Coghlan living a father's dream

Sunday, September 20, 2009 | Feedback | Print Entry

Roy Silver's phone at work would ring most evenings after the accident, and he knew the teenager on the other end of the line was filled with pain. "Are you still there?" the young man would ask.

"Yup," Silver would answer, and soon enough, the teenager would arrive at Silver's batting cages in Clearwater, Fla., to hit some baseballs off a tee. To throw. To talk. To just get away from his house, where there were so many tears in that devastating summer of 2001.

Just days before Chris Coghlan turned 16, his father, Tim Coghlan, had been killed in a car accident. "At the time, all I knew was that I didn't want to go home," recalled Coghlan, the Marlins' rookie left fielder, earlier this week. "Everybody was crying, and I didn't want sympathy. Baseball was my out."  
 

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  • Buster Olney Buster Olney

    Buster Olney is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He began covering baseball in 1989, as the Nashville Banner's beat reporter assigned to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds. Later, he covered the San Diego Padres (1993-94), the Baltimore Orioles ('95-96), the New York Mets ('97) and the Yankees ('98-2001). Olney joined ESPN The Magazine in 2003, after six years at The New York Times, and he's the author of the Times' best-seller "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty," a book about the Paul O'Neill-Tino Martinez Yankees dynasty of 1996-01.

    He grew up in central Vermont collecting baseball cards and listening to Red Sox, Expos, Phillies and Pirates radio broadcasts, and was a rabid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He graduated from Vanderbilt University the same year as hoops legend Will Perdue, and ranks among the all-time leading scorers in pickup basketball at Memorial Gym. He claims to have witnessed the Commodores' winning football season in 1982 (although anthropologists have not yet confirmed this).

    Olney also contributes to ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, ESPNEWS, "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight."

    Follow Buster on Twitter: @Buster_ESPN

    Ask Buster a question: Buster's Mailbag

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