yagsy
04-22-2005, 01:31 PM
http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article_perspectives.jsp?ymd=20050422&content_id=1024854&vkey=perspectives&fext=.jsp
04/22/2005 12:45 AM ET
Caminiti didn't miss the dance
MLB.com
Barry M. Bloom
http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/images/2005/04/22/A3JNV6dQ.jpg
Ken Caminiti's brother, Glenn, and sister-in-law, Debbie, embrace during Thursday's ceremony honoring the former Padres third baseman. (Lenny Ignelzi/AP)
SAN DIEGO -- When a man perceived to be a hero is torn out of a community much too soon, it creates a wound, a tear in the psyche that never really heals. It doesn't matter much how or why it happened -- just that it did.
As Ted Leitner, the longtime Padres broadcaster, told a crowd of about 30,000 on Thursday night at PETCO Park, last year the baseball community, in general, and San Diego, in particular, lost Ken Caminiti. It doesn't much matter how or why. Those details have been well reported. What matters is that he is gone.
A cloud of dust -- or in a baseball sense -- ash in the wind.
"We loved him when he played here," Leitner told the somber crowd over the public address system. "We love him now and we will love him forever. Nothing will ever change that."
The short ceremony began with a video of Cammy feats the Padres used to show regularly at Qualcomm Stadium and ended with a moving tribute to his life, produced by the Padres' Chase Peckham. After the closing bars of Garth Brooks' "The Dance" faded in the ballpark where Caminiti never got a chance to play third base, the crowd stood and, in memory of one of their own, gave Cammy a standing ovation.
"Glad I didn't know the way it all would end, the way it all would go," Brooks sang as pictures of Caminiti with his wife, Nancy, and three daughters were wrapped around action video clips from different eras in his career. "I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss ... the dance."
It's the third time I've seen that particular piece of video, and I'm not ashamed to say that tears streamed down my cheeks all three times.
In one sense, there is the anger at the way he went, to a drug overdose at the age of 41, leaving behind his three daughters -- Kendall, 13, Lindsey, 11, and Nichol, 8 -- who were all in attendance on Thursday night. In another sense, Cammy was a comet that streaked across our landscape and burnt out much too quickly.
He lived hard, played hard and was gone just like that. He certainly didn't miss the dance. And on his public stage of a baseball diamond, he performed for a short time like none other.
"He was a warrior. He was a friend and a great teammate. He was all those things," said Mark Sweeney, who played with Caminiti on the Padres' 1998 National League championship team and is back with the club this season.
"He was a bulldog," said Trevor Hoffman, also a member of that singular team. "He was extremely intense. He didn't care about himself. He just did whatever he had to do out on the field to win a ballgame."
It is a strange twist of fate, but in my long career as a journalist, which includes an 11-year tour covering the Padres as a beat writer, I have written the obituaries of four one-time Padres players: Alan Wiggins, Eric Show, Mike Darr and Cammy.
Three of the four were drug-related deaths. None of them were easy to write about. This one still isn't.
Darr was 26 years old in 2002 when he drove off a highway late one night near the team's Spring Training facility in Peoria, Ariz. Darr's last game was also the last for Tony Gwynn, who had retired at the end of the previous season.
Show, whose 100-win total is still the highest in franchise history, was an accomplished jazz guitarist and could argue religion and politics with the best of them. He was so racked by demons while ensconced in a drug rehab facility one night that he injected himself with a speedball -- a mixture of cocaine and heroin -- and never woke up. He was 37.
Wiggins holds the team's all-time single-season basestealing record of 70, a stat he posted in 1984. His daughter, Candice, plays basketball at Stanford and has the same jaunty gate and burst of speed. Her father, withered and weak, perished at 32 because of a tainted needle. His death certificate listed AIDS as the cause of death.
In 1996, Cammy became the only Padre in the team's first 36 seasons to win an NL MVP award. That he admitted later he used steroids during that stellar season doesn't really taint the accomplishment -- not for me, at least.
Caminiti played so hard and dove so often, he tore his right shoulder apart.
"He was always playing with intense pain," said John Moores, the team's majority owner, who added that he loved Caminiti like a son. "My understanding is that you can take steroids to help recover from injuries quicker. I'm sure that's why Cammy must have been using them -- at least I hope it was."
It was Moores' desire to honor a fallen, if fallible, hero, giving a proper send-off to a man fans voted as the team's top third baseman of all time.
He wanted the girls, especially, to capture a glimpse of how their father was adored. After all, they were way too young to recall Caminiti, wearing his trademark No. 21, diving to spear another hard-hit baseball, leaping to his feet and, with aplomb, tossing the runner out at first.
Those were good days then for the Caminiti family. They are not so good now.
Their dad would've been 42 years old on Thursday. That night, he was alive again in the mind's eye. We all sure could've missed the pain, but then we would've missed the dance.
