St. Croix Ravens Baseball - (Solon Springs, WI)

I’m writing this article in a matter eerily similar to the way I wrote the eulogy for my best-friend Casey Gazdik. It’s about 6:00 a.m. and I have found myself with a blank screen with nothing typed on it. It’s been like this for hours.

I’m sitting here with memories racing through my head, but not knowing how to capture all of my emotions without writing a novel. So, I’ll start this article off the same way I started that eulogy…

Casey Gazdik was an original.

Just a little background for those of you who don’t know, Casey was my best friend. We grew up, played baseball, coached Little League, coached Babe Ruth, and did pretty much everything else together.

My group of best friends were always together. Casey, Jake, Mike, Charlie, and myself were like brothers. And each of our parents were like parents to all of us. It was pretty much one big family.

Casey was the one in the group who never shied away from telling you what he thought about anything. Sometimes it was rude, sometimes is pissed you off, sometimes it would make you laugh… but it was always honest. He never “sugar-coated” anything, and he really didn’t care what you thought. He would always be the one who’d tell me to take my head out of my ass when I messed up, but always helped when things were rough.

He was my big brother.

It was the day before Thanksgiving of 2001. I called Casey to see if he wanted to hang out for awhile since we hadn’t seen each other for a few months. He told me he was going to rest because a week or so earlier, he had come down with what was thought of as pneumonia while at school in Stevens Point. He told me he’d talk to me tomorrow.

I hung out with my family for Thanksgiving and eventually made my way to my friend Charlie’s house that evening since he lived a half-block from me. We were hanging out when Charlie’s phone rang. It was Casey. He called to ask us if we could bring him to the hospital in Ashland because the rest of his family was still at their hunting shack. So, Charlie and I hopped in my car and went to pick him up.

He had lost a few pounds from being sick for a couple of weeks. I joked around with him, telling him that he looked “sexy and slim”. He was happy to see us, and naturally, joked back.

We brought him to urgent care that evening and sat in the waiting area for a few hours. We didn’t think much of it. He eventually came out saying that he was ready to go. I later learned that he had been advised to stay overnight for some tests but declined and said he’d come back the next day if he wasn’t feeling better. The reason? He didn’t want to have had us take the time to go out of our way, bring him all the way to Ashland, wait there for him for a few hours, to return without bringing him home

That’s how much he cared about his friends. He was more worried about us than himself.

We dropped him off at home that night, making plans to hook up the next night if he felt up to it.

The next night came, and I called him to make plans for all of our friends to go bowling at IROC Lanes in Iron River since all of our friends were going to be there. He said he wasn’t going to be able to make it to bowl with us because he still didn‘t feel up to it. So, we went bowling without him. It was weird because Casey was the one that ALWAYS went to IROC with us.

That phone call was the last conversation I had with Casey.

I was on my way to my house in Minneapolis after visiting Iron River the holiday. I stopped by my sister’s house in St. Paul to drop off something. She told me that my mom had left a message for me saying to call her asap because something was wrong with Casey. I figured it was that he was sick, and that I already knew, so I didn’t call back right away when I got home.

My mom was finally able to get ahold of me. The news she had for me was devastating.

That night that we had went bowling, Casey had collapsed and was air-lifted to Duluth and was in a coma.

Since I was so hard to get a hold of (this was before everyone had a cell phone), I was pretty much the last one to find out. A bunch of his friends from UWSP had made their way up to the hospital as well as all of our close friends. There was a massive snow-storm the night I finally learned the news so Casey’s mom Linda advised that I should stay down in the Cities since it would be dangerous to drive and I had school that week. She said that there wasn’t much they could do but wait.

What was originally thought of as mucous in his lungs turned out to be a rare-fungus (blastomycosis). If he had stayed for the blood tests that night in Ashland, they may have caught it in time to treat it…

A few days passed, in which I’d go to school, call Casey’s waiting room to check on what was going on a couple of times a day, and then try to go on with my business. But it was hard. I was scared.

Then came the worst day of my life. November 29, 2001. A cold, windy day. Everything outside was grey. I arrived at school and was getting ready for class. About seven minutes before class was to start, I felt the need to call up to the hospital to check in to put my mind at ease. Using the lobby pay phone, I placed the call to the waiting area where our friend Carrie answered. She was sobbing. I tried to act as normal as I could and asked how things were going.

