ON A 68-DEGREE Saturday in late October, Artwork Shamsky left his residence to see a pal. He grabbed a baseball and an previous glove, and took the subway to a abandoned prepare automobile on the Lengthy Island Rail Street. New York was nonetheless skittish, and Shamsky had been too. He’d by no means been so susceptible in his life. However he wasn’t fascinated by the pandemic, or himself. One thought stored floating by his head: “What if he would not acknowledge me?”
Shamsky had simply turned 79 years previous, however there was a continuing whir about him; all the time someplace to go and one thing to do. When he was younger and got here to New York for the primary time, the crowded frenetic life bothered him. Now he missed it. If issues have been regular, and he wasn’t sporting a masks, he in all probability would not be capable of transfer concerning the metropolis with out being acknowledged. Shamsky was a member of the Amazin’ 1969 New York Mets. It had been greater than a half century since they received the World Collection, however he was nonetheless getting 10-20 fan letters every week. And it by no means bought previous. Shamsky might have been born in St. Louis, however he was made in New York. He was without end an Amazin’ Met.
The prepare rumbled previous Queens and Westbury, locations the place he was adored. His closing cease was Central Islip, close to the house of shortstop Bud Harrelson. If Shamsky was a glue man who helped maintain the staff collectively all these years, then the previous seven months solely cemented his maintain. In August, they misplaced pitcher Tom Seaver to Lewy physique dementia and problems of COVID-19. Seaver was the staff’s true star, with Hollywood appears to be like, a farm-boy work ethic and two nicknames: “Tom Terrific” and “The Franchise.”
When Harrelson realized of his teammate’s dying, he cried out “No!” However a number of hours later he had forgotten about it. Harrelson has Alzheimer’s illness, and if 2020 reaffirmed something, it is that point is valuable. Shamsky did not wish to wait.
Harrelson’s ex-wife Kim Battaglia, considered one of his caregivers, met Shamsky on the prepare station. They drove to the home, and met Harrelson inside. “Hey Buddy,” he stated, “It is Sham.”
The room full of awkward small speak, however then Shamsky stated one thing acquainted, and Harrelson’s blue eyes lit up.
“Do you wish to have a catch?”
AN AGING CELEBRITY, who, regardless of many Google searches I can’t appear to search out, as soon as was requested concerning the secret of longevity. “Do not fall,” they stated.
I by no means actually thought of that quote till Thanksgiving 2019. My mother wasn’t feeling properly, and she or he fell popping out of the bathe. She didn’t wish to go to the hospital, however then spent the following three months in hospitals, tormented by quite a few medical points, and by no means once more stood lengthy sufficient to stroll to the toilet. Linda Dian Merrill died March 2, 2020, days earlier than the coronavirus shut down the world. She was 73, however was splendidly bizarre and youthful, by some means managing to have fewer traces on her face than me.
Within the isolation of the previous yr, I have been oddly grateful. I did not have to fret about monitoring in a lethal virus after I visited her residence, or say goodbye to her on an iPad. I could not fathom what it might have been like for her to be right here, of a sure age and immediately within the crosshairs of a world pandemic.
Now, a yr later, the coronavirus has killed greater than 570,000 in the US. About 80 % of those that have died have been 65 and older, in response to the Kaiser Family Foundation, regardless of that demographic representing simply 16 % of the inhabitants. Nursing houses and group-care facilities have been hit particularly laborious within the early levels of the pandemic, folks dwelling and dying alone whereas youthful generations fought over haircuts, masks and freedom. Some political sorts even recommended that grandparents is perhaps prepared to die to save lots of the economic system. The aged grew to become disposable. Perhaps that is all the time been a part of America, and COVID-19 simply laid it naked.
However in sports activities, there’s a reverence for previous gamers and their historical past. Particularly baseball. In 2020, whereas folks have been trapped indoors, baseball-card amassing skilled a growth. Individuals like ’69 Mets pitcher Jerry Koosman acquired 50 letters every week. It introduced happiness to Koosman, who seemed ahead to his 100-foot stroll to the mailbox together with his border collie Buddy (who’s not named after Harrelson).
The ’69 Mets have been heroes who transcended sports activities, however for the previous yr, they have been like everybody else who falls on the flawed finish of statistical classes, grappling with their mortality in a time when staying alive and wholesome is deemed a victory. They share that victory collectively, as a result of once you’re a part of one thing particular, bonds by no means break. Friendship can maintain you going through the darkest yr of your life.
