We'll Miss You, Sean Taylor

It's going to be a long day, probably a long week. I jumped out of bed early this morning to check Sean Taylor's condition after he was shot in the leg Monday morning and was horrified to see that he'd died overnight. I just want to emphasize this: this is terrible, terrible news, bad enough that I can't properly quantify it.

I don't know, I guess I have a lot of thoughts about this, but I don't have the vocabulary or energy to get into all of them. Mostly, I suddenly feel like its very important that somebody, maybe everybody is made aware that those of us who've followed Sean Taylor's career are crushed by this news for reasons that have nothing to do with his prowess on the football field. Taylor was 24 years old when he died, he had a fiance and a daughter and a wonderful life ahead of him. He was beloved by his teammates, his coaches, and those few members of the media that were able to get to know him. We'll miss him here in Washington. I don't tend to think about this most of the time, but now that this has happened, I'm more aware than before of how the players I cheer for and that represent my hometown have become a strange extension of my family and a part of my town's identity. Dozens and dozens of celebrities have died since I've been paying attention, but this one sucks so much worse than any I can remember.

This news is being reported in a handful of ways around Washington, and I'd like to discuss a few of them.

1. Andy Pollin is a fucking asshole. Taylor has been dead for less than 12 hours and Pollin is already scraping the bottom of the barrell for the worst possible angles on this story, questioning whether Taylor's on-field recklessness and feeling of invincibility translated to off-the-field recklessness, and whether his troubled past has finally caught up to him. Hey Pollin, you goddamn prick, let's recap: a 24-year old kid was shot and killed while he slept in his bed at his home. Take your muckraking and shove it up your ass, you heartless bastard.

2. Doc Walker isn't a whole lot better. He dared to ask ex-Redskin Ken Harvey (more on him below) how prepared the Redskins would be for their Sunday matchup at home against the Bills. Unbelievable. He then went on to suggest that had Sean Springs not been dealing with his own personal issues with his ailing father, he'd surely have seen this coming and kept Sean Taylor from going back down to Florida a week after an ominous break-in at Taylor's home. Way to go, Doc: because what this story really needs is an injection of contrived, bullshit speculation. Let's recap: a 24-year old kid was shot and killed while he slept in his bed at his home. Not interesting enough for you? I know what happens to guys who've had long football careers: they turn into football hardheads with permanent helmets, and every comment they make is a chance for them to prove how tough they are and how tough you have to be to play in the NFL. I strongly object to Doc Walker even bringing up Sunday's game. You can't imagine how sad the Redskins must be today, you can't imagine how sad many of us fans are, the last thing anybody wants to think about is the game of football.

3. Chic Hernandez, of Comcast Sports Net, seemed to be one guy who truly understood the sadness of this loss. Pollin tried to rake in a little Len Bias comparison, and Hernandez was in a unique position to comment on it, as he was a graduate student at Maryland when Bias died on draft night. Hernandez spoke eloquently about the feeling of wasted brilliance and wasted life, and expressed several other appropriate emotions before he was overcome and the interview ended. That more closely resembles how the rest of us feel, and it helps to know there are some members of the media that feel the same.

4. Ken Harvey was about 3 sentences in to reaming Pollin on live radio after the recklessness comment before Doc Walker kind of jumped in and steered things another way. Harvey is a great guy and family man; I met him once at the bookstore I worked in. Did you know he writes children's books? I met his son that day, he seemed like an outstanding kid. Harvey took exception to the characterization of a man that grabs for a weapon to protect himself, his home, his fiance, and his 18 month old daughter from an armed intruder at 3am as reckless. He was in the middle of making the point that all players exhibit recklessness and require a sense of invincibility on the field in order to do the job, but that off the field, you don't have to be reckless to do whatever you can to protect those things and people that are important to you. It's probably a good thing Doc interrupted, I have a feeling Pollin was really in for it.

5. Against all odds, local radio news powerhouse WTOP is reporting the Taylor death with far more class than local radio sports news powerhouse SportsTalk 980. All the above atrocities took place on 980, whereas WTOP was featuring the story and continuous interviews with various DC media members and personalities, but without any of the crap about on-field accomplishments or the speculation baloney on 980. I didn't get a chance to catch ESPN Radio, but if the Taylor story is getting the level of attention on their radio broadcasts its getting on Sportscenter, we won't know anything happened until next week. I'm not saying the world should shut down over this, but seriously: a 24-year old kid was shot and killed while he slept in his bed at home, and ESPN is showing taped analysis of the upcoming Packers/Cowboys game. I don't know, call me crazy, but the bigger, more important story in sports news might be the young standout that was murdered in his home yesterday. I don't decide what goes on Sportscenter, and it's probably a good thing, but I was pretty upset to see that in the 30 minutes I had the TV on this morning, they didn't even cut in with an ESPNews update.

Hey, lets all of us send good vibes to Sean's family and friends, and choose to think about and talk about this guy in terms of his value to them and his promise as a person, as a husband and as a father; lets try to remember this awesome guy for his strength of character and his impressive ability to take control of his life. Lets appreciate his loss as a loss to our strange, extended family and a tremendous loss to the identity of our community. We as fans got all we could get out of this guy, lets remind ourselves and those around us that the value of that goes beyond the game of football.