To all my Strat colleagues-

This is a very sad day. For me personally, but more importantly for our entire community. We all lost a dear friend. I mean that, because if you played Ron Pearson once, you had a new friend. 

Ron and I first bonded when we got paired up to play a test game when the stpc dice roller was being tested out. He took the Dodgers.  The entire team was Dodgers. Or former Dodgers. We talked about baseball endlessly. 2 old pitchers talking about the glory days (his were far more glorious than mine), our favorite players, memories of our first time at a big league ballpark. Life. He told me he once hit a ball 480 feet at Long Beach Community College. I told him I could have broken that up into about 9 singles up the middle. That night we became life long friends. He was my sounding board whenever I had troubles, either with life or with trying to throw more strikes at the age of 56. And he was always there. He’d listen. He’d encourage. He’d commiserate. He’d celebrate the victories. Always there. No exceptions. 

A few years ago he came to Arizona to watch me play in the MSBL World Series. He became ill on that trip. When he came out of it, I joked with him and said “If I sucked that bad all you had to do is tell me, you didn’t need to go to the hospital to get out of coming back.”  We laughed about that for years.

We all lost an amazing guy. I am still processing all of this. I’m trying to have the mindset that he has really struggled with his health these last few years, and it really bothered him that he was no longer able to do the things he once did. He is at peace now. 

I’m not sure what we can do as a community to honor him, but I would be honored to be included in the planning of it. As you play your games this week, keep Big Ron in your memories. And maybe we can all try to be a little bit more like him.

Peace and love to all of you. 

PJD