“Baseball saved my life.”
The words on the page are a sucker punch to the senses, given the context.
We have this thing about sport being the savior. A mom swears it, no doubt, gymnastics kept her little girl from the wrong crowd. Football on the world’s dusty streets and ratty schoolyards keeps millions of kids out of trouble. And a 99-mph fastball steered Hideki Irabu clear of a violent end in the Japanese mafia.
Or so he believed. Hideki Irabu believed baseball saved his life.
Hideki Irabu is dead.