DH Off-Topic: RIP Air Mcnair

I saw it run across the bottom line of ESPN’s news crawler yesterday afternoon and sitting in the hotel lobby I raised up from my chair. It was an absolutely flooring reality for me: Steve Mcnair is dead.

It’s pretty obvious that he had a girlfriend on the side of his marriage, Sahel Kazemi. And we don’t want to speculate too much but she sounds (and looks like) a crazy bitch.

This is a baseball blog. But it’s a sports blog too. This is something so harsh, you don’t even really know how to react to it. I remember as a kid back in 1995 when Mcnair was selected by the Houston Oilers 3rd overall out of Alcorn State thinking ‘this is a dude I could really pull for’. He was tough. He made his teammates rise above adversity. He didn’t let down in the pros.

That drive at the end of the Super Bowl against the Rams was something out of a Hollywood script. It takes a lot for a player to really wow me, but he did it over and over again in that final minute and 48 ticks of that game. He was a guy who would be on the injury list every week, only to show up on Sunday and get a victory.

Aside from what he did as an athlete, it’s the case of a good man who strayed from the path we all thought he was on. Another harsh lesson that in life, humans are capable of anything; both good and bad.

It’s hard to see someone you grew up watching have their life end this way. It’s pathetic. Diamond Hoggers sends thoughts and a boat load of prayers to the Mcnair family at this time. And to Air Mcnair himself, we have a feeling Johnny Unitas just took a few pointers about being a gamer from you up in Heaven.