"A Tragedy In The Cardinal Family"

Somehow, someway, it's been 20 years since Darryl Kile

June 22, 2002.

It was back before every Cardinal game was on TV, especially in my area, so I was looking forward to the afternoon Cards/Cubs game being televised on FOX. However, when I turned the game on, there was the Red Sox and Dodgers. I was getting concerned that I wasn’t going to get the game—you know how markets and national broadcasts are—so I remember logging on to see what was happening.

My computer was in a different room from the TV and about the time I got on I heard Joe Girardi’s address to the crowd.

As he began to speak, I honestly thought this might be a delayed reaction of some sort to the passing of Jack Buck. The longtime announcer had died just four days before and the club hadn’t taken any time off for it. While that seemed odd, that was the only thing that my mind could come up with.

Until, a few moments later, Jack’s son made a different announcement.

It was unfathomable. How could a major league player, theoretically in the prime of his life, be gone so suddenly? Kile had thrown 7.2 innings of one run ball just four days ago against the Angels, right before the passing of Buck later that night. Now the two were connected in another way.

Kile was 33, just a few years older than I was at the time. I don’t think I’d given a lot of thought to players as people up to that point. Especially since coverage was different then, I don’t think I’d given much thought to his family life, but hearing about the young kids he had, including one that was less than a year old that would never really know his father, was crushing.

Unlike some stories of baseball deaths, there was nothing to latch on to, no blame to be assigned. The Cardinals have had more than their share of player deaths, with Josh Hancock and Oscar Taveras happening in 2007 and 2014. As tragic as those are, there were circumstances around them that made them easier to understand. Hancock was drunk, speeding, texting, and not wearing a seatbelt. Taveras as well had been drinking before getting behind the wheel. Those gave us a little understanding. We can understand bad choices, poor decisions. We have trouble with seemingly random tragedy.

It would have been so interesting to see what happened with the rest of DK’s career. He was signed through the 2003 season but you could easily imagine Walt Jocketty extending him after 2002 if his season had continued the way it was going. Of course, that might mean they never sign Chris Carpenter, who they acquired expecting him to pitch in 2003, or Jeff Suppan, who they picked up after the 2003 season. However, having Kile on that 2004 team might have made one of the best teams in Cardinal history even better and could have perhaps extended that Red Sox curse a little longer.

Imagine him a 37 year old on the 2006 team, the grizzled veteran still leaning on that curveball. How might history have changed there? Of course, he might have moved on by then but, like so many before and after, Kile seemed to thrive in St. Louis and it seems likely he’d have stayed put as long as he could.

You wonder if, because people would remember him differently, he’d been in the Cardinals Hall of Fame by now. I expect he would have been elected, though his protégé Matt Morris is still waiting for induction. The quality of his character, testified to by so many and the fact that both the Cardinals and the Astros have a Darryl Kile Award now, would have likely meant he was remembered fondly and would be currently part of the red jacket crowd. It would be so good to see him showing up occasionally on the Bally Sports Midwest broadcast, talking about his kids and grandkids.

That’s not the universe we live in, however. The Cardinals played the next night on Sunday Night Baseball but it was clear their hearts weren’t in it at all. St. Louis lost 8-3, making two errors and not getting on the board until the eighth, when Albert Pujols homered. Jason Simontacchi made the start that Kile was supposed to make.

Twenty years on, the memories are still fresh. A couple of years ago, Marcell Ozuna overslept for a game (or at least that was the official story) and the level of concerned was heightened because of the similarities with DK. Zack Thompson, just this season, became the first player to wear 57 in a game for the Cardinals since June 18, 2002. (In fact, Thompson pitched on June 18 of this year, throwing three scoreless innings against the Red Sox, though he had a couple of appearances before that.) The DK57 circle remains on the wall, reminding us that no day is guaranteed, no life is exempt from ending.

There’s now a generation of Cardinal fans who never knew Kile, never saw him snap off one of those curveballs like Adam Wainwright is famous for doing, never knew him as the ace of the staff. As long as there are those that did, though, this day will always be remembered as the day a rivalry was set aside to honor a fallen friend and a fanbase was never the same.