old, a year less than my youngest brother, was taken away from this cruel earth by a drunken driver after the game of his life. He had just finished pitching 6 strong innings of shut-out ball for his Angels. Something that many thought wasn't possible after overcoming majors odds against him. Tommy John surgery before the MLB Draft dropped him to the 14th round, 4 seasons in the minors, and in his 3 previous starts in the majors his ERA was 9.00. But all that was behind him for 2 hours Wednesday night. He pitched the game of his life at the Major League level with his father in the stands. Why would God take him away after such a glorious day? The Angels are favorites to get to the post season this year and you'd be ignorant to think that God doesn't work in mysterious ways. For one night, Nick Adenhart made a name for himself, unfortunately most of us wouldn't of appreciated his work if it wasn't for his death.