The last 24 hours for the sports world has been surreal – & not in a good way. An avalanche of grief from surprise passings
It started w the sudden loss of a 6-9 center who’d been drafted in the first round by the Portland Trail Blazers, Caleb Swanigan. He was only 25. Caleb was a standout at Purdue before making it to the NBA. He was known in Portland for his generous work in the community.
Shortly after, we heard of the passing of Jaylon Ferguson, LB for the Baltimore Ravens. He was affectionately known by teammates as “JFerg” & those around him say he was a bundle of positive energy. He was only 26.
That was then followed up by the shocking passing of “The Goose” – Tony Siragusa. The D Lineman had won the super bowl – also w the Ravens, back in 2001, & bc of his larger than life personality, had made a career as a sideline reporter & analyst that so many (even casual) fans came to know & love. A gentle giant-type. The Goose was only 55.
Three deaths in a row to young athletes/former athletes like that, & it’s hard to fathom. So first & foremost for this post – if you’re feeling lost, questioning things, worrying abt the frailty of life, you’re not alone. Same Here. It’s times like these we need to be open abt our grief & stick together we w COMMUNITY. This is bigger than politics or anything else. This is life & death. Let’s be there for one another.
But the other common thread here is that we weren’t told the cause of death in any of these cases. We heard things like – “no foul play,” “found unresponsive,” & “please respect the privacy of the family.” I get very real & tactical when these things happen bc we need to be. I’ll ask this rhetorical question: where does your mind go, when we lose ppl at such young ages, & we don’t know/aren’t told, the causes of death?
In possibly 2 of the 3 cases, weigh management could have had something to do w the losses, but we don’t know. Having relationships w fans, current, & former players in sports, I’m gonna state the elephant in the room: when we lose ppl this young & we don’t hear a cause: the mind immediately goes to two places: suicide or overdose.
Maybe that’s not fair. But after ALL the losses we’ve experienced in that way, can you blame human nature? We’ve had all these suicides of D1 college athletes (6 recently) that we know of. We are told overdose deaths in the country are up 30k YOY, to the highest they’ve ever been. So why bring this up? What are we gaining by being quiet? It’s absolutely the fam’s right to be quiet. Here’s the BUT…if this is where the mind & the talk goes, when we lose folks tragically like this at such young ages, what is gained by the silence? What legacy is attempting to be preserved by silence? There’s so much shame arnd these topics that there SHOULDN’T be…& the quieter we are, the more that shame continues. The more we end up losing. I don’t know that this logic convinces anyone or any fam to think abt this differently. And I hope we do hear causes of death in these cases & they weren’t related to suicides or overdoses. But it has to be stated – something that was shared on a recent post: what happens in the dark & stays there, grows in the dark. At some point we need to address these things bc they aren’t going away & we need to find ways to stop them from happening. RIP to all 3 men😥.
