I used to collect baseball caps, but with a rule: Unless I received them as a present, I had to acquire them in the city in which the team played, that is, no taking the easy way out by buying them at the mall or online. It’s not a huge collection: Dodgers (gift; thanks, Steve), Angels (gift; thanks, Laurie), Red Sox, Cubs and White Sox (gifts; thanks, Faith), Mets and Yankees, Marlins, Potomac Nationals, Portland Sea Dogs, Nashville Sounds, and a few others. I keep them on top of my bookshelves as well as afew other spots.
But none has that much emotional significance. certainly not like the one Mark Teixeira has to remind him of a special fan, as reported by Pat Borzi in today’s Times.
After an exhibition game in Sarasota, Fla., this spring, Teixeira turned his cap over to show what he had written on the inside: Faith, Brian, #5. Ernst idolized Teixeira from his days at Georgia Tech and had requested to meet him through the Make-A-Wish Foundation….
Teixeira met Ernst only once, at Children’s Hospital in Atlanta, and talked to him one other time on the phone. Ernst, a promising high school pitcher from Oakwood, Ga., who died March 16 of a rare form of cancer, so impressed Teixeira with his sense of humor in the face of a terminal illness that Teixeira wrote Ernst’s first name and jersey number, 5, on the inside of his cap, where it remains.
Brian Ernst, age 19, died just about a month ago from a rare form of cancer.
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