MLB jersey in 2011: Money, drugs, tragedy and history

Plenty of other years, #2 Derek Jeter jersey smashing a ball over the fence for a Richter Scale-jarring 3,000th hit would find itself among the five biggest stories in baseball. Same with two of the sport’s greatest players finding closure in their steroid trials, a rash of bone-crushing collisions at home plate and a pitcher winning the Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards.

If the ramifications from the new collective-bargaining agreement are as widespread as executives believe, perhaps we’ll look back on it as a seminal moment. Not yet, though. Ditto for Jerry Meals’ blown call at the end of a 19-inning game that helped prompt an overhaul in replay.

No, cracking the top 5 stories in baseball for 2011 took something bigger – a confluence of emotion-tickling, shock-delivering might. It took money and drugs and tragedy and history. It took a great year of the sport and reduced it to its essence. And so the countdown begins with a pair of fathers, one whose trip to the ballpark turned deadly, another who survived the unthinkable.

Here are the top five baseball stories of 2011:

5. The Tragedies

The pall surrounding the cheap Los Angeles Dodgers jersey permeated opening day. Normally joyous – especially with their bitter rivals and defending champions, the San Francisco Giants, coming to town – it bore instead the feeling of the first game in a slog of 162. Owner Frank McCourt would declare bankruptcy less than three months later. The team wasn’t very good. And that day, what happened at Dodger Stadium frightened away enough fans that the Dodgers ended the year drawing 627,179 fewer than the previous year.

Bryan Stow, a San Francisco fan, arrived that day clad in a Giants jersey ready to cheer for his team. In a parking lot after the game, two Dodgers fans, Louie Sanchez and Marvin Norwood, allegedly beat Stow into a coma from which his family feared he’d never recover.

Today, miracle of miracles, he’s talking, moving, eating, breathing – basic functions even doctors once figured impossible. He is alive. Changed, yes. Maybe forever. But still a father for his two children.

Cooper Stone misses his dad. He was named Shannon Stone, and he was a lieutenant in the Brownwood, Texas, fire department. He took Cooper to a Texas Rangers jersey cheap game in July. They sat in left field, near Cooper’s favorite player, Josh Hamilton. Shannon yelled at Hamilton and asked for a ball. Hamilton threw him one. Shannon reached over the rail and lost his balance. He fell 20 feet and died. He was 39. Cooper was 6.

Stone’s friends and family still struggle without him. He was a good man – loyal and kind and willing to give up his life to save others. That he endured more than a decade in an eminently dangerous job and left a wife and son behind because of a baseball touched the country. Everyone wanted to rewind life and urge Hamilton to throw the ball harder or Stone not to lean so far.

Only we can’t. wholesale Baseball jerseys took Shannon Stone away from his son. It almost stole Bryan Stow from his kids. The game can be cruel. Never so much as it was this year with two dads.