Summer, 1986. Picture day at Exhibition Stadium. At six years old, the only thing I wanted in the entire world was a picture with my favourite player, Damaso Garcia. He was #7; played second base. I was #7; played second base.

You’re supposed to live vicariously through sports. That’s what’s happening when you feel happy or sad depending on your favourite team’s results. I would live and die with every one of his at bats.

And the most intense pain I’d felt to that point in my life occurred when Damaso Garcia got out - which he did often. I remember everyone would make fun of me for liking him. He wasn’t great by any means, but that made him all the more endearing and made the attachment stronger.

I think I imagined in my young brain that he would understand all of this when we met on picture day; that we’d get around to talking about how I stood up for him all those times; how we’d suffered together through all those strikeouts and groundouts.

I can still remember the set up: Kids were lined up on the field to meet the players who were 10 ft. from the stands where parents stood with their cameras. There was some kind of elevated bench for kids to stand on so that they were at the same level as the players.

Everyone wanted to have their picture taken with other players: Tony Fernandez, George Bell, Lloyd Moseby, even Ernie Whitt. I couldn’t care less about any of them. I walked straight to Damaso Garcia.

To say he received me coldly would be to suggest he received me at all. He initially refused to look at the camera and then walked away from the whole enterprise before any photos could be taken. It’s all foggy from my childhood memory, but I remember stories my parents told.

What I remember most vividly was trying to hold back the tears in the back of my throat; the heat in my face warming, begging for tears to be released down my cheeks to cool it.

I could never have articulated at the time what it was I expected, but I knew that whatever it was, it didn’t come to pass and I was hard done by what had happened.

I don’t know if I was so obviously devastated or if Garth Iorg - remember him? - was some sort of empath. Either way, as I marched back to my mom, he swooped in; he picked me up and asked me what position I played, what hand I threw with, which way I batted. He was miraculous.

It would be an exaggeration to say Garth Iorg saved me from life without baseball. I probably would’ve still played and followed my favourite players. But the living and dying with each at bat changed after that. It wasn’t the same. The vicarious relationship was fractured.

Anyway, I was reminded of all this because Damaso Garcia passed away today. I will never love a baseball player like I loved him. And I’ll never be devastated by a baseball player like I was devastated by him.

No puns at the end. Just a melancholy childhood baseball memory.