FanNation - The Republic of Sport

By now I'm sure you've heard about the tragic death of the young pitcher for the California Angels, Nick Adenhart, age 22, who was killed along with two others in an early morning trafic accident. He lost his life after what was reported to be his first major league start.

Now adding insult to injury, an article in T&R is exploring whether the Angels might be dealing with a curse.

Growing up in Boston it was always funny to read about the Red Sox curse. Thinking there was an evil cousin to the Celtics lucky leprechaun was always something I considered fun and a form of justice by the sports gods. Whenever the Celtics, in a sort of reverse curse, would win a championship, only to be ignored, and the 5th place finish of the Red Sox was heralded as a great omen for the coming year, I would personally start chanting.

As basketball season approached and the baseball season wound down I would  try to invoke the curse. I was convinced it came true each year by the unerring way the Sox would pull an end season swoon while I awaited the start of another Celtics winning season.

But that was just in fun. We all know that curses are things of the imagination. They aren't real and have nothing to do with bad luck or unforseen tragedy. Blaming our misfortunes on some evil spirit is crazy and kind of stupid. But some people, especially those involved in sports, believe in such things. Superstitions abound in your average locker room and players put a lot of stock in such things when it comes to streaks and slumps.

Given that reality, the T&R story has to reign as one of the tackiest and cruelest pieces of sports garbage that I've ever seen in print. This poor young man hasn't even been laid to rest and his family hasn't had the proper time to grieve and mourn their loss. But in the interest of sports reporting these morons who think of themselves as writers, are already contributing his death to some ridiculous "curse"!

Unbelievable is putting it mildly.

A lot of people take their sports seriously, I understand that. But this is taking a game far too seriously and in a way that, however unintentionally, can only serve to add to the pain that his family is going through.

I can't imagine how the family must be reacting to this news. Before they can absorb the facts of the story, they are being confronted with this sick fiction being bandied about. The have to face the possiblilty that that their son wasn't just the victim of a stupid, drunken driver, but that the very organization he was a proud member of, laid a curse on his head.

I don't know whats more disturbing... that a major sports site would sully his memory with such a cheap exploitive story bent on squeezing all the readers attention possible out of a tragic death... or that there are so many morons, both in the media and in the sports world, that just might actually BELIEVE such paganistic tripe.

How's this for a twist... three innocent people died at the hands of a drunk driver. The drunk driver was not killed and managed to flee the scene while his passenger survived with only minor injuries.

Is that how a curse works in reverse here as well? Because I bet he felt a lot more blessed than cursed.

FanNation and it's parent SI.com, should be ashamed at themselves for making sport of a familys grief and tradgedy... If it were possible I would put a curse on them myself. And everything they ever put in print would come out as incoherent babble.

Wait... now that I think of it...