Why Tommy Hanson's premature death at 29 years old makes no sense

The day after Tommy Hanson died at 29 years old, a man called to say his children would miss Tommy’s phone calls, the ones where they’d laugh and goof on each other and talk about where they’d go hunting next. Another, maybe tired of holding it all in his own head, called to wonder how this could happen, how Tommy could be gone, because it made no sense, just none at all.

They wanted to know what took Tommy Hanson.

He had a good soul, they said. He worked tirelessly, desperately, to be the pitcher he once was, a hell of a thing when you’re 27 or 28 or 29. He lugged the death of a younger brother with him, that from two years ago, which doesn’t go away with a good season or a bad one, or with time, or with anything.

They were afraid baseball had taken Tommy Hanson, that this had something to do with the fastball that slipped away and the career that stalled for it. They were afraid they hadn’t helped enough, or been friend enough, and now all they could think about was Tommy’s young wife and Tommy’s parents and all that could have been out there for Tommy, no matter the baseball.

They’d received the same sequence of texts over a few frightful hours on Monday, that Tommy Hanson was in bad shape, that he was in a hospital in Georgia, that he was in a coma, that he was dead. That Tommy Hanson, 29 years old, was dead. They cried for that, and they’d carry it around with them with the confusion and helplessness, because there were no reasonable answers to why.

Then everyone started saying his goodbyes.

“It hurts my heart to see him go so soon,” Craig Kimbrel said via Twitter.

“My heart is broken today,” Chipper Jones wrote.

“Really sad to hear about Tommy Hanson,” C.J. Wilson wrote. “Was a really nice person, and a caring teammate. I feel terrible for his family.”

“He was a really nice dude,” Andrelton Simmons wrote.

And that’s it, isn’t it? Not that he could pitch. Not that his fastball was here or there. It’s that people liked Tommy Hanson, and more than a few loved him, because he was friendly and smiled a lot and cared and was a good teammate and was nice enough to call people’s sons to talk about hunting. He’d suffered terribly for his brother. He’d been young and terrific (the Arizona Fall League held for him, its 2008 MVP, a moment of silence Tuesday afternoon) and then young and struggling, because that, sometimes, is the game, which makes it no easier to comprehend.

He was still every bit Tommy Hanson, just a guy getting through it, a guy living with heartache, a guy trying to be a little better today than he was yesterday, and still so, so young. A whole life was out there waiting on him.

“It’s bothering me,” said one of the men who called.

We don’t know what took Tommy Hanson. Not yet. Whatever the doctors and coroners say, the science of it, that will be only part of the story. We only know he is gone and, with him, a son, a brother, a husband, a friend and a teammate. A good soul. A big ol’ bear of a human who, by all accounts, was gentle, respectful and kind. And that’s it, isn’t it?

We know that it is terrible, and will be, and will bother us all.