I wanted to say that in a response to a comment in the other thread, but felt that was wrong.

I’m hoping Holliday loads up on Zinc and C and can start as well. Don’t succumb to a runny nose Matt for the love of God!

I appreciate it, because this does have serious repercussions for the Angels both now and in the long term from an on the field perspective.

It will be nice to have a place to talk about them, when it feels like something to talk about.

I am still in shock and wondering if it would be bad for the A’s to have an OPD patch on one sleeve and an Adenhart patch on the other.

Id imagine so.

For those of you who feel that it’s way to soon to start talking about this sort of stuff that’s perfectly fine. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who are ready to talk about so there’s no need to come in here and say it’s way to soon to discuss the baseball implications of Nick’s very untimely death. Please don’t make us feel like horrible people for wanting to discuss baseball.

That being said I’d say this is an obvious big blow to the Angels rotation for years to come. Adenhart was a top prospect expected to help anchor the rotation along with Santana and possibly Saunders once Lackey and Escobar are either gone or way to injured to contribute. I don’t know a whole lot about the Angels’ system so I’m unsure if there are any other promising pitching prospects in the wings or not. This definitely helps tip the balance of power over the coming seasons in the A’s direction. It’s just too bad that it had to come at the expense of someone’s life.

(so thank you, devo), is that apparently Cahill and Anderson became friends with Adenhart at the Olympic games. Plus it’s Anderson’s debut that is postponed due to the death of his friend. It must all be very confusing for him, and for Cahill, who on top of all that have to be thinking, as 21-year old rookies, “Man, that could have been me.”

this is a good site: http://www.mlbdepthcharts.com/2009/04/los-angeles-angels-2009.html
doesn’t have knox listed for some reason.

gut reaction thoughts, in order:

1) damn, that sucks
2) damn that sucks for the angels
3) damn that sucks that his team blew his first W for him just hours before it happened
4) damn, this puts a damper on the celebration from last night
5) Well, I didnt want to win this way, but this could really hurt the Angels this season
6) Shit, Anderson was going to own tonight.
7) Hey, looks like the A’s just won their first series!

Seriously, I can’t allow myself to feel bad all day every time a human dies. I took a few moments for Nick because it was an oddly cruel fate for him, and for a moment our lives were tied last night.

is that AN is more loving than HH, because we have over 100 more posts of people ofering their condolences. And we’re the ‘enemy’

We are a loving community so go us
:)

but still sad day
:(

I think this might rekindle those conversations. With Adenhart gone, the Angels are in desperate need for rotation depth. They also just took a huge hit to their farm system.

So I expect that in the next few days, the Angels will acquire a Starting Pitcher, by Trade or Free Agency, to fill that void, at least until their 3 starters get off the DL. That could be Pedro, that could be Harang, or that could be Gaudin. It depends on how they want to do this.

this year. I believe that they are already honoring a “Preston” who died this year? They have a black patch of the baseball diamond with his name on it. I assume that this is a tribute. Now, they will have two names on there……sad

The Padres commentators claimed they had been the last team to get one when Adrian Gonzalez went deep today.

Some people deal with it by thinking about other things, some allow the emotion to flow, so I think it is a bit pretentious to say “it’s too soon” to some, as much as it would be wrong for others to say “you are dwelling”.

I have a 20 year old son and tried calling him all day and he returned my call at 3pm. I cannot tell you the relief I felt. This impacts everyone differently, so to that I say thank you Devo. What would Adenhart say? “Play Ball” I bet, and yet, we take a day to sort out our feelings. We so closely identify with baseball players that it feels like a family member. Take your time, or talk baseball, but please don’t judge others on how they choose to deal with the news or how quickly or slowly they move on.

I look forward to seeing the boys back in town tomorrow, to seeing Anderson pitch after meeting him at fan appreciation day, and cannot imagine the emotion the ballplayers must be feeling. Top it off, we have the memorial for the officers tomorrow too. God, what a range of emotions tomorrow!

Thank you Devo

Totally agree.

… are zilch.. Baseball is a game – not important, not life changing, simply a stage upon which fine people entertain us from time to time. The truth is that baseball is just another simple human pleasure that we use to distract us from horrors such as this death. The game of baseball will go on because we need it, because things like this tragedy are all too common.

About seven months ago, a good friend of mine was killed while stopped at a red light. I remember feeling the regret of not having been a better friend, the pain of knowing he’d never achieve the countless goals he had set.

Last night, I looked at the box score and thought, “Man, another stud Angel pitcher for the A’s to worry about for years.” This morning, I read the news that he had been killed, and my heart sunk into my stomach. I want my team to win, but never at the expense of another player’s health.

It really sucks that Nick Adenhart died. It sucks that he didn’t get to play out his career, settle down with a family, and accomplish the things I’m sure he would have liked to accomplish.

My hatred of the Angels is suspended indefinitely. I can’t muster the guts to despise them anymore. Outside of Lackey, I can’t think of a single player on their team that, performance aside, I wouldn’t welcome in Oakland.

All that said, we (the citizens of the world) didn’t just lose a person— we lost a talented baseball player. It definitely changes the look of the Angels’ rotation. To say that there are no baseball implications is a lie. We will all mourn him in our different ways, but as baseball fans, we’ve all lost a potential star. All at the hands of a drunk driver.

how hard is it going to be for any Angels’ fifth starter for the next couple of months. Especially if it’s a callup from the minors. That’s not exactly the kind of environment you want to break a rookie into.

Next time any A’s fans here want to go into self-pity mode and say, “whine whine whine, we got hit by all those injuries, it’s not fair,” hopefully they’ll think twice and hit cancel before they post. I saw a lot of that last season and I sure got sick of it.

There are a whole lot worse things that can happen to your rotation than having a bunch of guys spend time on the DL. Next time someone complains about our injuries, I won’t say it, but I’ll be thinking it.

should probably not participate in it.

It’s their right to, of course, much as it’s the right of any A’s fan to talk about how the Angels’ rotation affects their team, a right that I don’t think needs to be abrogated just because a terrible accident befell one of the players.

Much as it’s my right to point to specific posts and say, “could you be any more sanctimonious if you tried? Just a tiny bit more?” but have so far refrained from doing so.

Sites like AN really oughtta have a code sheet so we can just call out numbers in cases like this one.

Dramatis Personae:

Officious Intermeddler (here, RL)
Obnoxious Civil Libertarian (DFA, TDF)

Script:

Our scene opens with OI objecting, on thoroughly principled grounds, to something in a thread:

OI: “You shouldn’t do that.”

OCL, equally principled, replies: “If you don’t like it, then don’t watch.”

OI, needing to instruct, with snark quotient rising: “You shouldn’t do that because [restates principle, with extreme strawman examples] and that makes you an immature, unfeeling jerk.”

OCL takes the bait: and with condescending erudition, pokes at the principle and tries to ignite the strawmen, adding, “…and if you don’t bow to my superior intellect, you’re stoopid — and an intermeddling asshole.”

OI: can’t resist responding, although by now it’s almost completely personal: “Yeah? Well, YOU’re a bigger, more obnoxious asshole, and what’s more — yer mother swims after troop ships!”

OCL, now red around the ears retorts : “cuz yer daughter’s too busy to throw her a lifeline! Ya prick!”

OI, thoroughly enraged: Fuck-off and Die, you pathetic piece of shyte!!"

OCL, apoplectic: “No, FUCK YOU!!!!”

Chorus (a/k/a Moderator): “You’re both banned. Go soak your heads.”

After which time, meaning overnight, OI and OCL become embarrassed at their behavior. They go have a virtual beer and talk about how the Moderation system sucks.

The End.

Except that, instead of virtual beers, we can all go have real ones at the AN Tail-Gate ExtravagANza this afternoon.

I’m buying — anybody care to skip ahead and join me?

The bottom line is that many of us were raised with old-fashioned values that include waiting a decent period of time before discussing how someone’s death may benefit us. I expressed that point of view as did some others. It’s just as appropriate for those of us that feel that way to say so as it is for those that think this was a great old idea for a thread. AN is all of us..and reflect the posters here. It’s ok to be critical and let people know when you think they went in the wrong direction. I tried to express myself in a polite way and when I saw that others were upset by what I said I walked away. This has nothing to do with this young man being famous…I would feel the same way if one of my children started discussing how someone’s death would benefit them career-wise or anything else.
There’s a TIME for everything … I didn’t feel that the day after the accident was respectful or appropriate. But the rest of you turned a simple disapproving comment into a hullabaloo. I do not take responsiblity for the direction the comments have taken…some of you are far more interested in stirring the pot than anything else and it’s a shame.
Let’s all try to drop this topic…it’s obviously something that isn’t going to be resolved.

This must have read like an invitation to those AN members who would lecture about what’s appropriate and what is not.

I bet on some level, these same members wish that the comments here were actually insensitive so that they’d really have something to complain about and conjure up some real blog drama.

for us to be talking about baseball implications of Adenhart’s death, there has been precious little actual discussion of baseball implications here. I see only two or three comments that touch the surface of that topic, and those only barely, and nothing at all that resembles IM4Oakgal’s alleged discussion of “how someone’s death may benefit us”.

The fact of the matter is that, even here on this thread, no one particularly wants to discuss that and therefore we don’t. What this thread does provide is a separate forum for general observation and discussion about the death but with a tone which is rather more detached and less sentimental. This, in my opinion, is a very good thing to have provided. People have different personalities. Some want to emote and cry, others want to ponder the mysteries of life with a more intellectually aloof attitude. It’s good to have a place for either.

As for the unwelcome interlopers who have come into this thread to tell the rest of us how wrong we are to be having our discussion, it’s hard to tell whether (1) in their agitation and outrage they failed to actually read the thread and notice that the sort of discussion they accuse us of isn’t actually happening, or (2) they do realize it’s not happening but they don’t care because what really pisses them off is that our tone isn’t sufficiently sentimental, that we can sit here and nod our heads saying “yeah, that’s what happened, he’s dead now” instead of “oh my god, I was so shocked, I’m crying my eyes out right now!”.

Either way, I think they’re wrong. More important, they’re in the wrong place.

I know that your motive in posting this thread was 100 percent good, and that you thought that you were doing AN a service. I disagree with that idea but you are well-respected by me. I am truly sorry I didn’t say that to you before. I should have done so.