Watching the clock approach midnight, Andre Dawson, up unusually late, alone with his thoughts, found himself welling up with emotion.
After the top of the hour came and went, he prayed.
“I had been giving it a lot of thought the last couple of months,” Dawson said by phone this week, “and the only thing I could come to was, ‘Where has the time gone?’
“But I guess that night, kind of suddenly, I started looking forward to it. I reflected on people who weren’t here that I’ve lost and was thinking, ‘I made it. I made it to 70.