Mike Hazen’s wife was diagnosed as glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Then the baseball community around them stepped up.
For the first time in six years and just two seasons after losing 110 games, the Arizona Diamondbacks had clinched a playoff spot, sealing up a National League wild card on the season’s penultimate day. Clad in neon ski goggles and champagne-soaked black shirts, the celebrants filled Chase Field’s signature pool in right-center. A spontaneous roll call began, summoning coaches and executives into the water, and one by one they took the plunge.
He came back because his children wanted him to and because he had been nagged by the sense of a job left undone. Hazen knew home was where he was supposed to be, that he faced the infinitely harder task than a disappointing season, yet he couldn’t help feeling as if he should have been stuck in the baseball muck, too.
He was grateful for the flexibility the Diamondbacks offered him and knew he was in the right place. Yet Hazen couldn’t shake the feeling that he belonged in two emotionally draining spots at once. The Diamondbacks went 3-24 the same month Hazen announced his leave. Though he and Sawdaye talked at least seven times a day, that couldn’t make up for being absent in the season’s hardest moments. “I didn’t feel guilty about leaving baseball for my wife at all,” Hazen said.
Each boy said yes. Baseball and the Diamondbacks had been their lives before, and they would be again.As Hazen vaulted over the outfield fence and into the drink, a new feature of his appearance poked out of his beer-soaked sleeve. His left arm is now a tapestry of remembrance, the product of more than 30 hours under a tattooist’s needle. Nicole is depicted as a dove, the four boys as animals of their own. Seventeen-year-old Charlie is an eagle, and 16-year-old John is a bear.
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