When unexpected, finality is devastating. Finality is crushing. Finality not only takes the breath out of the lungs, but swirls emotions, halts words in throats and unleashes torrents of tears fueled by love and regret alike.
In sports, the end of the season is the hardest part not because it’s the end, but because you didn’t know that’s when the end was coming. Competitive flames burning year-round are snuffed out in a single moment, the belief that tomorrow would always be there upended with one swing of a bat.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way for Mississippi State’s baseball team, they thought.