It may very well be stated that 1969 was a troublesome yr too. The nation was divided over the Vietnam Conflict and nonetheless reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy the earlier yr. Racial tensions have been excessive. Two unimaginable issues occurred that summer time: A person landed on the moon and the perennially hopeless Mets instantly had the look of a winner.
That they had by no means, of their seven years of existence, been above .500 after the ninth sport of the season, by no means completed larger than ninth within the 10-team Nationwide League. Their preseason odds to win the World Collection have been 100-to-1. The ’69 season didn’t begin with nice promise, both. The Mets opened with an 11-10 loss to the enlargement Montreal Expos and misplaced 14 of their first 23 video games. However they received 11 straight from Could 28 to June 10 and took the town on an unforgettable joyride.
The video games have been dramatic, the pitching was dominant and a forged of assorted underdogs contributed in clutch moments. If dwelling among the many dredges of Main League Baseball humbled them, successful collectively fused them. They trusted one another up and down the lineup.
In mid-August, the Mets sat in third place within the Nationwide League East, 10 video games again. They proceeded to win 38 of their final 49 and completed first, eight video games forward of the Chicago Cubs. They swept Hank Aaron and the Atlanta Braves within the NLCS. Their World Collection opponent was the Baltimore Orioles, a group of future Corridor of Famers who’d received the AL East by a margin of 19 video games.
The Mets misplaced Sport 1, then rattled off 4 victories to change into champions. They have been the sports activities model of Neil Armstrong and The Beatles. Shamsky appeared on the duvet of a vogue journal, locked in an embrace with mannequin/actress Lauren Hutton. America was so in love with the Mets that a group of gamers went to Las Vegas and did two exhibits an evening at Caesars Palace.
They sang “The Unattainable Dream.”
They represented hope.
“They captured the eye of the world,” says tv author Phil Rosenthal, a New York native and “Everyone Loves Raymond” creator. “What made the ’69 Mets additional particular was that they have been underdogs. When you have been a brief little child like me, and considerably weak and bullied, perhaps this staff meant much more as a result of they have been relatable.
“When you have been alive, it meant one thing to you. That is how large it was. The little guys received.”
WHEN THE PANDEMIC hit New York, Shamsky retreated to Florida. He did not assume he could be there lengthy.
His metropolis was resilient. When terrorists flew planes into the dual towers of the World Commerce Heart in 2001, the folks of New York got here collectively. They grew to become stronger.
However now, everybody needed to be aside. Shamsky tried to remain busy in Florida. The important thing to staying upright, he says, is being lively. Having a goal. He labored out six days every week, and took lengthy walks within the solar. He realized how you can do Zoom calls and began “The Artwork Shamsky Podcast.”
“You must discover methods to remain related,” he says. “In any other case, you fade away.”
Shamsky by no means let the friendships from 1969 fade away. He is the man who briefly stood in as finest man at teammate Tommie Agee’s wedding ceremony when Cleon Jones was working late. And when Agee died instantly of a coronary heart assault at age 58, he and Jones made some extent to take care of his widow Maxcine and their little daughter J’nelle, making check-in calls and visits. A number of years in the past, Shamsky gave a speech at J’nelle’s 30th party.
He wished to be an All-Star, nevertheless it was by no means going to occur in New York. Not with supervisor Gil Hodges’ platoon system. Shamsky, a left-handed outfielder, batted .300 in 1969, however due to matchups, Ron Swoboda began over him in 4 of the 5 video games of the World Collection. To this present day, Shamsky says he would not commerce 100 extra at-bats, or 100 occasions his wage, for that season.
His first visitor on the Artwork Shamsky podcast was his previous teammate Ed Kranepool. A number of months into the pandemic, the COVID-19 numbers began spiking in Florida.
“I see folks with out masks on, and it is a little bit scary,” Shamsky says. “They do not care.”
He went again to New York.
THE FIRST TEAM casualty to COVID-19 got here in Could. Nancy Pignatano was afraid of getting sick. She was dwelling in Florida along with her husband Joe, the Amazin’ Mets bullpen coach. She was following the precautions.
