Rangers devastated by fan's tragic death
Rangers devastated by fan's tragic death. Josh Hamilton just wanted to make a young boy and his father happy by tossing them a baseball.
But when the father fell over the wall in left field – a drop of about 20 feet - trying to catch the ball, and ultimately died on the way to the hospital, it shook the Rangers' All-Star center fielder.
"It was just hard for me, hearing the little boy screaming for his daddy after he had fallen," said Hamilton, who spent a long night being comforted by his family. "And then being home with my kids. It really hit home last night."
Shannon Stone, a firefighter from Brownwood, died from cardiac arrest after suffering injuries from falling into a gap between the left field wall and the front row of the stands. Stone was attending the game with his 6-year-old son, Cooper.
"I can't think what they're going through, I can't imagine it," Hamilton said. "All I can think about is just praying for them and knowing God has a plan. We don't always understand what that plan is when these things happen."
Hamilton was given the option of not playing Friday's game, the second of a four-game series with the Oakland Athletics. He declined.
"There's nothing that would benefit me from not being out there playing," Hamilton said. "I talked with Wash [manager Ron Washington], I talked with [outfield coach] Gary Pettis. If I feel like I need some time, I'll take some time. But there's nothing that I could do by not playing."
Hamilton wasn't the only one having a tough time digesting the events from the night before. A somber mood permeated Rangers Ballpark in Arlington on Friday and the team's normally raucous clubhouse was subdued.
A father-son trip to the ballpark is normally a happy occasion, not one that ends in tragedy.
"You have a bunch of guys who drove to the ballpark today and I'm positive that baseball wasn't the No. 1 thing on any of our minds," designated hitter Michael Young said. "It's difficult, especially when there are people in here who have kids and people who love the game and watched the game with their fathers growing up."
Everyone connected to the Rangers organization expressed sympathy and concern for the Stone family. The Rangers established a memorial fund in honor of Stone and lowered the flags in the stadium to half staff. A moment of silence was observed before Friday's game and both the Rangers and A's will wear black ribbons on their jerseys the rest of the series.
But the grind of a 162-game season won't wait, even in the aftermath of a tragedy, which is why Washington did his best to project a businesslike attitude.
"I expect us to continue to play baseball the way we've been playing. We all feel bad about what happened but no one cancelled this game today. It's got to be played and we're not going to use what happened yesterday as an excuse for not going out there and playing baseball."
Washington said news of Stone's death was whispered to him in the dugout during the game, but the players were not aware until Rangers CEO and president Nolan Ryan informed them in a closed-door meeting.
"We had our postgame victory music going," Young said. "We turned it down, [Ryan] said a couple of words and obviously everyone was pretty emotional at that point."
That emotional mood carried over into Friday's pregame preparations.
"We got to the field today, and everything was still pretty quiet in here," Young said. "Everyone is dealing with it in their own way. The first thing on our mind is our thoughts and prayers are with the Stone family and the members of the Brownwood fire department."
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