#someone i was friends w in hs actually reached out to me after i posted on my story about a protest coming up

[darkjusticiar]

This has been eye opening for my real life contacts, like who is speaking up and sharing information and who won't stop fucking travel blogging for five minutes to say something, anything. I feel equally heartened by the many people I know who are fighting and equally disheartened by all the people I know who are intentionally looking the other way

[crawsley]

Post breakup t4t lesbians richards/Carter reconciliation....your brain and meat are SO HUGE

this is the funniest possible way you could have phrased this, thank you 😭

here's a little of the concept, under a cut bc it got long ... copied and pasted from my extremely lengthy gdoc chatfic doc!

which mostly revolves around carts and richie breaking up when mike was going through the end of her nhl career, the mess at the border, etc. and then years later, after jeff retires, she shows up at mike's place in kenora kind of expecting to be welcomed back with open arms? or at least to mend fences.

maybe in the back of her mind expects mike to be the same as she remembers her when actually, she’s grown and matured way beyond the party girl she was before? in a way that carts hasn’t, in the same way

but mike just goes. uh. what the fuck are you doing here, jeff, and jeff's like. wait what

truth be told, the major reason jeff dipped was bc while she was getting more responsibility with the kings, becoming more comfortable w the way her career was going, mike‘s life was spiralling

and it was hard to watch, and also not rly something that jeff wanted to deal w at the time! she was selfish, immature, yes a bit fairweather. and also. some mean little part of her was glad that it wasn’t HER going off the rails for once

i think in this universe she hasn’t fully processed those things yet! so when mike sends her packing, and she goes back to [wherever she spends the off-season.... toronto? LA?] w her tail between her legs she actually DOES do some soul searching (after fucking around for a little bit. long enough to confirm this isn’t what she wants anymore). and then she goes to therapy lmfao

on the kings together, it was like that thing in hs where you get a new, cooler friend group, and turn around and start being mean/looking down on your old friends? the ppl on the team started to get down on mike, and it was easier to laugh along than put herself out there and say “stop being assholes to her”

and she had rationales at the time, it’s hard being on a new team, mike’s been here longer, it’s all in good fun etc when rly. it was just bad behaviour, and an excuse to b petty and mean to someone who YES has been in her life for over a decade now

like no fucking wonder mike started self medicating w various substances, started spending more time in bars. the ppl around her weren’t supporting her! and ESPECIALLY she was getting no support at all from carts!

the real problem was that she hadn’t wanted to do serious, settling down type things, hadn’t wanted to deal w things that she considered a hassle, didn’t realize how deep mike's issues ran. when mike would come to her to talk she’d brush her off, thought mike was over exaggerating, being dramatic

there’s one particular fic that’s tagged “you won’t like [character] much at first” and i feel like that’s how this would play out. and then carter does a hell of a lot of work on herself, works on becoming someone she’d like to be around, reaches out to mike again

and this time when she goes to visit mike’s prepared. and they talk, and actually the hardest part of that is finding out mike’s forgiven her for all of her nonsense?

like. jeff’s so off kilter bc she comes there expecting to grovel, basically, and mike’s like. i forgave you years ago dude. it was hard, but it was better for me, for my life, to let go of that anger & pain. to let go of you

which once again SHAKES jeff bc mike takes up so much space in her head that it’s jarring realizing that she doesn’t take up that much in mike’s?

there's a whole bunch more but i haven't even put pen to paper on this yet so it's nowhere CLOSE to being done, and will probably have an audience of aprox 4, but. i'm still Very Interested in the concept lmfao

[flauntpage]

Thanks, Doc

When people die, we all hurry to share our thoughts, to impart our experiences with them.

On one hand, it feels callous to turn someone else’s misfortune into a personal story. On the other, there’s probably no better way to honor a person than to share how they impacted your life in some small way, or maybe even a big way.

When that person is a professional athlete, those stories are in endless supply. Some are told by friends and family, but most come from mere admirers who likely never met the person or at most had fleeting, memorable encounters with them.

Athletes, celebrities and other public figures have outsized impact on those who view their work. Their performances can mark time for total strangers. I remember where I was. Those things aren’t just part of sports fandom– often they’re part of people’s lives.

