Sometimes mere words can be entirely inconsequential

It never crossed my mind.

Not even for a second did I think about writing anything here last week on this subject.

I knew Nick Adenhart as well as I did “the others,” as so many newspapers reported their three deaths, which is to say we never met. I only knew the three of them as kids, gone by no fault of their own, and was privately stewing about it.

And then came an e-mail from Ty Cesene, a newspaper reader, and who knew there were folks out there still counting on a newspaper.

“Where the hell were you on the Adenhart tragedy?” he wrote. “You and Plaschke both silent when a whole city could use your words to express our pain and confusion for us. Both of you missing when you are finally needed.

“Maybe it is why newspapers are going broke. You are no longer contributors to the social reality. Do you think Jim Murray would have been speechless now? No. This was a time to turn off the computer and pull out your typewriter, a time to use your talents for something other than playing Manny’s straight-man.

“A young kid, three young kids, were put to rest before an entire city with no one giving a proper eulogy. Shame added to tragedy.”

For the most part, I disagree. There are those grieving the loss of Adenhart, Courtney Stewart and Henry Pearson who knew those kids intimately, and who have and will continue to deliver the proper eulogies.

I’m saddened by such news like everyone else, but wrote nothing because I am just as angry and afraid as I’m sorry for the loss of three people I never met -- each of their deaths striking so close to home.

If Adenhart had never put on an Angels uniform, or pitched in front of so many the night he died, he would be just like Stewart and Pearson -- who so many of us know now only as Adenhart’s friends.

Yet they all shared one thing in common: They were still just kids, and most of us are parents -- until the day we die.

And so when Adenhart, Stewart and Pearson were killed, beyond the shock, my initial thoughts were with the parents of Adenhart, Stewart and Pearson, and the safety of my own kids.

Is there anything more important in our lives than the good health of our own children?

How much do we do to make sure they remain safe, only to be reminded by something such as this -- we’re powerless to guarantee such a thing?

And that’s frightening. Maybe we all worry about losing our jobs in this day and age, but there’s always a chance of getting another -- so long as they never read Page 2.

We still believe we can do most anything in life, a new President re-enforcing that notion, but to be reminded that we are helpless when it comes to guaranteeing the long lives of our children is maddening.

A drunk driver? Hold me back.

No doubt Dr. Phil would love to weigh in on this, but the first thought here was not to write about the “Adenhart tragedy,” but rather get past it as quickly as possible to avoid being reminded about the luck of the draw.

I’ve never spoken to Rick Baedeker about it and probably for the same reason.

Baedeker, the local spokesman for the Breeders’ Cup, is as good a person as there is out there -- unless negotiating strokes before a golf round -- and so there is no explanation why he, his wife and son were singled out.

His 19-year-old daughter, Jillian, joined by two other teenage girls, went out one evening seven years ago this past March, a driver later arrested on suspicion of drunk driving after running a red light and killing all three girls.

Incomprehensible. I think about it all the time -- good, innocent parents dealt the cruelest news of all -- and I didn’t live through it the way the Baedekers did.

Hug them all you want, tie them to the back door, and darn if they don’t figure out a way to get out on their own.

I read Bill Shaikin’s moving story about Adenhart’s father returning to Angel Stadium the morning after, touched like everyone else by the enormity of the situation the night after a father has watched his son pitch.

It’s a fine line between intrusion and a newspaper delivering the goods, and Shaikin’s work was extraordinary.

The world we live in doesn’t always make sense, and so I’m sure there were just as many touching moments the next day for the parents of Stewart and Pearson, but their kids did not play baseball for the Angels and so we read no moving stories about them.

As for Murray, he might’ve shied away, not knowing the youngsters.

But if he had written, he would have captured the tragedy and the feelings of so many with just the right words.

But he lost a son too, and we’ll never know if he would have been moved to write or pushed away from such a painful reminder.

Vin Scully, the closest of friends with Murray, offered his thoughts last week during a Dodgers’ game. Try and write a column for the newspaper as eloquent as anything Scully has to say.

Scully, speaking for every member of the Dodgers’ organization, as he said, offered “heartfelt and deepest sympathies to the mother and family of Nick Adenhart, and to every member in the Angels organization, for the untimely accident and death of young Nick . . . at the tender age of 22.

” . . . if there is one thing I’ve learned in all my years -- and I haven’t learned much -- but the one thing I’ve learned: Don’t even waste your time trying to figure out life.”

Vin Scully lost a child too, a grown son maybe, but still his very own child.

So when he says, as he did, “it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take a moment and say a prayer in memory for Nick, especially for his parents,” as well as the parents of Courtney and Henry -- nothing more really needs to be written.

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t.j.simers@latimes.com