Remember Kyle Blakeman? How could we forget?
Blakeman was the heartbeat of Rocktober. He was the 15-year-old Colorado kid who found the strength during the final days of his life to give Clint Hurdle a lucky number the Rockies manager would religiously scribble atop every lineup card as the team made a miracle run to the World Series.
“The nightmare of parents who have lost a child is people will forget,” said Joanna Blakeman, the mother of a boy taken away by a rare form of kidney cancer in August 2007.
A year after his death, the magic of Kyle’s No. 64 still lives, but it has moved from a National League ballpark to a much bigger arena.
Blakeman has become a recruiter for a growing team of Coloradans who believe there’s no foe too tough to beat.
Hundreds of people gathered Saturday at Civic Green Park in Highlands Ranch for a benefit concert honoring Blakeman in conjunction with the first National Childhood Cancer Awareness Day.
It was a winner.
“You recognize this?” said Brad Blakeman, tipping a navy blue cap from his head during the party. It was the same cap his son once wore to play baseball.
A local band cranked up the volume on classic rock. Giggling children squirmed as their faces were painted. Hot dogs sizzled on a grill. An autographed jersey that Hurdle wore to the All-Star Game earlier this summer attracted gawkers at a silent auction.
“We’re trying to give meaning to why the heck this had to happen to this kid, his school and a community,” said Joanna Blakeman, wrapped in the love of new friends and allies she has made in a campaign against cancer.
The Blakemans attend football games of the high school their son would now be attending. Why?
“It’s hard. But when I look at the field, I can see him out there,” Joanna Blakeman said.
“Grief is a constant circle. You never really learn to deal with grief, but you learn how to go on living with it.”
Sitting on a green bench in the park, 16-year-old Ryan Carroll, now a junior at ThunderRidge High School, quietly explained how he felt compelled to go to the computer desk in his bedroom late one night in the final week Kyle Blakeman was alive. Carroll grabbed a pencil and a handful of Sharpies, then began doodling a tribute to a fellow baseball player he thought was tougher than Superman.
“What I miss most is his smile,” Carroll said.
Unlike the rest of life, whose challenges are colored in so many shades of gray, it’s sometimes hard to tell up from down much less right from wrong; we love sports because the winners and losers are always identified on the scoreboard when the game ends.
Then, you look at the faces of 17 kids who have gone one-on-one with cancer, with their photographs hung in places of honor on the wall of a tent erected in a suburban Denver park to celebrate a good fight waged by Kyle Blakeman.
And it makes you wonder: Who among us has not occasionally been guilty of keeping score entirely the wrong way?
“If your kid doesn’t hit a home run with the bases loaded, or comes home from school with a ‘C’ on the report card, just chill a little,” Joanna Blakeman said. “And give ’em a hug.”
On a glorious summer afternoon in a park, everywhere you looked, there were adolescents and adults, dear friends and complete strangers, all of them signing up for Kyle Blakeman’s team.
Folks happily plunked down 10 bucks to purchase the uniform a brave young man had inspired his buddy Ryan Carroll to create: a simple blue T-shirt with “KB” in the shape of the Superman logo across the chest.
On the back of every shirt was printed the number 64.
And below Kyle’s magic number was a single heartfelt request.
Never forget.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