They stayed indoors, had their groceries delivered and restricted her outside journeys to grabbing the paper and the mail. However she caught COVID anyway and died in Could on the age of 86. For months, Joe did not perceive that she was gone. He has dementia. His household would inform him that she was out with buddies, and he’d smile and be OK.
Their youthful son, Frank, nonetheless lives in Brooklyn. The final phrases he heard from his mother have been over the cellphone. “Frankie, I like you,” she informed him. “I can not speak.”
Frank is the one to move alongside the reminiscences now. He was 12 years previous that season — his nickname was “Little Piggy” — however he speaks as if it was his finest yr too. The Mets stored a tomato backyard within the bullpen through the ’69 season. Joe discovered the wild plant, and as a substitute of ripping it out, he watered and tended to it. “He was a Brooklyn Italian,” Frank says. “You give them a patch of grime and so they plant tomatoes.”
Joe’s easiest pal, Frank says, was Gil Hodges. They performed collectively for the Brooklyn and L.A. Dodgers and the 1962 enlargement Mets, then began teaching collectively in Washington in 1965. They’d be on the ballpark all day, then meet for playing cards later with their wives at evening, the room a chain-smoking haze of crab claws, blended nuts and banter.
“I inform my children it was a less complicated time,” Frank says. “You can have a home and a automobile within the storage and have children on one wage. You’ll be able to’t try this immediately.”
Hodges was a Marine throughout World Conflict II, however he all the time downplayed it. He used to inform his son Gil Jr. that he labored behind a desk. It wasn’t till the boy was older that he discovered that his father was a gunner within the 16th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion, fought in Okinawa and was awarded a Bronze Star.
He performed with Jackie Robinson in 1947, the yr Robinson broke the main league coloration barrier. Hodges was a simple man with little ambiguity, however he was additionally a dreamer. Simply earlier than Sport 1, 19-year-old Gil Jr. was sitting in his dad’s workplace, marveling over the Orioles’ stat sheet, when he requested him what the Mets have been doing on the identical discipline with Baltimore. Hodges bought up, closed the door and sat subsequent to him.
“Pay attention, son,” he informed him, “I’ve 25 guys on the market who assume we are able to win. That is all that issues.”
The Mets had back-to-back 83-79 seasons after the World Collection, and Pignatano stored tending to the tomato plant. That they had excessive hopes heading into ’72, a season that was delayed by a gamers’ strike. Throughout spring coaching — Easter Sunday — Hodges and his coaches spent a morning taking part in 27 holes at a golf course in West Palm Seashore, Florida. Pignatano was placing his golf equipment within the trunk, Frank says, when Hodges suffered a coronary heart assault, fell backward and smacked his head on the sidewalk. Pignatano held him as he was dying.
Hodges was 47 years previous. For years, Pignatano blamed himself. He was proper subsequent to him. If he hadn’t rotated, he thought, he may’ve caught him. However Pignatano could not have accomplished something. Hodges’ son tried to clarify that to him many occasions.
“Once you love somebody like that … ” Gil Jr. says, “you’ll all the time really feel like you would’ve accomplished one thing. But it surely was out of his fingers.”
Pignatano has an image of Hodges in the home, and he’ll level to it and all the time says the identical factor.
“That is my finest pal.”
THE LAST TIME they noticed Tom Seaver was in 2017. 5 previous teammates stood in a parking zone attempting to not say goodbye, attempting not to consider how it might in all probability be the final time they’d be collectively.
It was two years earlier than the ’69 Mets 50-year reunion, and Shamsky had determined to put in writing a ebook. Maybe no sports activities staff has been written about greater than the ’69 Mets, so Shamsky’s co-author, Erik Sherman, was apprehensive at first. However after some brainstorming, Shamsky got here up with the proper pitch. They’d journey to Seaver’s residence in Calistoga, California, together with a number of different teammates, then Shamsky and Sherman would write concerning the expertise.
Harrelson, Koosman and Swoboda accompanied them on the journey. “After the Miracle” chronicles the expertise. They did not know what to anticipate. Seaver was having reminiscence issues by then, and Harrelson was within the early levels of Alzheimer’s. However on the final day of the journey, they caught Seaver on a great day. They ate lunch collectively and Seaver confirmed them round his winery.
The Corridor of Famer had a deep appreciation for the collective effort it took to win his solely championship, the diving catch by Swoboda that saved him in Sport four; the six innings of no-hit ball that Koosman threw in Sport 2 that swung the momentum the Mets’ means.
