Having experienced personal tragedy that no man should have to face, athlete or not, Graeme Lloyd admits that he is a much different person from the man he was a year ago. It shows you what matters and what doesn't matter, what your priorities are.
Baseball is just a game.
He was taught that lesson in the most horrible fashion imaginable last spring. Just weeks after Lloyd was told he'd miss the entire 2000 season with a career-threatening shoulder injury, his wife, Cindy, died at 26 of complications from Crohn's disease. The Lloyds had been married for little more than a year when her health began to deteriorate unexpectedly. Cindy had suffered from the complicated digestive disorder since she was 13, but there was no indication she would go into a downward spiral so quickly. It came on very sudden.