Mar 13, 2009
Steven George, Former Wakefield baseball player
Saturday night around 11:30 p.m., as I was ending my drive home from Greenville after the Hillside girls’ basketball team won the East Regional championship, it all came rushing back.
Three years? Really? Has it been that long? That was three apartments, two jobs and 15 pounds ago. My wedding was 14 months away.
I thought about it for several more minutes, and indeed it had been that long … just a smidge more than three years to the day, as a matter fact.
On March 4, 2006, Wakefield High seniors Steven George, Timothy Steinberg, Baker Wood and Anthony Bostic died in a horrific one-car crash as they were returning from Greenville after watching the Wakefield boys’ basketball team beat New Hanover at the buzzer to win the East Regional title. The car was travelling at 115 mph when it hit a concrete barrier on the exit ramp where U.S. 64 meets I-440. It went over the barrier, fell 60 feet to the ground and burst into flames. Alcohol was involved.
When I got home on Saturday and checked my e-mail, there was an invitation to attend the dedication of the Steven K. George Fieldhouse on Thursday at Wakefield High School. Oddly enough, it had arrived in my inbox shortly before I left Greenville.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think about those four boys. But my mind wanders particularly any time I’m driving on route 64.
When I head east, I find myself wondering what those boys were thinking as they were leaving the Triangle for Greenville, unaware that they were on their way to see an amazing basketball game, unaware that they would not make it home.
When I’m driving west and approaching the entrance to the Beltline, I find myself wondering what was going through their minds when they were on the same stretch of road, unaware that their lives had only a couple minutes remaining.
Of the four, George was the only one I knew because he was a baseball player while I was the sports editor at The Wake Weekly. I cannot say I knew him terribly well, but I expected to get to know him over the course of the next several months that spring. He was going to be an integral part of Wakefield’s baseball team as it tried to win a third straight conference championship. George was a first baseman, relief pitcher and he hit in the heart of the lineup.
Earlier that week, I went to a baseball game in Durham (they played at Jordan), unaware that it would be the first and last time I would see George play. Wakefield lost 4-3 after allowing four unearned runs and stranding five runners in scoring position. Given what happened shortly thereafter, a seemingly innocent scene has always stuck in my mind. I remember George looking forlorn after he struggled at the plate that day. But he was so eager to dig his spikes back into the batter’s box, keep taking his swings and start spraying base hits on ball fields all over the Triangle.
But he never played again. Two days later, he was dead.
Before Thursday, I do not recall returning to Wakefield’s baseball field in since the end of the 2006 season. When I arrived shortly before the dedication, I noticed most all the things that were no longer there, a sure indication of how time has passed.
The sign that was placed on the right field wall commemorating George is no longer there.
The Wakefield uniforms are different. The “30” that everyone on the team had stitched into the back of their fitted caps is no longer there.
The cubby in the dugout they kept in his memory, and his No. 30 jersey they hung from it, is no longer on display.
In fact, the team isn’t even in the same dugout anymore. The fieldhouse was built along the first base line, so that’s the team’s new home.
None of the players from that team in 2006 remain. In fact, only this year’s senior class was at the school when the accident happened. They were all freshmen.
As the crowd milled about prior to the brief dedication ceremony, it hit me in the form of three words in the chorus from John Mellencamp’s song “Jack and Diane.” Mellencamp’s gravely voice from crept out of the ball yard’s speakers: “Life goes on.”
Life does go on, and so does the memory of those lives sadly lost.
Contact Tim Candon at 821-8697 or tcandon@wral.com.
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