. . .

I just couldn't title it. I'm a couple of days late on this, because I didn't know until right this minute:

Steve Howe killed in truck accident

It's odd: As long as a long-troubled addict is alive, you can make jokes. You can laugh at the person's stupidity. You can shake your head at the wasted chances and shrug off the pictures snapped in front of the courthouse.

(Need examples? How about Darryl Strawberry or Dwight Gooden?)

Sometimes, you can get angry. You get angry for all the same reasons: waste, stupidity, etc.

And then, this. It's not funny at all. Not anymore. And there really isn't any anger there, either. I just feel sad. That's the thing about addiction: You watch the person toss his life away. You deal with it the only way you know how – either with anger or humor or a combo of both. You watch, helplessly, through the nods and the methodone and the rehab and the relapses. You watch, sometimes, as he trades one addiction for another (alcohol, gambling). Through it all, you wait. You wait for the phone call that says he finally did himself in, whether from an overdose, a bad deal, or an accident. Sometimes, you get so damned tired of the waiting that you push him out of your head.

So you're not waiting anymore, not really. Not consciously. You hear through friends that he's gotten his act together. You have a distant, cautious hope, but you've heard that all before. You can say, "oh, that's nice," and mean it. Then, you go for months, maybe even years, without hearing anything else.

And then you get the news. Sometimes it comes in a hysterical phone call. Sometimes it's a headline. You're not surprised. If you're angry, it's usually directed inward . . . you feel stupid for letting that hope creep in and take hold. If you were close to the person, you feel guilty for letting him go.

For him, you're just deeply sad. At the funeral, you're deeply sad for the family. It isn't until later, days, months later, that the anger comes again to be directed at him again. For all the familiar reasons: waste, stupidity, etc.

If you've read this, you probably guessed that someone close to me was an addict. He, too, died in a car accident. The toxicology came back clean, though. It was, in the end, just a freak thing – maybe he was switching the radio station or reaching for his Dr. Pepper in the cup holder. The wrong place - right into a telephone pole - at just the wrong time.

Steve Howe . . . I want to feel the familiar anger. He could have been so much, and he threw it away with both hands. His pitches were junky, dirty batters' nightmares. He had a gift. And he wasted it. I don't want to feel sorry for him.

And then I remember: sadness first. There's plenty of time for the anger later.