R.I.P. Nick Adenhart - And Why Our Prayers Matter

As evidenced all over the blogosphere, MLB has lost one of it's youngest pitchers to an imbicilic act of drunk driving by a third party. Although I don't know much about Adenhart, my thoughts and prayers go out to his family as well as the other two passengers that were killed.

Now, I don't usually write something like this without something of value to say (I know from experience that you can only hear "I'm so sorry" or "My prayers go out to you" before you become numb to the words.) However, sometimes it's important to join the chorus of thoughtful people because there's always one person out there who wants to tear somebody down or act out of spite for some reason...and that is the reason I am writing this post.

You see, a number of weeks ago, I opened up a box of Topps Stadium Club and pulled a Nick Adenhart serially numbered card. As it turned out, that was my second pull of an Adenhart serially-numbered card. Here's what I wrote:

What's that you say? I pulled a Nick Adenhart serially-numbered card out of my
last bunch of packs?! Why yes, you are correct... I've never heard of Adenhart,
but now I have to hope he becomes a superstar... If you have any
serially-numbered Stadium Club Adenharts you don't mind parting with (and let's
be honest, who wouldn't mind parting with them?), I wouldn't mind having them.
Maybe I can get all 999.

Now, while there's a bit of insensitive sarcasm in there (which is par for the course I think whenever you pull a player from a team you don't care about and a player you've never heard of), notice that I did say that I hope Adenhart becomes a superstar.

Why do I bring this up? Here's a comment some anonymous jack*** left on this post (which I refused to publish):

Well, it's your lucky day, that Nick kid was killed in a car accident. That
should increase the value of those cards, huh?

If that doesn't turn your stomach, I don't know what will. Three families were torn apart from loved ones lost much before their time, another family has to deal with the aftermath of a drunken member destroying the lives of three peoples, and yet, someone is pathetic enough to dig up old posts from December on sports card blogs and leave insensitive comments like that.

And so, I encourage everyone who's a self-respecting decent human being to join me and many, many, many, many, many, many, many others in sending out your thoughts and prayers with both the Adenhart family and the families of the other two passengers. We can't fix stupid, but we can show that there are more decent people in the world than there are vocal jack***es.