Spencer’s pals, strangers try to make sense of it

It was not a beautiful day for a ballgame at Rainbow Family Park, the home of the Peccole and Red Rock Little Leagues, on Saturday. There was a nip in the air that smacked of November. And dark clouds hung low in the sky, like teardrops.

Lillies that had been placed at the spot where little Spencer Melvin had collapsed before dying on his way to the hospital Tuesday night had begun to wilt at a makeshift memorial honoring the shortstop of the AA Peccole Cardinals.

Bunches of other flowers, still wrapped in their original cellophane, were doing better.

There was a white cross with a red "S" on its crosshairs, adorned with two plastic cardinals. There was a red miniature Cardinals batting helmet with Spencer Melvin's number 5 scrawled on the side in felt pen, and a message that said he forever would be in the hearts of the ones who had placed it there.

There was an American flag and eight baseball balloons and three religious books and six baseballs that, judging from their bird-scratch autographs, had been signed by Spencer's pals.

"I will miss you, Spencer. Tyler," read one. "Let peace be with you, Spencer. Love, Isaiah," read another.

Sensing it might rain, somebody had placed the autographed baseballs in plastic baggies, so the signatures and poignant words would not be washed away.

People are so thoughtful at times like this, when little 8-year-old shortstops with floppy ears and wide eyes and big dreams that will never come true die of a broken heart. That's what I was thinking.

I also thought of Darryl Kile, the major league pitcher. He had played for the Cardinals, too, and also died of a heart attack, in 2002. And of Big John McSherry, the umpire, who died on the field on Opening Day in Cincinnati in 1996.

Kile was 33; McSherry, 51. Too young, for sure. But at least they had achieved their biggest dream, and had lived to be adults.

This little boy was 8.

He had a father named Bob, also his coach, and a mother named Lisa and a sister named Skylar and a big brother, Sam. When Sam said he was going to be a pilot when he grew up, Spencer asked if he could be his co-pilot.

Spencer Melvin was like most kids his age, except there was something wrong with his heart, and nobody knew it, not until he collapsed not more than 20 feet from where the other kids were warming up on Saturday and chanting "suh-wing, batter" as oversized ball caps fell over their eyes like lampshades.

"I don't think you can make sense out of something like this because there is no sense to be made," said Valarie Walton, the longtime president of Red Rock Little League who organized Saturday's spaghetti dinner benefiting Spencer Melvin's family.

Jeanne Bullock, treasurer of the Peccole Little League, thought of her 10- and 13-year-old ballplayers and of getting them ready for games, as Bob and Lisa Melvin surely must have done for their little shortstop.

"There's baseball equipment all over the room, and it's like, 'Did you remember your cup?' " Bullock said. "And at the end of the night, none of it matters, because that poor family had to go home and there was no son for them to go home to."

Eric Nichols, vice president of the Peccole Little League, delivered a spaghetti care package to the Melvin family on Saturday. He said they were doing as well as could be expected, which really wasn't well at all.

"The more questions you ask, the more questions that come up," Nichols said, shaking his head. "As a parent in one of the older divisions, you worry about balls and strikes, safe or out. And then something like this happens, and none of that matters."

I met a fifth-grader named Trace Klump, who plays for the Red Rock Yankees. He had distributed tear-off strips in his own handwriting with Spencer Melvin's name and the time and location of the spaghetti dinner to classmates at Helen Marie Smith Elementary School, and that seemed to matter.

I saw a big guy with "BOMBERS" stitched onto his windbreaker, and a bunch of his players from one of those traveling all-star teams that everybody loves to beat, who had come out to support little Spencer. And for one day, nobody wanted to beat them. And that seemed to matter.

I met the woman who had gotten up at 6:30 a.m. to put those autographed baseballs in their plastic baggies. She said to call her Linda. She didn't give her last name. She said this was about the little boy who had died, not her.

And that seemed to matter.

Last year, at almost this same time, I was at the Trails baseball diamonds in Summerlin, where they were dedicating the season to Christina-Taylor Green, the Little Leaguer from Arizona who was shot and killed during the assault on Rep. Gabby Giffords in Tucson.

If there was a shortage of tears, I wrote, it was only because this was somebody else's little girl, somebody else's child. It always is. Until one day it isn't.

On Tuesday afternoon, on what had been a beautiful day for a ballgame at Rainbow Family Park, it wasn't.

And so on a gloomy Saturday, a little girl got out of a car, clutching a tiny jewelry box with sparkles. She opened the box and fed folded dollar bills through the slot in the donation box for Spencer Melvin, the little 8-year-old shortstop with the floppy ears and the broken heart.

It appeared she had been crying.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.