You sit in the bedroom of a couple whose son died the night before in a high school basketball game. Just like that. Grabbed his head and fell to the floor and died, right there before his father's eyes.

You ask what he was like, their only son.

"He was a good son," the father says from the foot of his bed, his tone a little more than a whisper. "He was my baby."

You write it down. You thank the parents, offer one last condolence and walk out of that bedroom, through the screen door, past the bent basketball goal in the driveway.

And you are changed forever.

Young people aren't supposed to die playing a game. You already knew that, of course, and you knew that it had happened before and would happen again.

A boy dies at a high school football practice. Struck by lightning. A colleague – a worldly fellow fluent in French and Spanish, comfortable in the company of the IOC president – goes out to Forney a couple of months later to talk to the boy's parents.

The father tells him that the boy signed an organ-donor card, and that his son's eyes were used.

Pausing a long moment, his thoughts hung up on something unspoken, the father looks up at the reporter.

"He had blue eyes."

As the reporter is telling you the story back in the office, sitting at the desk next to you, his voice breaks, and his eyes water.

And you are changed forever.

Every senseless death has the same effect, no matter where you find it. An infant is left in a car. A father accidentally shoots his daughter. A mother drowns her five children.

Maybe tens of thousands are killed by terrorists in hijacked commercial airplanes.

You call a 32-year-old man at his New York apartment on Tuesday. A friend of your wife's family, he's a sales manager for a company on the 78th floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower.

Been at it 14 months. Good job. Good future.

He never made it to work Tuesday. Running late after a morning meeting, he's walking up a Manhattan street when American Airlines Flight 11 slams into the North Tower, a few floors from his office.

Back in his apartment later, he tries to answer questions as best as he can, still in shock. Finally, perhaps racked by guilt, he asks to be excused and that his name be left out of a story.

"I don't know who was in the office," he says between small sobs. "I don't know who's alive.

"I don't know who's dead."

He apologizes, and you tell him not to worry. You tell him to take care of himself, and the last thing you hear as you hang up the phone is a small whimper.

You think about the column you were writing for Wednesday. What the Rangers must do about Pudge Rodriguez and next year's rotation and the questions next spring will pose.

The column seems silly now. You were thinking that as you watched the television Tuesday morning in gaping silence, smoke billowing from the South Tower when it suddenly imploded, caving in on itself and its victims as a network commentator chattered over the scene, oblivious to the most extraordinary and horrific moment in television history.

You watch, the images eating at you, leaving you helpless and hollow, and you know there is nothing in sports that matters.

But it is not a revelation. You already knew that. Your family, your friends, your God. These are the things that are important.

You grew up learning these things. Occasionally, tragically, you are reminded.

You sit in the kitchen of a couple whose oldest son died in a boxing ring. An honor student and cross-country runner, in only his fourth amateur fight, he took a punch to his left temple and, in his father's words, "fell over dead."

No one can tell them why. You try to find out. The explanation is that he's a victim of second-impact syndrome, a rare but deadly consequence of two or more concussions in a short period.

The parents will be grateful for the answer. But it is not what you remember most about the story. What you recall is sitting in their Round Rock kitchen, listening to them explain through their grief that, like the football player from Forney, their son's organs were donated, including his strong runner's heart.

The father looks over at his wife.

"We take comfort in the fact that his heart is still beating somewhere," he says, nodding, his lips pressed tight.

You write it down and get up and leave, out the door and into the night. You go to your car and put the keys in the ignition and, before you turn it over, you stop and put your head in your hands.

One death, or 10,000, you are changed forever.