They appreciated one another’s variations. They nonetheless do. Koosman, for instance, occupies a few of his time watching Fox Information, Newsmax and OAN, whereas Swoboda nonetheless calls Vietnam “an unlawful battle.”
“He is a radical leftist and I am a conservative Republican,” Koosman says with amusing. “No … We love one another. We do. We’re good buddies. You play that lengthy with anyone, you expertise one thing that nobody else had. … You could have a bond like a brother. After we speak, it is similar to we noticed one another yesterday.”
A number of hours after they received the World Collection, Swoboda sat within the Diamond Membership on the fourth ground of Shea Stadium, staring out the window on the trampled-over discipline, taking in what they’d simply accomplished. He got here to appreciate that nothing in his life would shine brighter than that second when he was 25.
Round summertime, within the top of the pandemic, Swoboda anxious about his nation. He thought concerning the divisiveness and the wrestle between reality and fiction on the web. The late 1960s was a tumultuous time. However Swoboda stated it was nothing like now.
“I really feel a giant darkness approaching right here,” he says, “as a result of we’re so separated as folks.”
ED KRANEPOOL KNEW about darkness. He was trapped underneath the grey clouds of New York. He couldn’t exit as a result of he acquired a transplanted kidney a yr earlier, which made him extra susceptible.
Regardless of having the toes faraway from his left foot due to an an infection, Kranepool was nonetheless lively earlier than the pandemic, working within the credit-card processing enterprise. He beloved assembly shoppers for lunch and the sensation he’d get when he walked right into a restaurant and somebody stated, “Krane!” after which he may inform his tales.
However then the times have been diminished to him ready for the New York Put up and Newsday to hit his door. That, together with espresso and breakfast, bought him to about 9 a.m. Then he had nothing to do. His spouse performed canasta along with her buddies on the pc, and that stored her occupied, however Kranepool felt remoted.
He knew it may very well be worse. By summertime, 1000’s of New Yorkers in nursing houses and long-term care services had died of COVID-19. To buoy spirits, the Mets performed digital visits with space long-term care services and nursing houses. In August, Kranepool was the particular visitor for the Amazin’ Alumni collection with AristaCare at Cedar Oaks, a facility in a bed room suburb of New York Metropolis. About 10 residents eagerly waited in a parquet floored room with balloons and a Mets banner precariously hanging within the again. Kranepool was on the Zoom name whereas ready within the parking zone for his spouse Monica — the boss, he jokingly calls her.
However there have been technical difficulties, and his face was diminished to a gray-and-white avatar. Kranepool could not discover the video button, then his connection was poor and the feed stuttered. “Is that any bettah?” he requested.
The feed pale out and in for 40 minutes and was indecipherable at occasions. It was virtually becoming when halfway by the decision the Mets banner fell within the again. However members of his viewers, who hadn’t hugged their kids or grandchildren in virtually six months, did not appear to care. They requested questions and clung to his phrases.
“I want I may get to the ballpark,” he informed the group. “So let’s clear up the act with COVID. I do not like watching the video games on TV. I wish to be there.”
When it was over, a person sitting within the entrance began to cry. Robert Bongard, a 70-something in a Mets jersey, hadn’t seen his spouse for the reason that pandemic began, and hadn’t had an entire lot to look ahead to. He stated he’d waited his entire life to fulfill an Amazin’ Met.
WHENEVER SOMETHING BAD occurs, Jay Horwitz is normally one of many first to get a name. Horwitz was the Mets’ head of media relations for almost 4 many years, and is now the staff’s historian and vp of alumni relations. He’s so dedicated to the Mets’ household that each evening, round suppertime, he calls Gil Hodges’ widow Joan. “I get pleasure from speaking to her,” Horwitz says.
On Aug. 31, Horwitz was residence studying the paper when he bought the decision no person wished: Tom Seaver had died at age 75. Eleven teammates at the moment are gone, and each dying is tough, however shedding Seaver felt like the tip of an period. There could be no public service, not with the pandemic, and no tributes in entrance of a packed ballpark.
Horwitz scrambled to name Seaver’s previous teammates. He did not need them to listen to about it on the information. Cleon Jones was engaged on a home in Cellular, Alabama, when Horwitz known as. Usually, it takes so much to drag Jones away from his work, however when Jones bought the decision about Seaver, he put all the pieces down and went residence to inform his spouse.
