The Red Sox lost to the Angels last night, and I can’t find it in me to care. The tragic death of Nick Adenhart loomed over everyone and everything in the stadium, making the outcome secondary to just getting through the game.

Quotes from the Red Sox players in the L.A. Times:

Terry Francona
“Obviously, our thoughts and prayers are with the Adenhart family and the Angels’ family,” a somber Francona said. “We’ll try to be very respectful and we’ll try to compete. And I think that’s the best you can do.”You’re supposed to show up and have fun going to the ballpark and it doesn’t seem like that’s appropriate today.”Then there’s the game.”When the game starts, you’re supposed to try to win,” Francona said. “It’s a hard thing to understand. And maybe that’s why I’m probably stumbling a little bit. But I don’t know how many people aren’t. It’s very difficult to put into words or to comprehend the right thing to say because nobody knows.”

Dustin Pedroia
“Everyone in here feels for their whole team, their organization and the kid’s family,” he said. “We’re here to support them. Baseball is secondary.”We have to go out there and play the game, but that will definitely be in the back of everyone’s mind. Their team and their organization, guys are going through the worst-case scenario. We feel for them. If they need support, it doesn’t matter if we’re different teams from different cities. We’re here for all those guys.”

Mike Lowell
“It’s a tragedy not only to the Angels’ organization, but I think it’s a tragedy to baseball too,” he finally said. “Everything I’ve that heard people say is that he was such a good guy.”

David Ortiz (translated by Mike Lowell)
“He’s like, when you hear news like that it just [gives] you an unsettled feeling,” Lowell said. “It humanizes everything else. We’re kind of in this la-la land playing baseball. [But] this is something that really touches everyone from the human side.”


It’s difficult to find something to compare this to. This isn’t the guy you work with who has puffed 3-packs-a-day for 30 years or the receptionist who turned 90 when the Sox won the championship in ’04, this is the just-out-of-college intern who doesn’t look old enough to shave. It’s unthinkable, yet the Angels, and all of baseball, are going through it.