I am not one of those people who believes that death puts the rest of your life in perspective. If you need a tragedy to realize that there are more important things in life than following a baseball game, well then I wouldn’t even know what to say to you. It’s my belief that most of even the most ardent baseball fans understand that the thing they treat as if it is life or death really isn’t and people preaching to me about how I should care more about the economy or some witch-hunt Nancy Grace has initiated instead of following MLB, annoy the ever-loving crap out of me.
So it surprised me that I was so bothered by the fact that on MLB.com this morning the death of a Rangers fan during the Rangers/A’s game last night, was relegated to number seven on their list of latest news:
I don’t like telling people how they should feel. And at least they are actually covering the story, right? For all I know, there is no rhyme or reason to how they list the stories on their front page (but the fact that All Star voting and Jeter’s quest for 3000 lead the list makes me feel like there is an obvious agenda). Â I just think the story of how a fan fell to his death while reaching for a ball that a player threw into the stands is worth of more than almost being completely buried. Â (And to be fair, on the Rangers’ official site, it’s number three on the list of “headlines”.)
I don’t know why this one bothers me so much. Â Fans have died at games before, it isn’t as if this is the first time a tragedy has happened during the game. Â Maybe how it happened is what strikes me because the idea of a fan dying because he was reaching for a ball really freaks me out? Â Maybe it’s because I was stupid enough to watch the video of it and listening to the broadcasters joke about it is haunting giving how things ended?
In any event, someone died in the middle of enjoying something as simple as a baseball game with his son and MLB seems to rank it as less important than Derek Jeter and the All Star Game. Â Sorry to be a bummer today but the sight of that man tumbling to his death is something I’m having a difficult time getting out of my head.