She replied, “I don’t know how to tell you this….”

I didn’t need to hear the rest. It was the worst news possible. All week, he had been given a less-than-promising prognosis, but this was CASEY. The horse. The fighter. The invincible one who overcame everything. If anyone could make it through this, it was him.

I grabbed all of my things, stopped by my house to grab a bag full of clothes and sped up to Duluth. The trip was the longest drive of my life yet I barely remember any of it. The only thing I do remember is that there was a car driving in front of me on I-35. The driver dozed off while driving in front of me and crashed into the snowy ditch right in front of me. I stopped and went to the car to make sure the guy was ok, which he was. Another motorist had also stopped and offered to bring him to Moose Lake. So, I hopped back into my car and continued north.

I arrived at the hospital just before it started to get dark. Our friends and his family were all sitting in the waiting area with blank looks on their faces as I entered. I went around the room giving everyone hugs while trying to keep a smile. Few words were said. We just sat there for a minute or two. Casey’s aunt then offered to bring me into the adjacent room where Casey was.

I’ll never forget seeing him laying in his bed, hooked up to all kinds of machines with his family and closest friends standing in the room. They had an empty chair for me right next to him. I sat there, held his hand, and bawled my eyes out. I didn’t know what to do. His mom, who was crying, encouraged me to tell him how much he meant to me.

To this day, I don’t remember exactly what I said. All I remember is telling him I loved him over and over.

I couldn’t take it anymore so I went for a walk outside with my friend Mike. We came back inside about five minutes later. Our friend Charlie met us in the hallway and hugged both of us at the same time and said, “He’s gone.”

As the family and friends were grieving, Casey’s aunt told me that he stayed with us long enough so he could see me one last time. I know it’s true. He always worried about his friends more-so than himself.

There are a lot of images from that week that are forever etched into my brain that flash into my thoughts everyday. Seeing him laying in his bed when I got to the hospital. Looking through the open doors at the church during his visitation and being able to see the casket from outside. Seeing the little leaguers that we coached together crying and coming up to me to say that they were sorry. Seeing Raj present his family with his Ravens jersey at the funeral.

When all of these sad memories pop into my head, the only thing I can try to do is come up with images that remind me of what a great friend he was.

We enjoyed biscuits and gravy for breakfast in Iron River before going to Mellen for a Sunday afternoon tilt once…. Needless to say, we had to make a few “pit stops” to drop some weight on the way there.

Anyone remember him pulling up to the field in his hideous copper/bronze-ish colored Escort wagon, placing his speakers on the roof, and blasting the Black Crowes?

We rode to every game together. It was that way in high school, legion, and wherever we coached. The car rides were the best. He’d belt out in his usual tone-deaf manner to his favorite songs, all the while, checking me for a reaction. To this day, I’m not sure if he was waiting for me to tell him that he was a great singer, or trying to get me to laugh. He actually pulled over to the side of the road all pissed off and told me to get out of the car once because I was making fun of his singing, so he probably thought he was really good.

That’s the way he was with everything he did. He always wanted to be the best. He was an awesome hockey player, but when it came to facing him on the diamond, playing him in basketball, or simply wrestling with you in the parking lot after we got our asses handed to us in the first round of the WBA’s, he wanted to kick your ass to prove he was the best at that too. He had balls.

I miss the him more than most of you could even know, but a lot of you have an idea. Almost every time his name comes up when us Ravens are together, it usually ends with me in tears. It’s been five years, but I still find myself crying when I drive home alone from some games.

I had never shown emotion like that in front of my Ravens-mates before November of 2001.

To me, the point of this article is not only to celebrate how great of a teammate and friend Casey was, but show what it means to be a Raven. He laid it out on the line for our squad that summer he was with us. He was the ultimate-teammate. He didn’t let the peaks and valleys of the long summer waiver his enthusiasm or effort on the field.

I take it seriously when we host a tournament in his name, with the point being to celebrate the end of another season. It’s disappointing when the team from Bayside has to help run the show because our own guys have “better things to do”. It’s also embarrassing when we are getting together to hang out and during that weekend, and you can count the number of Ravens on one hand. It pissed me off and I took it personally.

I shared my innermost emotions about him hoping that some of you can take away something from him, without even meeting him.

No matter if you knew him, or had never met him, we all need to remember, Number Seven.