1. Sorry to clog your timeline, but with the Aledmys Diaz trade today, I need to get something out. I guess the 280 characters will help.
2. My wife’s and my typical summertime routine was that I would watch the Cardinals game in the evening, while she went about her business. She’s sometimes peek at it, but wasn’t invested in it like I was.
3. As a couple of you know, she fell ill with a siezure on New Years Eve 2015. In March 2016, she was diagnosed with brain cancer—primary central nervous system lymphoma.
4. Because it was the brain, it affected her cognitively. She couldn’t do things independently as she once had. There were also extensive inpatient chemo treatments every other week throughout summer 2016.
5. As a result, she began to sit with me and watch the Cardinals games. I explained to her the story of the Cards’ new shortstop Aledmys Diaz. She was taken with the story and began rooting especially for him.
6. It took awhile for her to get his name nailed down. She had some trouble remembering it and then pronouncing it. But eventually she got it. At the same time, Aledmys’s season was taking off.
7. Wendy called him “our little rookie,” and would sometimes tell nurses that came into the hospital room to tend to us about him. In South Florida, the Cuban angle is a grabber. She’d say “we’re rooting for this little rookie Aledmys!”
8. Our kids bought her a Diaz shirsey, which she loved. Sometimes she’d fall asleep during the game, and would always ask the next day, “How did Aledmys do?” He was having a lot of good games then, so I often had good news for her.
9. (She also rooted for Anthony Rizzo, who had been treated and cured by our oncologist at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center in Miami, Dr. Lossos. But I usually tried not to tell people that.)
10. As the season wore on, we got good news in August—remission! And bad news in September—aggressive recurrence. I remember we were in the hospital for more treatment in September when Aledmys’s childhood friend Jose Fernandez was killed in a boating accident.
11. I remember my son saying, “Whatever happens to him and us from here on out, that guy is always going t be special to us.” He wished there were a way for us to tell Aledmys that what he did *mattered.* A bright spot for a suffering family.
12. The season ended and Wendy’s disease continued to worsen. I lost her on December 17, 2016, just short of a year ago. We were two months shy of our 25th wedding anniversary.
13. Today’s news about Aledmys Diaz being traded was inevitable. But I was still surprised when I saw the news on Twitter and tears came while I was sitting in a restaurant.
14. His short time in St. Louis mattered to us. I’ll always root for him—in baseball and after—because of that. Here’s Wendy in her Aledmys shirsey (though you can’t see the back). Our dog is Ozzie, so she liked him to have a uniform too. 
15. So thank you, Aledmys Diaz, for your time with the @Cardinals. And God bless you. It meant a great deal to be and my family.
