Summer Time

Last night I was talking to a very close friend about my day; gathering with my Family of 40,000 as we celebrated the life of Summer Serrano. I was at a loss at how to explain what the day felt like; what it all meant. We all have been to memorial services and celebrations of life, yet had anyone been to something like what we experienced yesterday?

From the very beginning, it felt more like Opening Day than a day of mourning. Padre jerseys were everywhere in the parking lot. When I walked into the venue, one of the first persons I saw was a man who wears three World Series rings; naturally there long before everyone else and that’s exactly how you find success in baseball and everywhere else.

In helping Bruce ad Delia, I was inside long before the doors opened to the public; much like I did before games at The Murph and later at the Ballpark. Again, when I shared that I had to keep looking at the walls and the ceiling to remind myself of where I was, I wasn’t kidding. One family member after another poured through the doors, as it appeared they were going to have to accommodate 40,000 people.

With yet another apology to Nick Canepa, whom I still hope knows imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, I will share a few more thoughts on the Celebration of Life for Summer Serrano.

As I mentioned yesterday, we can all come up with at least 3,141 great things to say about Summer. But for the sake of brevity I’ll keep it short…

We all know and love the adrenaline that came along with Trevor Time. And coming from me, you know it means a lot when I say it pales in comparison to the love we all have during Summer Time…

Favorite personal quote of the day came when introducing my son to Tim Flannery- “You’ve been coaching him for 13 years Tim, you just didn’t know it”. Honored to introduce Trevor to a man who epitomizes all that is good about the Sacred Game…

Never thought I would cry during “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. Started out as tears of sadness, ended with tears of joy in knowing what Summer would have thought of it…

Summer never served in the military, but the Medal of Honor Challenge Coin was a fitting tribute for Delia and Bruce. As I’ve said before and will say again and again, if baseball fandom was the military, Summer and the Madres would be Seal Team Six…

Had a brief but poignant moment of conversation with Alicia Gwynn. She and Tony are THE example of what it takes to make a success of the most Sacred form of teamwork…

Longtime Padres employee Andy Strasburg was in the house, sharing a letter from Cooperstown. Check out his stories. My favorite thing about the baseball is the storytelling aspect and for every great story you might have, Andy has at least 61 equal or maybe even better ones…

Though all the speakers of the day shared wonderfully, with laughs, tears and flat out hilarity; I don’t think anyone led the charge better than Brian Beechler. He pleaded with everyone to help get Summer honored on her birthday and it became a reality not long after the sun went down. Hey kid, you did good…

In the days leading up to Monday, I wondered if it would be poor taste to have my son Trevor wave my original Trevor Time flag when we gave Delia a standing ovation. As with many of the ideas I had for the day, I wondered what Summer would have thought of it. I can feel her smile as I write this, and I know her eyes were shedding happy tears when we all honored Delia the way we did…

Delia, Part Deux; She may have given birth to only one child, but she is Mom to hundreds of us…

Hearing Mudcat read the letter from Hoffy brought to mind past services for locally and nationally known dignitaries. I don’t feel quite the same about Summer. We all know she was a hell of a lot more important than that…

As a civilian, I’m not all that up to task on knowledge about military uniform protocol when it comes to baseball jerseys. But who else loved when Chaplain Don Biadog pulled that jersey over his uniform?...

It is often said what we call coincidence is actually God’s way of working anonymously. Summer is the Ultimate fan, Bruce is owner of Ultimate Sports Adventures. Coincidence? I think not…

Seeing Carlos, Andy, Mark and Archi from the 1998 team along with the guy who waved them home for each and every run was a reminder of how much we can accomplish together. Boys of Summer indeed…

Fan Experience Wizard Dr. Charles Steinberg hired Summer to the Pad Squad in 1995. No better place to start, in that her love for the game and everything about it is nothing short of Ruthian…

I’ve done several speaking engagements over the years and each time I came home from one I was filled with gratitude and humility for the opportunity. In the past 6 months I have done two for my Padres Family because of Summer. Greatest two speaking engagements of my life. Thank you…

No matter what I posted on Facebook, the first “like” usually came from Summer. I’m gonna miss that…

In talking with Carlos Hernandez and sharing our mutual sadness, I thought of the many friendships I’ve made with some of the most hallowed names in Padres history. I’ve never looked at it as “Hey, look at me; I know this guy or that guy.” No, it’s just a humility to have such great friends in my life. Baseball is just how we met…

I’ve long believed that the truest and purest measure of success is determined by how many lives you touch in a positive way. On that note, I’ve never been blessed to meet someone more successful than her…

Last time I saw so many Padres fans in Mission Valley, Phil Nevin had Mike Darr jr on his shoulder and Mayor Dick Murphy was boarding a helicopter bound for Downtown with home plate tucked under his arm. It may be safe to say we’ll never see such a large gathering of Friar Faithful in Mission Valley again. And that’s very fitting…

Mr. 3,000

One day in the classic comic strip Hagar the Horrible, main character Hagar was shown toasting the New Year. Another character quipped “Does he really have to toast each day individually?!” During that same year, I made a “resolution” to have at least one drink every day of the year. I was all of seventeen years old and I think I made it to somewhere in mid-May. Yeah, drinking was pretty much life from an early age. It took me nearly 20 years to realize the folly of such habits but it didn’t take nearly that long to learn I was an alcoholic.