“She simply prayed and we held fingers,” Jones says. “It was a lack of not solely a teammate. It is the lack of a pal and somebody I extremely revered.”
Within the clubhouse celebration after the World Collection, Jones and Seaver have been interviewed collectively, and Seaver held his teammate tightly.
“It is the best feeling on the earth,” Seaver stated of the championship.
The change may not appear to be a lot immediately, nevertheless it meant all the pieces to Jones, who grew up within the Jim Crow South. When Jones was a baby, a white man ordered his dad and mom to get to the again of a bus line, and a battle broke out. Police got here searching for his dad, and his dad and mom fled their hometown of Cellular, Alabama, going separate methods and leaving Jones to be raised by his grandmother.
He endured racial slurs and rejections as he rose by the minor leagues, and it did not cease when he reached the Mets. Jones hit .340 in 1969, and caught the ultimate out of the World Collection. He beloved that staff, regardless of the one or two gamers who Jones stated would have a smile for him and his Black teammates on the sector and contempt for them off of it. Half a century later, Jones will not determine these gamers. He’d moderately give attention to the 20-plus others he calls “brothers.”
“There are such a lot of methods to battle,” Jones says. “However you need to do it in a means that’s going to be useful.”
He finally went again residence to Alabama and Africatown, which as soon as served because the docking place for the final slave ship to return to America. He began the Final Out Group Basis, a non-profit group that refurbishes and builds inexpensive houses for the neighborhood. Jones may be very hands-on. Sooner or later final summer time, he could not come to the cellphone as a result of he was chopping down a tree. He does absolutely anything, and even fixes roofs. He says he can nonetheless climb ladders, however refrains from leaping off homes like he used to.
“I am 78,” he says, “however do not inform anybody.”
Due to his work, Jones is not the simplest particular person to get ahold of. Swoboda oftentimes simply talks to his spouse Angela. When hurricanes have been bearing down on the Gulf Coast final fall, Kranepool informed Jones and his spouse to return as much as New York and stick with him. “Effectively, I do not assume it’ll be that dangerous,” Jones informed Kranepool. “However I recognize it, Eddie.”
Jones has watched racial and social progress inch ahead and slide backward. When he noticed the video of George Floyd being killed by a Minneapolis police officer late final spring, he thought of all of the occasions Black males have been confronted with these conditions however did not get pleasure from a digicam cellphone. He has no thought whether or not the social justice efforts will result in substantial change.
“As a minority, as a Black particular person, we dream so much,” Jones says. “However we dream as a result of it was a very long time earlier than we may do the rest. Now, a few of us stop to dream as a result of they see no means that issues can change or be totally different for them as a result of it has been so dangerous so lengthy.
“However I am a optimistic thinker. I simply imagine issues will likely be higher sooner or later.”
IN THE KITCHEN at Bud Harrelson’s home sits a digital picture body. It rotates photos of him in varied levels of his life. Typically, a photograph of him in his Mets uniform pops up, and he’ll keep in mind. “That is me,” he’ll say. Different occasions, the ballplayer within the picture is a stranger.
He was known as Twiggy again in his taking part in days as a result of he was 5-foot-11 and 155 kilos, however his teammates by no means questioned his toughness. Harrelson is named a lot for a brawl with Pete Rose through the 1973 NLCS as he’s for his Gold Glove.
Harrelson had a two-year stint because the Mets’ supervisor within the early 1990s. In 2000, he grew to become a co-owner, coach and vp of the Lengthy Island Geese, an unaffiliated minor-league staff. One among his favourite issues to do was to stroll across the concourse, signal autographs and meet folks.
Harrelson went public together with his prognosis as a result of he wished to teach others about Alzheimer’s illness. However when Shamsky invited him on the journey to Calistoga in 2017, Harrelson did not wish to go. He did not know what to anticipate. However ultimately, he discovered it comforting. Seeing Seaver, he informed Battaglia, made it really feel as if he wasn’t alone.
Harrelson’s neurologist informed him that one of the simplest ways to sluggish the illness’s development was socialization. The pandemic ended all of that.
