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Diamond Diary by Kevin Cooney
6/28/2002 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
June 28, 2002
A Death in the Family
If you remember back in April, we talked about our good friend and fan Edwin Nelson. He had been hospitalized and was not doing real well. Our players responded immediately and made a number of visits to Edwin. They would stop by and talk about baseball and the many other subjects that would surface any time you engaged Edwin Nelson in conversation.
It was great news when I heard that he was back home. We spoke before the A-Sun tournament, and he gave me much encouragement to pass on to our guys. It must have helped because we started to play our best baseball from that point.
The last three weeks of the season were a hectic blur of travel and excitement. As happens with many of us, I didn't get time to speak again with this particular fan. On Monday night I was thinking that I needed to call and discuss the regional win and all the drafted players. I knew Ed would get a kick out of all the pitchers that were drafted, since that was his area of expertise. In fact, when we first became acquainted, he proceeded to inform me of all the mechanical failings of our pitchers. He stressed that they needed to be taught differently. He didn't know that I was the pitching coach. After knowing him, I don't think it would have stopped him from giving his opinion.
Monday night, Edwin passed from this life into the next.
If heaven is all that we love, Edwin Nelson will be surrounded by family, good friends, treasured books, and most of all... baseball. We shed tears now, not for him, but for our loss, and the loss to his family.
At his wake last night I learned that Edwin Nelson was actually a renowned criminal attorney in his hometown of Brockton, Mass.(I wonder if he purposely kept that from me, knowing my feelings about lawyers). He was referred to as the "Errol Flynn" of the courtroom. His daughter, Andrea told me that he was the type of man whose entry into a room stopped conversations. She said that leaving such a publicly acclaimed life and moving to Florida, proved to be a difficult thing for her Dad.What helped this transition was his association with FAU Baseball. Andrea said that the ups and downs of our teams over the years energized her Dad. I know that from our conversations, he was an astute baseball man. One year he told me that we had a "real dog" on the team, and that even though he was extremely talented, he would not play him if he were the coach. Edwin had a way of cutting through the foam and getting right to the beer!
So we have one less fan here in town, but his family poured out their gratitude to me for all we did for their Dad while he was here. In return, I thanked them for the gift their Dad provided our kids. That was the chance to visit with a perfect stranger, years older than them, and spend time doing something that some 19-22 year olds rarely get the chance to do. He did more for us than he knows. He gave me another reason to be proud of this special group whose year has been chronicled on these pages.
Baseball has traditionaly been romanticized by writers and filmmakers. I agree, but there must be a reason. What is it about this game that binds so many disparate people together? Fathers and sons, Mothers and sons, coaches and players, fans and players...families. Maybe it's that aspect of a team game that is so dependant upon the isolated pressure of so many individual performances. Who knows?
Jim Bouton wrote in Ball Four that "you spend your whole life gripping a baseball...only to find at the end that it had its grip on you."
I know that Edwin Nelson never let go of his grip on the baseball. May he rest in peace. KC
PS- Should any of you want to drop Phyllis Nelson a note or a card, her mailing adress is: Phyllis Nelson 271 sw 7th terr Boca Raton, FL 33486
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