In the world of sports, playing is a way of healing.
Life goes on in the real world; the game goes on in the sports world.
And so it was that the St. Louis Cardinals played the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday night, less than 48 hours after pitcher Josh Hancock was killed in a car crash in St. Louis.
This was, both teams agreed, what a baseball player would have wanted.
Not playing Monday, one day after the Cardinals and Cubs had postponed their game, was not an option.
“I don’t think that serves any purpose,” Brewers manager Ned Yost said. “Josh was a guy that went out and played his heart out every single day he stepped on the field. You honor him by doing the exact same thing.”
Playing baseball may seem like a callous way of covering one’s grief, but only because it is such a public business and beamed nationwide by TV cameras.
“There’s a lot of sadness and grieving,” Cardinals manager Tony La Russa said.
“It’s a lot like people, no matter what their walk of life is, go through every day. You grieve, and life goes on. It should be no harder for us than for anybody, except [how] we make our living.”
So the game went on, Hancock’s memory honored by his road jerseys hanging in the Cardinals’ dugout and bullpen and each player’s left sleeve bearing a black circle with an inscribed white “32” representing Hancock’s number.
And life went on as well. Twenty-five-year-old Dennis Dove — called up to take Hancock’s spot in the bullpen, if not his place — made his major-league debut by pitching a scoreless inning in the Cardinals’ 7-1 loss.
It wasn’t easy for Dove, or for any of the other players. It never is.
Scott Spiezio was scratched from the lineup because of pregame emotion. He said the final decision was La Russa’s.
“I got a little caught up before game time seeing his jersey,” Spiezio said. “Usually you can escape it, but here [at the ballpark] you can’t. Sometimes you think you’re pretty tough, but things come at you the wrong way.”
For whatever reason, the Cardinals have contributed more than what seems their fair share to the healing process by playing heart-wrenching games after tragedies.
They helped mend a country’s heart by being the first to return to the nation’s pastime after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, announcer Jack Buck reading a touchingly defiant poem beforehand.
And one day after pitcher Darryl Kile was found dead of heart failure in a Chicago hotel in 2002, they returned to play at Wrigley Field.
And now, Hancock.
“I’ve been through a lot in seven years in this uniform,” said veteran Jim Edmonds, who has endured all three incidents as a Cardinal.
It never gets easier, even having dealt with it before.
“I don’t think it helps me,” pitching coach Dave Duncan said of the Kile experience. “You understand you will get through it and it will pass in time. But it never goes away.”
For Duncan, the healing process is doubly tough because son Chris was a teammate of Hancock’s. Chris Duncan will be 26 on Saturday; Josh Hancock turned 29 on April 11.
“You think about that,” the elder Duncan said, “how difficult it is for them. It’s a new experience for most of them. But they have a lot of help here. They’ll get through it.”
La Russa had already cautioned the team “to be careful of the insincerity of some media people who are trying to befriend you and [then trying to] turn this into a story that’s not all sweet.
“The first time I hear insincerity,” La Russa said, while leaning on a fungo bat, “I’m going to start swinging this fungo. It’s all about Josh and how we deal with it and honor him.”
La Russa’s reference apparently was about those who might be checking into whether Hancock had been drinking during the evening before the accident.
By the time Monday night’s game was over, the Cardinals seemed emotionally drained, beaten down by a complete game from Jeff Suppan, a teammate last year.
“I’m not going to say it was easy,” Suppan said. “I just went out and tried to do my best.”
It is all any player can do to help the healing.
