Even with his baseball team struggling to win consistently and all the sleepless disappointment that goes with that, Joe Girardi was able to recall this story and this long-ago act of kindness: via NBCSPhilly
His emotions were moving just as fast when the trooper arrived at his car and said,"You wait right here. I'm going to get the other guy."For one agonizing hour, Girardi sat on the shoulder of I-80 somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania. The trooper told him to wait and that's just what he did.To this day, Girardi doesn't know what the guy looked like, how old he appeared to be or anything like that.
But in other ways, it was the worst of times. Two weeks after driving his red Ford Tempo to the Cape, Girardi received a call from his dad, Jerry, back home in Peoria, Illinois. His mom's six-year battle with cervical cancer had taken a horrible turn. She'd developed meningitis and was hospitalized. She was withering. She couldn't speak. Come quick.
As Mother's Day approached, Joe Girardi recalled the row of sandwiches that his mother would prepare each morning as the kids headed out for the day."Four," he said with a laugh."I'd always need one before practice." Looking back, Girardi now believes he considered quitting because he'd never really grieved after his mother's death three years earlier. He was in the red Ford Tempo the day after the funeral, driving back to Cape Cod. He went 4 for 5 his first game back. Then it was two more years at Northwestern, more baseball, and, of course, the engineering degree he'd promised his mom.
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