I learned a lot about life and death and baseball when my younger cousin got Lou Gehrig's Disease.
This cousin, Andy Knipe, was the perpetual tag-along during our childhood. When our families got together on Long Island, with eight of us cousins cracking jokes and poking each other, we'd usually ignore Andy, almost the youngest kid in the group, but every once in awhile he’d crack us all up, usually by squeezing food through his fingers or reminding us about the toilet. His life of mischief was underway.
Andy, up to no good
Eventually I moved out to the West Coast, while Andy stayed in New York, got married, and excelled at his job, making funny TV commercials for companies like FedEx and Pepsi. His audience and humor had evolved. His jokes now cracked up millions of people all over the country. He almost seemed like an adult.
Then, at age 37, with a wife, teenage daughter, and two little boys, he got diagnosed with ALS.
At Christmas dinner that year, he couldn’t make the salad tongs squeeze together, but otherwise he seemed fine, so I still thought there must be some mistake, some way out. But there wasn’t. ALS continued to destroy his nervous system, relentlessly. By my summer visit back to New York, he was in a wheelchair, hands propped on the armrests, unable to turn his head from side to side, barely able to swallow. His body was frozen in place, but he was fully alert, watching himself die.
In his final months, Andy and I connected over baseball. He sent my 9-year-old son a heavy encyclopedia of baseball history, which my son took to bed with him every night and studied like the Rosetta Stone. And Andy answered my questions with emails about baseball legends like Catfish Hunter, Don Zimmer, and Lou Gehrig. Because of his limited physical mobility, Andy's emails came out pithy and tantalizing, like ancient wisdom. To type out a one-line email, he put on a headset that tracked his eye movements, looked ahead at a computer screen, and then clicked with his index finger—one of the only parts of his body with any sensation left—on the word or letter he wanted, one at a time, with great concentration.
But with his last ounces of energy, Andy didn’t just compose Zen-like emails. He also got on websites for Red Sox fans and carefully clicked out messages like this:
“R-e-d S-o-x = S-c-u-m-b-a-g-s.”
Yes, he spent his final days tormenting Red Sox fans, the arch rivals of his beloved Yankees. Some of his insults were so disgusting that some baseball websites—not known for their decorum—banned him
After awhile, though, the emails and rants tapered off, as the disease took over every last inch of his body, including his internal organs. In August, 2005, he decided not to get an artificial respirator. At age 38, he wrote a final letter to his kids and got ready to die.
I couldn’t get a flight to New York in time, but I called to say goodbye. Andy couldn’t speak anymore, so I did all the talking.
I said I loved him. I said I was sorry I ignored him so much when we were little. Pretty soon I was fighting through tears to complete my sentences, incoherent ramblings about childhood memories and wanting to see him again. Up until that moment, I hadn't been able to comprehend Andy's impending death, but now, realizing that once I hung up, I'd never talk to Andy again, the certainty and utter finality of his death sank in.
I finally let go. I hung up, and Andy died a couple days later.
The funeral on Long Island was mostly a blur. Carrying Andy's coffin through the church with the other pallbearers, my cousins and younger brother, seemed too easy. We just placed our hands on the top of the coffin, to guide it, but the wheels on the cart below did all the work, rolling quickly along the smooth wood floor. How was it that we could walk so effortlessly, while Andy, the youngest among us, was dead and in a box beneath our hands?
The biggest surprise came after the funeral, at the lunch reception. Suddenly one of my cousins shouted, “Sick Bastard’s here!” Looking over at the restaurant entrance, I didn’t see anyone who looked sick or like a bastard, just a regular guy in his 30’s. I found out that "Sick Bastard” was this guy’s screen name. He was a Red Sox fan who had traded insults with Andy for months, until Andy finally let on that he was dying of ALS. By that point, they’d spent so much time together online, trying to reach new heights of creativity with their insults for each other, that they’d formed a bond. Sick Bastard, who had never met Andy in person, drove down from Boston to attend this funeral in the heart of Yankee territory.
This was like a soldier walking onto the middle of a battlefield during the American Civil War and screaming, “Shoot if you want, but that’s my brother over there and I have to see him again.”
My cousins, all faithful Yankee fans, mobbed Sick Bastard, hugging him and treating him like a celebrity.
Even after his death, Andy was still making us laugh...and teaching us how to live.
I finally started to wrap my head around some of these lessons when I wrote Corner-Store Dreams. Even though that book is mainly about an innocent store-owner trying not to get dragged down by the 2008 Financial Crisis, a subplot revolves around baseball, my kids, and Andy. His death made me realize it was all connected.
