A year is a very long time, but when you break it down into the parts of its sum, it goes by incredibly fast. Things that happened 12 months ago feel like they happened yesterday.
And yet, the attack on Bryan Stow at Dodger Stadium that occurred 365 days ago from Saturday feels like it happened forever ago. That's not because it's been forgotten: it's because the memory of the vicious attack on Stow in the parking lot of Chavez Ravine still hangs like a cloud over baseball with another Opening Day just over the horizon.
It should hang even heavier with the knowledge that Frank McCourt's pockets are lined with a fresh billion dollars in cash, while Stow's being moved from a top-notch rehabilitation center because his insurance money is running out.
It's fitting that just hours before the calendar turns to Saturday, reports are circulating that Frank McCourt, now-former Dodgers owner, will receive no revenue for the parking lots around Dodger Stadium.
He shouldn't -- that's where Stow was attacked, and one of the reasons listed for Stow's attack was that McCourt's club couldn't afford to properly provide security for his paying customers as they walked back to their cars.
Giving McCourt additional revenue from the Dodger Stadium parking lots even after he sold the team would have been the bad kind of ironic.
Thankfully, he apparently won't be getting that revenue. It's a small silver lining a year after Stow's attack. It's not alone in the rare good news from this tragic instance: security all over professional sports arenas has been beefed up and the teams playing in those stadiums are starting to understand that the fan experience should never, ever include anything involving fear.
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Stow and his family had to suffer in order to make that a prevalent issue in today's sports world and that's a damn shame. But at least fan-on-fan violence and stadium safety aren't being ignored by sports teams and leagues any more.
No amount of money is going to create the one other thing that needs to be done: a full recovery from Stow. His family says he still struggles with memory loss and he lost a year of his life plus future livelihood and the memories that are created by watching his children grow up.
Even a billion dollars wouldn't cure that pain. But money -- which McCourt has a lot of right now -- would go a long way towards improving Bryan Stow's life going forward. The first year of his new life's been bad enough without any assistance from the man who's most directly tied to the culpability for his attack.
Saturday -- 52 weeks removed from Stow's attack and less than one removed from McCourt receiving an egregiously large sum for the Dodgers -- is an unfortunate reminder of just how unfair life can be.
Stow's life shouldn't be like that for the rest of these sad anniversaries.
