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The Downside To Sports Is The Injuries

Sport has always been the area of escape, the place where we turn our passion loose and our costumed heroes win and lose on our behalf.

Then real life butts in. Hard.

On Wednesday night in Houston, Chicago Cubs outfielder Albert Almora Jr. felt those pangs after a line drive off his bat struck a 4-year-old child. She was taken to a hospital, according to the Houston Astros, and early reports did not indicate a serious injury.

Almora, however, was heartbroken. He’s the father of two boys.

“Right now I’m just praying and speechless,” Almora said.

Houston’s Minute Maid Park, like others in baseball, has put in protective netting to prevent this type of injury. But the netting ends at the end of the dugout on the third base side, and there have been calls to extend all stadium netting much further.

The news was just as unsettling in Jacksonville. New Jaguars quarterback Nick Foles and wife Tori are dealing with her miscarriage in the 15th week of pregnancy. Foles was a Super Bowl MVP with the Philadelphia Eagles and said that celebrating that with his wife and daughter was the peak of his career.

Now he is taking some time off from the Jaguars’ off-season program to heal with his family.

No matter what we say about athletes, whether it’s about activities on or off the field, we need to remember their humanity. They are not a race of supermen (or superwomen) and they live in the same world as we do.

They succeed. They fail. They have real emotions, real joy, real pain.

So we wish the best to that little girl and her family in Houston, to the anguished Almora and the grieving Foles family. They are all just like the rest of us.