You know that players get older, that any one of them, all of them, will not forever be the guy you got to see on the field. Someone whose mannerisms you remember years later, perhaps even someone you found yourself liking for little more than a ready smile, only to be rewarded by so much more as he delivered big hits and big plays.
But with the news that former big-league outfielder Dave Henderson has passed away at the too-soon age of 57 and just a month after receiving a kidney transplant, I find the fan I was responding to it more than the writer who might merely assess what he did in noting the fact of his passing.