CHICAGO – If Darryl Kile had pitched as scheduled last night for the Cardinals, the team would have been booed off the field at the end of batting practice. Because Kile didn’t pitch, the Cardinals were cheered off the field, a Wrigley Field first, a show of love for a beloved Cardinal.
Kile died in his 11th floor hotel room of heart failure brought on by blocked arteries, leaving the Cardinals in the unfamiliar territory of grieving for a teammate.
As a needed respite from that mourning, the Cardinals and Cubs played a baseball game on a hot and muggy summer night.
“If we were not playing the game, we’d all selfishly have a tougher time remembering Darryl, grieving like we’ve been doing since yesterday,” St. Louis manager Tony La Russa said. “This game will force itself in between that.”
The Cubs took great care in making sure the game didn’t seem like a party. No music was played. Only the sounds of baseball – the peanut vendor’s cry, the crack of the line drive, the stomping of the Dixie Cup, the ‘attaboy from the dugout – could be heard on a night that was all about honoring a ballplayer by keeping the focus on baseball, a classy Cubs touch.
The electronic message board beneath the manual scoreboard brightly burned the same message all night: 57.
Playing ball comes so much more naturally to ballplayers than talking about a man losing his life at the age of 33, making a widow and single parent of Flynn, mother of three, none older than 5.
During the game, Cubs catcher Joe Girardi appeared his confident self, zipping throws to second, dropping fingers for pitcher Kerry Wood, doing all the things that make all of his managers consider him managerial timber.
Before the game, won 8-3 by the Cubs, he looked like a terrified little boy desperately in need of a seat on his mother’s lap as she tilts back and forth on her rocker, pats his head and assures him everything is going to be all right.
“For me, the toughest part is imagining someone having to call his wife and kids to tell them daddy’s not coming home,” Girardi said, crying by the end of the sentence.
Girardi later returned to that thought, couldn’t get more than two words out, hung his head and broke into a full sob, which spelled the end of his news conference.
After the game, Girardi had regained his composure. He talked about a game that didn’t feel the same.
“I think both teams really weren’t into this game,” Girardi said. “The attitude of the crowd wasn’t the same. Guys were coming up to the plate with their heads down. It’s pretty incredible the Cardinals were able to play that game tonight. It’s amazing, really.”
Cubs manager Don Baylor was able to lend some historical perspective.
“I went through it in 1978 across town at Comiskey Park,” Baylor said, talking about a time when he played for the Angels, “with a player who made the last out of the ninth inning, Lyman Bostock. There were runners on first and second and he grounded out in disgust, showered in five minutes and that was the last time I talked to him.”
Bostock was shot and killed that night.
Elsewhere, Rangers manager Jerry Narron began talking about the 1979 night he replaced the deceased Thurman Munson, the night the empty spot behind home plate during the moment of silence tore everybody to pieces. Narron could only make it so far before he broke down and cried.
Ron Santo, Cubs announcer and should-be Hall of Famer, talked about how he went up in a plane with Kenny Hubbs piloting one day and the next day Hubbs crashed and died in that same aircraft.
Santo, who has battled heart problems and underwent the amputation of his foot related to his diabetes, mentioned his pal Don Drysdale dying in a hotel room long after his playing career had ended.
“Ever since Drysdale, every time I go to lock my [hotel room] door, I think about that,” Santo said. “I think: I hope it doesn’t happen in this room.”
It happened in Kile’s room, the room where unfortunately some marijuana was found. Nobody thinks the pot caused Kile’s heart to stop and anybody whose memory of him is tainted by that development was mistaken for elevating him or anybody else to saintly status. Steroids, after all, pose far greater health risks than marijuana, and if Ken Caminiti is to be believed, half of baseball is on them.
Kile was such an extraordinary athlete he made it all the way to the big leagues, even won 20 games one year. By all accounts, he was a devoted husband and father. No law says a man must have lived a perfect life to be missed by those who knew him.
Toxicology reports from yesterday’s autopsy aren’t expected back for another four to six weeks. To speculate on anything other than the marijuana found in his room would be irresponsible.