It's all bad news

We are at the beginning of the summer dog days for sports media coverage. There is only one of the big Four sports that is currently active, and it is the longest, steadiest season of them all. The crush of free agency is through for the three primary winter sports, and all the drafts are complete as well. It allows MLS to sneak up a little bit, but really, there are no big headlines to be made right now.
Unless it's bad news.
There is usually a buffet of stories about the offseason misbehavior of athletes - usually NFL athletes (there are just more of them), ill worded statements from executives and entirely too much attention paid to minor roster machinations in all leagues. Everyone tunes into every story more closely, developing strong opinions about everything they read.
And then the worst happens. Perhaps it is because we have so few distractions, except for those miscreant headlines, but it seems like the passing of Tyler Skaggs has a real chance to settle into our collective psyche and really, really hurt. With other bad news, and lord knows there is plenty in the course of the year, we can soldier on, but Skaggs sudden passing will likely have a chance to sit with us.
I think there is more to it than the headline desert of summer, or even the relative youth of Skaggs. There are other deaths that come in the summer in other sports. Jared Lorenzen, former NFL quarterback with the Giants and at the University of Kentucky just passed today, for example, at the tender age of 38. I think it's because baseball is a local sport, and fans of the game really have a chance to come to embrace members of the organization.
Baseball is part of the cadence of summer. Whereas football, and to a lesser degree basketball and hockey are events, baseball comes around every day, and we hear the announcers say the players' names so often they become interwoven in the humid summer air. The rhythm and the persistence of baseball make the players seem more akin to family.
And we watch them grow up with our organization, anticipate their success for longer. Players in other leagues are certainly younger, but they arrive ready to play, either out of high school or overseas. Maybe we saw them in college, but surely not the one in our back yard, or the one our local news, or the blog we read is most dedicated to.
Baseball players are part of the fabric of summer, in a way players in other sports are not enmeshed, and regardless of age, we become invested and engrossed in their development, and have a built in patience, almost like the players are our children in a way. We may never meet a professional baseball player through their career, but losing them so young has a special sting.
RIP, Tyler Skaggs. You will be missed.