It’s easy to get a little weepy-eyed on the first day of the baseball season. The stadium is draped in red, white and blue, the field looks like it’s been air-brushed, the sound of a wood bat against the ball is something you’ve missed since October, the sight of the players in their home whites seems so pure.
Every opening day takes me back to when I was a kid seeing my first major league game. It’s a time of metaphorical rebirth
Nothing said rebirth yesterday like the sight I saw outside Safeco Field as I walked from my car. Standing there on the sidewalk was a longtime friend. He looked like he’d recharged himself during another offseason and was ready to spend the next six months down in the clubhouse and up in the press box so thousands of us can enjoy the magic he performs every day with his knowledge of baseball and his mastery of the written word.
Problem is, this wasn’t just another offseason for him, and he’s not quite ready to resume the work that has delivered such joy to so many of us over the years.
He wasn’t feeling so good one day in January and, before anyone knew he was even sick, he was on an operating table undergoing a bypass. Just when the doctors thought they’d finished their work, his heart shook again and he was back on the table again.
I was a thousand miles away, getting ready for spring training, when someone from the Mariners called me with the news. It was a shock to hear, but then I’ve known a few people who’ve had bypass surgery and they always bounced back strong. I knew he would. He had to.
I didn’t realize until a few weeks later how touch-and-go this one was. We could have lost him, and that stunned me.
Maybe he never realized it, but this is the guy who showed me how to cover baseball 10 years ago when I joined this beat for The Herald. I watched the way he handled players, coaches, staff and managers with decency, understanding and fairness. I marveled at how he brought a baseball game to life in the next morning’s newspaper and I found myself almost in disbelief that someone with such little time to write before deadline could turn out something so good every day for six months. When I was the sports editor for this newspaper and would talk with high school and college students who thought they wanted to be sportswriters, I’d hold up his work and say, “Be like this.”
In the years since I began covering the Mariners, our friendship has grown well beyond the ballpark. We celebrate the successes of our families and hurt over the sorrows. All the while, we needle each other in ways nobody would understand.
It was a pretty empty spring training without him, not only for me but for everyone in the media room in Peoria who worried about how he was doing. Every day, someone — another reporter, a player, manager, coach, GM — would ask if we’d heard from him and how was he doing.
When I spoke with him in February, his voice sounded shallow and weak, and I could only imagine how he looked. But as spring training progressed, he sounded more like himself. When he called a couple of weeks ago to say he’d gotten a great report from his cardiologist, I could tell they had to peel him off the ceiling because he was so high with the news.
Then he said something that made us all smile: “I’ll see you opening day.”
Yesterday, on opening day, I saw something that was better than the green grass, the Mariners in their home whites and the red, white and blue bunting around Safeco Field. My old friend was standing on the sidewalk outside the ballpark, looking as fit as the day I last saw him in October. He’d been through the fight of his life — a fight FOR his life — and he seemed great.
He’s not quite ready to get back on the beat, but hopefully that will happen in a few weeks. It will be a glorious day when he’s writing again for the Tacoma News Tribune.
Until then, it was great to see you, Larry LaRue.
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