Barry M. Bloom is a national reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
04/22/2005 12:45 AM ET
Caminiti didn't miss the dance
MLB.com
Barry M. Bloom
http://sandiego.padres.mlb.com/images/2005/04/22/A3JNV6dQ.jpg
Ken Caminiti's brother, Glenn, and sister-in-law, Debbie, embrace during Thursday's ceremony honoring the former Padres third baseman. (Lenny Ignelzi/AP)
SAN DIEGO -- When a man perceived to be a hero is torn out of a community much too soon, it creates a wound, a tear in the psyche that never really heals. It doesn't matter much how or why it happened -- just that it did.
As Ted Leitner, the longtime Padres broadcaster, told a crowd of about 30,000 on Thursday night at PETCO Park, last year the baseball community, in general, and San Diego, in particular, lost Ken Caminiti. It doesn't much matter how or why. Those details have been well reported. What matters is that he is gone.
A cloud of dust -- or in a baseball sense -- ash in the wind.
"We loved him when he played here," Leitner told the somber crowd over the public address system. "We love him now and we will love him forever. Nothing will ever change that."
The short ceremony began with a video of Cammy feats the Padres used to show regularly at Qualcomm Stadium and ended with a moving tribute to his life, produced by the Padres' Chase Peckham. After the closing bars of Garth Brooks' "The Dance" faded in the ballpark where Caminiti never got a chance to play third base, the crowd stood and, in memory of one of their own, gave Cammy a standing ovation.
"Glad I didn't know the way it all would end, the way it all would go," Brooks sang as pictures of Caminiti with his wife, Nancy, and three daughters were wrapped around action video clips from different eras in his career. "I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss ... the dance."
It's the third time I've seen that particular piece of video, and I'm not ashamed to say that tears streamed down my cheeks all three times.
In one sense, there is the anger at the way he went, to a drug overdose at the age of 41, leaving behind his three daughters -- Kendall, 13, Lindsey, 11, and Nichol, 8 -- who were all in attendance on Thursday night. In another sense, Cammy was a comet that streaked across our landscape and burnt out much too quickly.
He lived hard, played hard and was gone just like that. He certainly didn't miss the dance. And on his public stage of a baseball diamond, he performed for a short time like none other.
"He was a warrior. He was a friend and a great teammate. He was all those things," said Mark Sweeney, who played with Caminiti on the Padres' 1998 National League championship team and is back with the club this season.
"He was a bulldog," said Trevor Hoffman, also a member of that singular team. "He was extremely intense. He didn't care about himself. He just did whatever he had to do out on the field to win a ballgame."
It is a strange twist of fate, but in my long career as a journalist, which includes an 11-year tour covering the Padres as a beat writer, I have written the obituaries of four one-time Padres players: Alan Wiggins, Eric Show, Mike Darr and Cammy.
Three of the four were drug-related deaths. None of them were easy to write about. This one still isn't.
Darr was 26 years old in 2002 when he drove off a highway late one night near the team's Spring Training facility in Peoria, Ariz. Darr's last game was also the last for Tony Gwynn, who had retired at the end of the previous season.
Show, whose 100-win total is still the highest in franchise history, was an accomplished jazz guitarist and could argue religion and politics with the best of them. He was so racked by demons while ensconced in a drug rehab facility one night that he injected himself with a speedball -- a mixture of cocaine and heroin -- and never woke up. He was 37.
Wiggins holds the team's all-time single-season basestealing record of 70, a stat he posted in 1984. His daughter, Candice, plays basketball at Stanford and has the same jaunty gate and burst of speed. Her father, withered and weak, perished at 32 because of a tainted needle. His death certificate listed AIDS as the cause of death.
In 1996, Cammy became the only Padre in the team's first 36 seasons to win an NL MVP award. That he admitted later he used steroids during that stellar season doesn't really taint the accomplishment -- not for me, at least.
Caminiti played so hard and dove so often, he tore his right shoulder apart.
"He was always playing with intense pain," said John Moores, the team's majority owner, who added that he loved Caminiti like a son. "My understanding is that you can take steroids to help recover from injuries quicker. I'm sure that's why Cammy must have been using them -- at least I hope it was."
It was Moores' desire to honor a fallen, if fallible, hero, giving a proper send-off to a man fans voted as the team's top third baseman of all time.
He wanted the girls, especially, to capture a glimpse of how their father was adored. After all, they were way too young to recall Caminiti, wearing his trademark No. 21, diving to spear another hard-hit baseball, leaping to his feet and, with aplomb, tossing the runner out at first.
Those were good days then for the Caminiti family. They are not so good now.
Their dad would've been 42 years old on Thursday. That night, he was alive again in the mind's eye. We all sure could've missed the pain, but then we would've missed the dance.
Barry M. Bloom is a national reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.