Death In The Family

Happy new year, kids.  I know I've been away for some time but I return to you now.

I'm back and the reason why I was away for so long...is complicated.  You see, I'm an emotional writer.  I sat here for the last couple of months and started to write for the SP and got about two paragraphs in and decided it was garbage and scrapped the whole thing.  I did this roughly about five times on five different occasions.  It's my roots.  I never wanted to open the paper the next day and absolutely hate what I wrote.  I don't really care if you hate it or not--I just don't want to.

So because of this weird neurosis of mine the Pastures gathered some cobwebs and then more cobwebs and we almost got to the point where we would all be sitting around wondering what ever happened to that thing we used to read all the time.

Then today happened and Stuart Scott passed away and the world got that much smaller.

I haven't been proud of ESPN in a long time.  I feel like they've become too corporate and basically use the Twitter trending list to schedule their news stories.  SportsCenter was my security blanket as I was growing up and aspiring to do something sports and writing related.  I would go to bed with it on and wake up to it in the morning.  I knew which anchors were on which days and times just like people would do with the regular news--but this was the regular news to me.

I went to journalism school, specifically for sports journalism, because I felt that a lot of people just didn't get it.  Sports does so much for so many different kinds of people that saying that you don't like sports is like cutting yourself off from humanity.  I wanted to write about what inspires humanity.

I never knew Stuart Scott personally so I can't tell you any tales of our adventures but I can tell you that he was an inspiration to me and plenty of other sports journalists.  The thing that strikes me the most about his passing--other than him being gone--is how his colleagues reacted.  They were absolutely wrecked...every single one of them.  The man had fought cancer three times and they were still floored when he passed.  The emotional outpouring from basically all of ESPN got me going and suddenly they were human again.  I was proud of ESPN.  They reminded me of my upbringing and what I wanted to be.  They reminded me that good men don't go quietly into the night.  They reminded me that even heroes cry and even heroes die.

The world shrunk because I suddenly felt like I knew all of them.  I felt like a grieving friend.  I wanted to be there in Bristol and console them and talk about Stuart's incredible life and I don't even know any of them!

I know there's plenty of journalists out there that were influenced by Stuart and they will in turn influence new generations but it's hard to put that into perspective when such a bright light has gone out.

I will say this:  Stuart Scott would undergo a chemotherapy session, go workout, and then walk into work for the next SportsCenter.  That's incredible and an attribute to how much this all meant to him and how much he wanted it to mean to you.

Sports matter because of the reasons why people engage in sports.  It's all incredibly beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time.

All hope is not lost, graceful swans.  Float on for Stuart.