Thinking Out Loud

Weekly thoughts from all across the sports world

The sports world lost two active athletes this week. I remember my first thoughts when I saw the news about MLB pitcher Joe Kennedy's passing last week on the crawl at the bottom of the TV. "What is the rest of the story?" Certainly, a 28-year old pitcher doesn't just die. There had to be something else to it. But as it turned out there wasn't. Just a normal, healthy 28-year old dying. It was shocking.

But it wasn't any less shocking when the news came that Sean Taylor had been shot on Monday, and subsequently died at 24 on Tuesday. Even though what led to Taylor's death was the type of explanation I was looking for on Friday when I heard of Kennedy's, it still hits you.

We watch athletes. We put them on pedestals. We don't expect this things to happen. We look at them as invincible in so many ways.

So now Joe Kennedy and Sean Taylor, who were different in so many ways, are linked in the end. Both of them dying in the primes of their careers on this Thanksgiving weekend in their home state.

Both were tradgedies, neither made sense, both were so different, and yet they brought about the same stunned reaction from so many of us.