Last June, Dallas Morning News baseball writer Evan Grant took his ailing father to a baseball game in his hometown of Atlanta. At that time, doctors didn’t think his father, Sheldon, would make it through the month. Grant wrote an emotional piece about his father and their relationship to each other and to the game of baseball. (Warning: grab a tissue.)
I’ve known Evan and his family for a long time. Sheldon was a gentle man with a fighting spirit. When doctors told him he couldn’t do something, he did it anyway. When they told him he had a year to live, he lived five more. And then another.
Evan was in San Francisco yesterday getting ready to cover the Rangers game when he got a call from a nurse who said his father had taken a turn for the worse. He jumped on a plane and flew to Atlanta. He got to his father at 10PM last night. Evan and his mother, Rhoda, sat by Sheldon’s bed sharing life stories. Sheldon gave up his fight at 4:15AM (CST). He was 88. I just re-read the piece Evan wrote last year and it cleared my head of some of the silly things I think are important.
