By Ron Kantowski · June 10, 2008 · 4:38 PM

NOW

----- Hi Ron, remember me?

That was the slug on an e-mail that was waiting for me when I returned from vacation Monday morning. Normally, it's not the kind of e-mail a happily married man wants to receive, vacation or no vacation, and so when I clicked it open, it was with a sense of trepidation.

It wasn't what I expected but even worse than I had imagined.

Christopher Luscombe's mom. I wanted to let you know that Chris was shot earlier this morning by a drive-by. He is hanging in there after about 8 hours of surgery. The second surgery was a miracle one because they didn't expect him to survive. Right before he went in I told him we needed a touchdown and to go ahead and do it. He nodded and he came through. He is hanging by a thread and we are all praying for him. Since you were so kind to write about him I thought you would want to know. You take care and say a prayer for him.

Marie Passante

A couple of years ago, when the Clark High football team was mired in a long losing streak that seemed to warrant my attention, I went out to the campus and talked to the players, who were some of the nicest kids I had ever encountered. None more so than No. 54, Chris Luscombe, the Chargers' middle linebacker.

Marie Passante's son.

I don't recall a whole lot about interviewing Chris Luscombe, other than he called me "sir" and thanked me for talking to him, which doesn't happen every day in my business. He didn't seem like the kind of kid who would get shot at 3 a.m., but then if you counted all the times I had put myself in the wrong place at the wrong time, you'd be counting for an awful long time.

Anyway, this is the place where I would normally say something about sports being irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and how when something like this happens to somebody you know, even if it was only in passing, it serves to remind that life is both a wonderful and tenuous thing that should never be taken for granted.

But it's not as if you haven't heard that before.

A shot rings out, a kid falls down, an ambulance siren wails in the middle of the night ...

... A distraught parent sits down at her computer and wonders if a sports writer still remembers.

THEN

----- Before I came to Las Vegas I worked in Farmington, N.M., in the Four Corners, where they have a great baseball tournament for high school kids called the Connie Mack World Series. It's just like the American Legion World Series, except it is named for a guy who wore a straw hat instead of guys who wear two-cornered hats made of wool.

Anyway, back in the early 1980s this cocky 15-year-old kid with a swing sweeter than Tiger Woods' and a smile wider than Columbia Parkway in his hometown of Cincinnati climbed the stairs to the press box, inquired about the whereabouts of the local newspaper guy and tapped him on the shoulder.

"When you gonna write a story about me?" he said, or something to that effect.

"When you can hit like your old man," I said, or something to that effect.

Ken Griffey Jr., the center fielder for the Cincinnati Midland Redskins, laughed and waved his hand in mock disgust.

On Monday night, he hit his 600th major league home run. His old man, Ken Griffey Sr., hit 152.

You were right, Junior. The old man was pretty good but he can't hold a candle to you.