There’s been no shortage of those stories since news of Roy Halladay’s death broke yesterday. We all remember when the Phillies traded for him, where we were during his perfect game (which he threw during Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals), and for his postseason no-hitter. We remember his love of Chooch. We remember “funner.” We remember him running the steps of Citizens Bank Park. We remember the time he saved a naked man from an Anaconda. Teammates remember clubhouse antics, personal exchanges, his work ethic, and being in the presence of greatness. They remember the person and the teammate.

But for all of those fond memories, today there is a family in mourning.

For better or worse, Halladay’s Twitter feed serves as a stark reminder that while he was a baseball hero to many, he was a loving husband and father to a few. These Tweets… they rip your heart out and smash it on the ground:

I love the Players & Parents of our Florida Burn! They keep proving why they’re the best team on the field but more important the classiest! http://pic.twitter.com/4agAeCO4wY

— Roy Halladay (@RoyHalladay) November 6, 2017

Yes here are the HS kids and me with my son! Proud dad, Proud coach, Proud member of a coaching staff! #family http://pic.twitter.com/3WgoW0kwC6

— Roy Halladay (@RoyHalladay) May 28, 2017

My son in the middle of the dog pile after closing out the semi-final game!! So proud!!#family http://pic.twitter.com/LmRmqi6toZ

— Roy Halladay (@RoyHalladay) May 28, 2017

First official day of summer break for my son! What a day! Icon A5 we spent 5hrs 3.2 flying, 1.8 chill'n, 100% buds! http://pic.twitter.com/DCclvMMvhs

— Roy Halladay (@RoyHalladay) May 19, 2017

Flew a Dog Rescue trip to Alabama for two 5m old puppies who's ears were cut off w/ scissors to prep them as practice for dog fighting!! SAD http://pic.twitter.com/A6EYYFGoT5

— Roy Halladay (@RoyHalladay) September 26, 2016

Come on.

Virtually every other Tweet from the last two years was about his love of his new plane, Chooch, or saving puppies.

None of us can speak for what his family is going through and what they’ll continue to deal with for a long time. In an instant, everything Halladay had worked for, earned, and enjoyed was rendered meaningless due to an unfortunate accident.

If there’s any good to come out of this, it’s that we’re hearing some stories about Roy, the person, that we never knew. This one from ESPN reporter and local guy John Barr may be my favorite:

1/ I have a story about Roy Halladay that sums up the player and the man. It was after he threw his 2010 post-season no-hitter v the Reds

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

2/ I was fortunate to be assigned to that game for ESPN and I saw it from the ESPN radio booth. By the 4th inning we saw he had no-hit stuff

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

3/ After the game, we interviewed Halladay and Chooch on the field as they were still riding sky high. Then we went to file our story.

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

4/ more than an hour later, I was walking thru the tunnel and it occurred to me I should check in at home. So I called the family

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

5/ As I rounded a corner, with my wife on the line, I saw Halladay up ahead. By then he'd finished all interviews and was milling about

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

6/ I asked my wife to hold on, put the phone down, and thanked Halladay for his earlier comments and for giving us a special moment

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

7/ when I put the phone back to my ear, my seven-year old was on the line. A HUGE Halladay fan. He said: "Dad, was that really Roy?"

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

8/ And then I took a look back at Halladay, and noticed he wasn't in any hurry to go anywhere and I proceeded to break protocol.

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

9/ I asked if he'd take a quick second to talk to my kid, who wanted to tell him "Great job!" So Roy takes my phone and talks to my son!

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

10/ Then my 7-year old goes into reporter mode. Asks Roy what it was like to throw a perfect game and no hitter in same year!

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

11/ Pretty damn good question from a kid, right? They spoke for about a minute or so. Then Roy hands the phone back.

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

12/ When I get back on the phone it's my wife, telling me my son started crying. He was overwhelmed by what he'd just done and processing.

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

13/ The next day he told the kids at his elementary school: "Yeah, I talked to Roy after his no-hitter."

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

14/ There are a helluva lot of athletes who I would never dream of approaching with a request like the one I put in front of Roy that nite

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

15/ But @RoyHalladay was special. He was the stuff childhood dreams are made of. And he made us all soar that night.

— John Barr ESPN (@JohnBarrESPN) November 7, 2017

Those are the stories I’m glad we’re getting to hear.