Sometime around 1991 I read an article stating a person could be considered an alcoholic if he had a certain amount of drinks per occasion on a certain amount of occasions per week, month etc. I knew then, yet I did nothing. Drinking was too damn fun to even consider the possibility that it just might become a problem. The real problem is a drunk doesn’t know how big of a problem it can become until it becomes too big.

Those of you who have read past blogs of mine and the special few who helped me through those days know that I was in a very dark place when I took my last drink. I was contemplating suicide for the first and only time in my life. I just wanted the pain to end. I thought of so many different ways to do it and I had narrowed it down to a few different ways to make it look like an accident; at one point I actually practiced “accidentally” catching my arm in the seatbelt and plunging onto the street and into the path of an oncoming car. I was that desperate. Past blogs go more into detail of those days and if you’re so inclined, you can find the links on the page you’re reading now.

If there is any wisdom I can share, it’s that there is always hope. I’ve met people who thought their lives were over at 19, and others who got sober in their 70’s. I know men who lived out of shopping carts, eaten out of dumpsters and went years not having any food that hadn’t already had a bite taken out of it. I know women who were estranged from their entire families and guys who watched their fathers die in the bottom of a bottle of whiskey while setting upon the same paths themselves.

These people are now living lives beyond their wildest dreams; having seen their grown children for the first time in decades and their grandchildren for the first time ever in the same day. They’re living lives of service to others and creating joy not with the bottle but without it. They’re having children who will never see mommy or daddy drink and they’re going to ballgames with their sons and daughters; still enjoying the tailgate parties and drinking twice as many Pepsi’s as they used to margaritas and they’re enjoying cherished friendships with those who can drink like normal people. And they’re doing it all because they made a decision to seek change.

Several months ago I came upon the idea of checking up on how many days I had been sober. After all, sobriety is achieved one day at a time. Upon entering my sobriety date I learned I would, lord willing, reach 3,000 days sober on January 5^th, 2019. 3,000. That’s a milestone number in baseball terms. I thought about that first day, 24 hours sober for the first time in who knows how long. Over the years you may have heard a baseball term or two describing things outside baseball and the family I gained during my years in baseball proved to be vital in achieving and sustaining sobriety. It’s safe to say I very well may never had even a single day sober without certain members of my Padres family.

I left the Padres the day after I took my last drink and with less than 12 hours of sobriety under my belt, I had an early-morning conversation with my good friend Summer Serrano. That conversation did something for me I could not do for myself; see life from a perspective other than my own. Without getting into details, she told me how alcoholism affected her as a child, as a teen and as an adult.

Since then, she and her mom Delia have been huge supporters of my writing; it is safe to say that no one has been more supportive of my work. To show my humbled appreciation, I often shared my blogs with Summer before I shared them publicly, making her the first person to read them. Last week, I was excited not only for the opportunity to reach such a milestone of sobriety, but even more so to share it with her.

Now, I can only imagine the look in her eyes and the knowing smile she would have given me when I told her about it. Summer passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Wednesday. There is really no way to accurately describe how I felt when I received the news. Initially I thought she was posting about another loss to her family and when I realized it was her; it took all I had to keep from breaking down in the lunch room at work.

When Tony Gwynn passed away, we all had each other. Fans gathered at his statue and we laughed, we cried, we consoled each other. When I think of Summer, I think of her as the epitome of “Each Other”. She was what it meant to be a fan. Her dedication to the Padres made the word “Fan” seem downright trivial, and understatement. As I had told her on many occasions, if baseball fandom was the military, Summer and the Madres would be Seal Team Six.

For a brief moment, I considering scrapping plans for this blog piece, at least the title. How could I use such a term when my Padres family is mourning such a tragic loss of a loved one? Then I laughed at myself, for I know damn well what Summer would have said to the idea. She would have given me that stern look of hers and said “Don’t you DARE let go of that idea, I love it!” She probably would have even shed a tear or two, considering her love of baseball and her even stronger love of the REAL Mr. 3000 in San Diego. Yeah, I think there would have been some tears. Tears of joy; rooted in her knowledge that she played a vital role in this sober life of mine.

I don’t know what heaven is. I know people have an idea of what it might be like, and we all have our ideas of what we hope it’s like. And if it’s anything like I hope it is, Press Gate Bruce surely came in for late inning relief of St. Peter sometime Tuesday night. Kevin Towers was just behind the gate, smiling and holding a bottle of Patron. Tony and Cammie are offering a seat next to them, and Summer is giving them that sly grin of hers while they wait for her to decide. Peach is there, along with Mike Darr, Darrel Akerfelds and all the loved ones our Padres family has lost over the years. But of course, Summer declines all their invites and takes a seat with her beloved grandparents, her chair right next to 106-year old rookie Ray Chavez.

And somewhere, from even higher above; from heaven’s press box, a familiar voice says “Oh Doctor, you can hang a star on that life..”