Tragedy at the Ballpark

By David Roth

During the second inning of Thursday night’s game at the Ballpark at Arlington, Shannon Stone did something that many Daily Fix readers have probably done themselves, at some point in their lives. He called out to Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton in hopes that Hamilton would throw a ball up to where Stone and his young son were sitting. Hamilton obliged, Stone leaned over the railing to catch the ball for his son, and what began as a warm and recognizable reiteration of a familiar ballpark ritual suddenly became something incalculably sadder.

Stone, a fireman in Brownwood, TX, toppled over the railing and fell 20 feet, head-first, to the concrete behind the left-field fence. Although he was conscious after the fall, Stone later went into cardiac arrest and died. In a statement issued after the game, Rangers CEO Nolan Ryan said, “We are deeply saddened to learn that the man who fell has passed away as a result of this tragic accident. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.” “This is unfair,” Yahoo’s Jeff Passan writes. “It’s so very unfair. It’s unfair to Josh Hamilton, a decent man and a father to three daughters. He tried to do a good deed. That’s all he tried to do. It’s unfair to Shannon Stone, a firefighter for 18 years who just wanted to make his kid’s night. It’s most unfair to that son. He will grow up without a father.” There’s not much but sadness to find in this story, at present – what should have been good went bad, and the hushed stadium and tearful locker rooms after the game told the only story that really seemed appropriate to tell afterwards.

The evening’s gamers and analysis – a good start for the home team’s Derek Holland, a rough one for Oakland’s Rich Harden – were just dutiful, but seemed ghoulishly tasteless. Even earnest speculation into how the incident will impact Hamilton, who has been very open about the demons that led him into years of addiction and nearly ruined his career, felt somehow off. It seems best, finally, just to send hopes and prayers to the Stone family. And to remind everyone headed to ballparks or anywhere else that accidents can happen – which is anywhere, really – to take care. So, take care.

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New Jersey Nets guard Deron Williams (l) will sign a contract to play in Turkey in there is a lockout.

It’s what happens during lockouts. Players position themselves as regular dudes who just want to go back to work. Team owners, for their part, strike humble Chamber of Commerce poses and spin their locking-out of those players as a business move made more in sorrow than in anger.  When NBA players were rumored to be considering a barnstorming tour of China, for instance, it had a whiff of we-just-want-to-play-ball positioning about it. (Also, as the Journal’s Jason Gay pointed out, it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun to watch as a domestic barnstorming tour of creaky local gyms) But when New Jersey Nets guard Deron Williamsannounced on Thursday that he would sign a contract with Turkey’s Besiktas in the event of a lockout, the move felt like a cross between another PR gambit and a savvy business decision.

The bigger question, though, is whether Williams’ move would open the door to more American players plying their trade abroad while a new collective bargaining agreement is negotiated.  Williams isn’t the first NBA player to opt for a deal overseas this offseason – Boston’s Nenad Krstic and Toronto’s Sonny Weems signed contracts with teams in Russia and Lithuania, respectively.

But Williams’s deal, which begins on September 1, is unique both because of how rich it is – it will pay him at least $200,000 a month tax-free, which is not bad for a fall-back gig – and because it offers an out clause that will allow him to head back to the United States once the lockout ends. All of this could be academic, of course – Williams’s first game with Besiktas would be September 27, which is right around the deadline for a deal that would salvage the next NBA season. But many NBA commentators see Williams’s move as a crafty, if potentially lucrative bluff. “Various agents currently are discussing deals with European teams, but they’re mostly for undrafted free agents or journeymen looking to stay sharp and make money during the lockout – not superstars in their prime,” Ken Berger writes at CBS Sports. “In exchange for a few million bucks and a free flight to Istanbul, Williams would not only be risking his next NBA contract, but the rest of his current one – for which he is owed $34 million over the next two seasons, with a player option for 2012-13.” As nice as Williams’s Turkish League salary looks to most Daily Fix readers, his NBA riches represent a figure no Euroleague team could match. Not, Sports Illustrated’s Sam Amick notes, that they’d necessarily want to. “Money isn’t the only issue,” Amick writes. “While Besiktas is in the Eurocup, the more prestigious Euroleague teams have been showing little interest in renting an NBA player only to see him leave when the lockout is lifted.”

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It’s not necessarily surprising, given all the indignities that come of seeking office (fervent truthy spinning, furious hand-shaking, clammily desperate fundraising and suspect-fried-local-delicacy-at-state-fair-eating) that prominent politicians in the United States often seem a bit off. But if national politicians can sometimes seem unconvincing when talking about actual politics, that’s nothing compared to the exquisite awkwardness of politicians talking sports.

From the multiple “favorite teams” to the garbled and overdetermined slang-slinging, politi-sports is a just-folks campaign staple that just about never works. But, because sports matter to people – and because politicians’ success or failure is predicated on how well they are able to imitate normal people – politicians continue to talk sports. “The presidential campaign puts candidates in a miserable position sports-wise,” Bryan Curtis writes in the Daily Beast. “We sports fans flash a demonic Dick Butkus smile, because when the candidates talk sports, they reveal their true selves. To deploy a sportsism, we fans are dictating the tempo here, and we’ve got the candidates right where we want ’em.”

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During his Hall of Fame career with the Baltimore Colts, John Mackey revolutionized the tight end position and paved the way for the brawny, balletic beasts that play the position today. As the first president of the NFL Players Association, Mackey also made a contribution to football history once his playing days were over. But for the last decade of his life, Mackey was an emblem of a more recent, more sobering chapter in football history, as one of the best-known football players to be debilitated by early-onset dementia. After suffering from the disease for a decade, Mackey died of frontal temporal dementia late Wednesday. As befits a man who did more during his career than nearly any player of his generation, Mackey leaves an outsized, complicated legacy. Tip of the Fix Cap to Reader Brendan Flynn.