Baseball:

This is a story I wish I never had to tell.

Former South Hills High School baseball player, Jeremy Giambi, was found dead in his family’s home in Claremont.

According to TMZ, law enforcement stated that Giambi took his own life on Wednesday morning.

He was just 47 years of age.

And while it’s sad when anyone dies several decades before their time, the news hit the San Gabriel Valley and the baseball community in particular like a sledgehammer.

Giambi, who was the little brother to MLB star Jason Giambi, is someone most of us knew.

In fact, almost everyone that played baseball locally in the late 80’s and early 90’s, knew the entire Giambi family, including Jeremy’s parents, and sister, Julie.

Giambi was part of the 1995 National Championship team at Cal State Fullerton

He would go on to have a six-year MLB career.

Jeremy was drafted by Detroit in the 44th round in 1995.

He played for the Phillies, Royals and Red Sox.

But it was his two years in Oakland that had to be his favorite.

In 2000 and 2001, Jeremy played side by side with his brother for the A’s.

Not that stats matter at a time like this, but Giambi had a career batting average of .263, with 372 hits, 52 home runs and 209 RBIs.

In 1999, Giambi had a career-high .285 batting average for Kansas City.

His 105 hits and 57 RBIs with Oakland in 2001 were a personal best, as were his 20 home runs in 2002.

The South Hills baseball family has seen far too much death of late, including Jason and Jeremy’s father, John Giambi.

And just over two years ago, the best coach in school history, Jim Bastion, a three-time CIF champion and someone who saw five of his players go on to have MLB careers, passed away.

Perhaps the most noteworthy South Hills tragedy was the death of Cory Lidle.

Lidle was killed in a Cirrus SR20 back on October 11, 2006, when it crashed into the Belaire Apartments in New York City.

On a personal note, any time I saw Jeremy he always went out of his way to say hello.

Back in 1988, I had three tickets to see a WWF house show at the LA Sports Arena, where Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, Bobby “the Brain” Heenan and others were on-hand to perform.

The day of the show, I got a call from a parent of two boys that I coached up at Goddard Middle School in Pony Colt named Al Fishman.

He told me that he had three tickets to game two of the World Series that night.

It was set for 24 hours after Kirk Gibson’s famous walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning.

The one catch, he said, was to bring his two sons along.

And I did.

Orel Hershiser would go on to shut out the A’s, 6-0, that night.

And what happened to those three WWF tickets?

I gave them to Jason, who went to the matches with his father and little brother.

It’s been well documented in stories and even movies about how much Jeremy loved to party and spend time in Las Vegas, and all that went along with that lifestyle.

But what isn’t covered enough is how much he loved people, and none more so than his beautiful family.

May God bless Jeremy Giambi and his family.