He had caregivers who got here in — he was one of many fortunate Individuals who may afford it — however when the pandemic hit, Battaglia needed to ship them residence. They did not wish to danger getting Harrelson sick. However even earlier than that, a lot of the burden nonetheless fell on the household. Harrelson’s cognition has declined to the purpose through which he wants round the clock care, and requires assist for basic items akin to showering, dressing and utilizing the toilet.
He is uncomfortable with having strangers assist him with personal issues, so his household handles a lot of that. Together with Battaglia.
It isn’t all that uncommon, she says, once you’re in the midst of an not possible end result, when there isn’t a miracle rally and the one ones left to handle what’s left of a guardian’s life are the youngsters. Battaglia and Harrelson divorced in 2013, however in March 2020, she moved into the home and took care of Harrelson so their 33-year-old son Troy, and the opposite kids, did not have to hold the entire burden.
“I like him,” she says of Harrelson. “It isn’t a job for me.
“He is the kindest, most beneficiant man I’ve ever met.”
AFTER BEING COOPED up for 9 months, Ed Kranepool wished to go to his son and his grandchildren for Christmas in North Carolina. He had all of it deliberate out. He’d pack up some presents of their Audi, make sandwiches for him and Monica, and so they’d arrive in 10 hours and would not even must go inside wherever alongside the way in which. They’d have a quiet Christmas collectively, after which they’d maintain going south to see their daughter in Florida. Every little thing could be wonderful.
When Kranepool informed his physician of his plan, it didn’t go over properly. “My physician informed me I used to be loopy,” he says. “I would spent 9 months in the home. Why expose myself when the vaccine was on the finish of the tunnel?
“It wasn’t the neatest factor to do.”
Kranepool stayed residence. Christmas was one other grey, gloomy day spent inside.
In January, Kranepool grew to become eligible to obtain the COVID-19 vaccine. He secured a late-January appointment within the Bronx, the place he was a highschool star almost 60 years earlier, and the lifetime Met acquired the Moderna vaccine at a web site close to Yankee Stadium.
SHAMSKY AND HARRELSON bought vaccinated too. By August, Battaglia was capable of rent full-time caregivers. She not too long ago discovered one with whom Harrelson connects, and he is glad more often than not. However the lack of socialization up to now yr, she says, has accelerated his decline. Typically Harrelson must be reminded to eat. He speaks principally in one-word solutions. He wakes up in the midst of the evening, prompting Battaglia and his different caregivers to nervously examine a monitor to ensure he is OK.
Early this spring, Battaglia was trying to find residence security data for Harrelson when she came across a brand new memory-care facility close by. It will encompass him with folks skilled in dementia care and provides him much-needed socialization. In June, Harrelson will transfer into the power. Battaglia says she wasn’t searching for any choice that took him away from his residence. However she concedes that it is time.
“It is more durable and more durable to handle residence care,” she stated. “And it is isolating.”
Shamsky began checking in frequently with Harrelson after the ’19 reunion. Harrelson wanted a helper on the occasion, and Shamsky fortunately volunteered. He rode out with him onto the sector in a cart that day, hanging on to his previous teammate in order that he would not fall out.
Battaglia, who serves on the Alzheimer’s Affiliation board in Lengthy Island, says Shamsky has been a continuing. However she would not blame any previous buddies who wished to name and did not. She understands that folks have households and lives of their very own. She additionally is aware of the awkwardness and uncertainty of seeing somebody from the very best time in your life who’s devolved into his worst state.
However this is the factor: Harrelson, in some methods, by no means actually forgot baseball. Throughout final yr’s lockdown, his grownup kids would take him out to play catch, attempting to interact him, and Harrelson would exactly toss the ball forwards and backwards for at the least 20 minutes. It was one of many few issues that also felt pure to him.
When Shamsky known as final fall, Battaglia informed him to convey his glove. So he grabbed considered one of his previous Mets gloves and a baseball and bought on the subway. Erik Sherman met them at Harrelson’s home. They stood about 30 ft aside and performed a three-way sport of catch within the entrance yard. Backwards and forwards. Harrelson smiled. It was like they have been warming up for a sport.
“For lack of a greater phrase, it was non secular for me,” Shamsky says. “Invigorating.”
They ate lunch, and Shamsky stated his goodbyes on that autumn day in the midst of the pandemic. He stated he’d be again.
ESPN producer William Weinbaum contributed to this report.