I’m genuinely at a loss for words. I have been for more than 16 hours now. I’m just sort of stunned, saddened, surprised, shocked, whatever. I never had an encounter with Roy. But he does hold some special meaning for me beyond just the baseball field.

The first ever post I wrote on this site was on the day the Phillies traded for him in December of 2009. I of course celebrated the arrival of Halladay but criticized Ruben Amaro for trading away Cliff Lee to make it happen. It’s a bad post. But it’s also one that quite literally changed my life, or at least my “career,” if that’s what you can call sitting at home blogging about sports.

I started multiple sites over the years, and none of them stuck. No one read them. But interest in Philly sports may have been at an all-time time high when the Phillies traded for Halladay. I figured I’d try one more time to start a website and see if I could make something of it.

I took to Facebook to create a Halladay fan page. At the time, you could be a fan of anything on Facebook– from a sausage link to a famous athlete. The social network wasn’t used for brand or official pages yet, and there were probably 10 or so dedicated to Halladay as a Phillie, but for some reason mine is the one that stuck, and it quickly amassed a few thousand fans, and then 10,000, and eventually more than 80,000.

I realized that I had a captive audience and that I could post links to my blog posts on the page. Despite the accusation of some Phillies bloggers at the time, I never posted as Roy or pretended to be him, I simply ran a fan page dedicated to him.

The readers I got from those early posts are the reason the site exists today.

Obviously it helped me grow an audience, but perhaps more importantly it gave me the motivation to keep going since I knew people were actually reading what I wrote. I am quite confident that I would not have continued with the site were it not for the early audience I got from that page.

After a while the page became redundant once I had amassed a following of my own on Facebook and Twitter. I made an effort to reach out to either the Phillies or Halladay’s agent (I forget which) to turn the page over to them. I never got a response. But after about a year, when Facebook went through the process of verifying official pages for brands and athletes, they reclaimed it and, at some point, turned it over to Halladay’s agency.

I believe the page now named “Roy Halladay Official” was the page I started in 2009. It has more than 300k fans and, agonizingly, contains posts from well-wishers mourning his death. For a while, Halladay (or his agent) was posting to it. The last one came in 2015 and was a picture of Halladay behind a guy wearing his shirsey at an amusement park. It’s become a pretty popular image:

I tell you this because, though Halladay didn’t know it, he is literally responsible for my livelihood. I had jobs in sales and marketing but had always wanted to do this. Halladay was the break I needed. And now it feels weird to juxtapose the celebratory posts from his arrival with news of his death.

As a fan, I of course have my own stories.

My Dad texted me last night and reminded me that we attended four of his five postseason games. What an honor. To me, almost as impressive as the no-hitter was Game 5 against the Cardinals in 2011. Halladay battled through that lineup and gutted eighth-inning outs to give the Phillies a chance. You just felt that he was willing them to win. He almost did.

But it was Roy’s first postseason start that was truly memorable. Probably the greatest sporting event I ever attended live. This is me, and my Dad:

If only iPhones had image stabilization back then.

These are the moments I talked about earlier– that’s not just a sports moment, that’s a memory. My Dad and I have attended hundreds of sporting events together, but we’ll never forget that one.

It’s those moments athletes create in our lives. They’re unwitting family members, if for just a day. It’s the bonds they create between fathers and sons. The most gut-wrenching part of this is that those are the moments Roy will no longer get to share with his sons.

Braden and Ryan will go on without their father. They won’t get to experience the joy of watching their favorite player, or their favorite team, with their favorite person. That’s really hard to swallow. Halladay had retired perhaps earlier than he needed to. As pointed out by Jim Salisbury, many players in his position would have turned to performance-enhancing drugs to heal an injured shoulder. But he decided to spend his time and wealth at home with his family. He slowed down to embrace what’s really important. For as good of a pitcher as he was, he was, by all accounts, an even better family man. He spent his time coaching and doing what he loved best– flying. There’s something poetic about that, I guess, but trolling through the pictures and videos on his Twitter and seeing him tweet so glowingly about what would ultimately lead to his death is just eerie. Most of all, it’s sad.

I’m not sure what else to write. Halladay was friends with Kenny Chesney, so I feel like maybe it’s best to just post this video about cherishing the small moments in life and then have a good cry. Feel free to join in.

Thanks, Doc published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv