Call a cab for crying out loud

Reports now indicate that Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock had a BAC nearly twice the legal limit the night that he crashed his car into a parked tow truck just south of Saint Louis University. Given Hancock's 217-pound frame, and the timeline of the night, this means he had the equivalent of 10-12 beers in about 3 hours, then decided to drive home.

First off, it's tragic that Hancock has passed, and that's exactly the point. It's tragic that a pitcher like Hancock, still not even 30 years old, had his career cut short. I say that with every bit of Cardinal-hating-Cub-loving blood in me. However, it could have been a lot worse, and that's where this soapbox segment comes from.

My beef here, is that it's amazing that no one else got killed. With Hancock obviously wasted, he never should have gotten into his car. He crashed it on I-64, which, although I haven't moved to St. Louis yet, from the times I've gone, I've gathered that to be a pretty busy stretch of roadway. He crashed in the far left lane of westbound I-64.

Perhaps we should be thankful it was there.

Had he been in the far right lane, he could have exited right onto SLU's campus where students would have been out on the streets for weekend carousing themselves, creating an even more dangerous situation.

Bottom line. If you're drinking, odds are you're an adult who can make your own decisions, and unless you're some sorority freshman on her first bender, odds are you know your limits. Maybe some of our readers have even gotten into a car when they were a little buzzed. That's kind of a fuzzy area that I won't touch here. However, when your BAC is twice the legal limit, you are fucking sauced. Sorry. At that point, call a frigging cab, because you're putting your life, and everyone's life on the road around you in danger otherwise.

Call even if you're a professional athlete. You can afford it. Yes, you will definitely get laughed at for the days and maybe weeks following from the Deadspin and blog community. Homemade posters showing youdoing kegstands and heckles of "Hey Josh, I'm heading to get a beer, can I get you five?" may follow you to road games for a little bit, but you know what? Then you can throw a few innings of scoreless relief to get back at all those fuckers. People shut up then.

But now you've let the last moment of your career be a jersey hanging in the dugout, largely as a result of your own irresponsible choices. The literary definition of a tragedy is where a character of high standing falls because of a fatal flaw (or something of that ilk. Ease up, I was pre-law), and this is a textbook example.