California: Home to sunshine, beach vacations and the final resting place of Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart. 

On Thursday, April 9, Adenhart was driving in his car with three friends in Fullerton, Calif., only to be struck by a drunk driver. Adenhart and two of his friends were killed, and the third friend was hospitalized. Adenhart was 22 years old. He had pitched six no-run innings just hours earlier.

It’s terrible that it takes the death of a public figure to put something as serious as manslaughter on our minds when it is happening every day. As Americans, we are constantly barraged with images and stories of killings that take place on the battlegrounds from our inner cities to the front lines of the Middle East or the genocide in Africa. But the death of a pro athlete seems to be something entirely different. 

Adenhart isn’t the first pro athlete to be slain so tragically. In 2007, Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor was shot by an intruder in his own home in Miami, Fla., and died of his injuries hours later. Earlier that year, Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams was shot in downtown Denver after leaving a nightclub. And St. Louis Cardinals relief pitcher Josh Hancock was killed in a car crash in April 2007. 

Along with many more deaths in professional sports, these incidents send a bitter taste through our mouths when we wake up to the cold headlines. 

But that taste ignites a fire. Suddenly, we viewers are distraught; we want to help fix this. But it doesn’t last. The league is upset; the players put on patches, write numbers on their shoes and partake in silent moments that fill ballparks and arenas. But it doesn’t take long for the nauseated sports world to ease back into everyday life.

The world we live in isn’t the same one we knew as children. Human carnage, unjust gang warfare and drunken accidents are part of a definitive horror that is our American reality. As we walk back into our normal lives, it is so easy for us to put tragedies such as Adenhart’s death in the backs of our minds. Adenhart won’t be the last pro athlete to be slain or killed unexpectedly, or the last American to face such an awful fate, or the last human to be cut short of life. 

But what short-lived message Adenhart does send is that, in the world we live in, we must constantly be vigilant of such atrocities. Even the smokescreen of sports shouldn’t distract us from the realities of the world.