Andy in his 30s.
Andy with ALS.
Andy teaching nephew Ben to drink soda. A few years later, he took Ben to the horse races, as his sister Susan fondly recalls.
Andy, up to no good
Eventually I moved out to the West Coast, while Andy stayed in New York, got married, and excelled at his job, making funny TV commercials for companies like FedEx and Pepsi. His audience and humor had evolved. His jokes now cracked up millions of people all over the country. He almost seemed like an adult.
Then, at age 37, with a wife, teenage daughter, and two little boys, he got diagnosed with ALS.
At Christmas dinner that year, he couldn’t make the salad tongs squeeze together, but otherwise he seemed fine, so I still thought there must be some mistake, some way out. But there wasn’t. ALS continued to destroy his nervous system, relentlessly. By my summer visit back to New York, he was in a wheelchair, hands propped on the armrests, unable to turn his head from side to side, barely able to swallow. His body was frozen in place, but he was fully alert, watching himself die.
In his final months, Andy and I connected over baseball. He sent my 9-year-old son a heavy encyclopedia of baseball history, which my son took to bed with him every night and studied like the Rosetta Stone. And Andy answered my questions with emails about baseball legends like Catfish Hunter, Don Zimmer, and Lou Gehrig. Because of his limited physical mobility, Andy's emails came out pithy and tantalizing, like ancient wisdom. To type out a one-line email, he put on a headset that tracked his eye movements, looked ahead at a computer screen, and then clicked with his index finger—one of the only parts of his body with any sensation left—on the word or letter he wanted, one at a time, with great concentration.
But with his last ounces of energy, Andy didn’t just compose Zen-like emails. He also got on websites for Red Sox fans and carefully clicked out messages like this:
“R-e-d S-o-x = S-c-u-m-b-a-g-s.”
Yes, he spent his final days tormenting Red Sox fans, the arch rivals of his beloved Yankees. Some of his insults were so disgusting that some baseball websites—not known for their decorum—banned him
After awhile, though, the emails and rants tapered off, as the disease took over every last inch of his body, including his internal organs. In August, 2005, he decided not to get an artificial respirator. At age 38, he wrote a final letter to his kids and got ready to die.
I couldn’t get a flight to New York in time, but I called to say goodbye. Andy couldn’t speak anymore, so I did all the talking.
I said I loved him. I said I was sorry I ignored him so much when we were little. Pretty soon I was fighting through tears to complete my sentences, incoherent ramblings about childhood memories and wanting to see him again. Up until that moment, I hadn't been able to comprehend Andy's impending death, but now, realizing that once I hung up, I'd never talk to Andy again, the certainty and utter finality of his death sank in.
I finally let go. I hung up, and Andy died a couple days later.
The funeral on Long Island was mostly a blur. Carrying Andy's coffin through the church with the other pallbearers, my cousins and younger brother, seemed too easy. We just placed our hands on the top of the coffin, to guide it, but the wheels on the cart below did all the work, rolling quickly along the smooth wood floor. How was it that we could walk so effortlessly, while Andy, the youngest among us, was dead and in a box beneath our hands?
The biggest surprise came after the funeral, at the lunch reception. Suddenly one of my cousins shouted, “Sick Bastard’s here!” Looking over at the restaurant entrance, I didn’t see anyone who looked sick or like a bastard, just a regular guy in his 30’s. I found out that "Sick Bastard” was this guy’s screen name. He was a Red Sox fan who had traded insults with Andy for months, until Andy finally let on that he was dying of ALS. By that point, they’d spent so much time together online, trying to reach new heights of creativity with their insults for each other, that they’d formed a bond. Sick Bastard, who had never met Andy in person, drove down from Boston to attend this funeral in the heart of Yankee territory.
This was like a soldier walking onto the middle of a battlefield during the American Civil War and screaming, “Shoot if you want, but that’s my brother over there and I have to see him again.”
My cousins, all faithful Yankee fans, mobbed Sick Bastard, hugging him and treating him like a celebrity.
Even after his death, Andy was still making us laugh...and teaching us how to live.
I finally started to wrap my head around some of these lessons when I wrote Corner-Store Dreams. Even though that book is mainly about an innocent store-owner trying not to get dragged down by the 2008 Financial Crisis, a subplot revolves around baseball, my kids, and Andy. His death made me realize it was all connected.
Andy in his 30s.
Andy with ALS.
Andy teaching nephew Ben to drink soda. A few years later, he took Ben to the horse races, as his sister Susan fondly recalls.
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