He was only 67. He had recently lost 50 pounds and was in better shape than he had been in a long time.

I wouldn’t be on here bugging you guys about baseball trivia if not for him (which is funny, in a way, because he didn’t like baseball).

He loved basketball. He coached my teams and also was an assistant coach at my high school. When I was younger, he never gave up a chance to play basketball. Church ball, city league, whatever he could do. He tore up both knees from playing so much.

He took me to my first BYU games, even though he wasn’t particularly a BYU “fan.” (He believed in equally supporting all the teams from Utah).

He took us to the 1996 and 1998 WAC championship games in Las Vegas. One of my favorite memories is that he decided to take a camper down in 1998 and we stayed the night in the Sam Boyd parking lot. The next morning, he made pancakes and we talked about the game that day, which BYU unfortunately lost. When I moved to Nebraska, he drove all the way out here and we sat in the nosebleeds and watched Mangum’s Hail Mary.

He knew Dave Rose and could get us good tickets to the WAC and Mountain West basketball tournaments. One year, the tickets were so good that Danny Ainge was sitting on our row.

I used to watch football with him on Sundays, and I’d watch the Jazz games with him. I specifically remember during a busy time when I would work late in college, coming home and asking him “Did the Jazz win tonight?” He always knew the answer.

He even took me to my first MLB games and taught me to play catch even though he hated baseball. He gave me my first baseball cards, which are the reason I love baseball stats and trivia so much. He spent a lot of time tracking down baseball cards for me for birthdays and Christmases. Sometimes he’d even drive to Las Vegas from St. George to go to card shops down there to find stuff for me and my brother.

My dad loved his kids and grandkids, and I’m gutted that my two youngest are too little that they might not remember him.

He set such a great example of sacrifice for me. He always gave up things he could have had in order to take care of others. He was an Air Force veteran who served his country as an airplane mechanic for four years.

He was the rock in his family after his parents divorced, and always took care of his mom and his siblings.

He was an elementary school teacher and principal and all of his students remembered him and used to talk about him when they found out I was his son.

He walked a mile to his school for months because my brother needed a car so he could get to and from football practice. He got a second job at a gas station so he could help pay for my brother’s mission.

He once sold his dream property because his younger brother was in desperate need, and my parents helped him by a house.

He wrote me every week of my mission, even writing physical letters after the church started letting us have email. He said he felt it would be important for me to still get some handwritten letters.

He had such a great corny sense of humor. He’s probably the reason they call them “dad jokes.”

He was an expert fly fisherman. When he was teaching me how to do it, he got so frustrated that I wasn’t catching anything that he climbed into the river, surgically repaired knees and all, tossed the line into a hole and caught a fish on the first cast. He loved the outdoors, especially Yellowstone and Island Park. We went on vacation there every summer.

I just don’t know what to feel. I know nobody is ever ready to lose a parent, but it was just so sudden. I love you, Dad.