Chris Snow was a columnist before he rose to prominence as a role model for how to handle a terminal disease with grace, a trailblazing NHL executive, and a regular fixture in glitzy men’s publications.
He wasn’t just a sportswriter, though. He was a sportswriter who made people say, “Oh my word, how is this kid so good?” He was a unique talent who was bursting with ideas, excitement, and effervescence. He was the kind of writer whose meteoric rise you wanted to despise, but you couldn’t due to the power of his personality and the excellence of his writing.
That is the Chris Snow I was most familiar with, and it is the Chris Snow I am considering today in light of the devastating news that he is brain-dead after suffering a cardiac attack on Wednesday. His former journalist wife, Kelsie Snow, made the announcement that he will stay on life support for as long as necessary to donate his organs to ALS research. ALS is an incurable disease that has already claimed the lives of his father, cousin, and uncles. He has battled the illness for three years longer than his doctors had predicted he would.
Even though we knew this day would eventually arrive, it still shocked us. Snow, a father with two small children, committed himself to making the most of their remaining time together. In a frank and heartfelt blog and a podcast on coping with bereavement called “Sorry, I’m Sad,” his wife detailed their troubles. Both include heartbreaking details and a common theme. Even on the days when all you can muster is anguish and wrath, they serve as a lesson in how to face profound loss with love and grace.
She stated in January that “hope isn’t just about fear” for her. It’s also about comprehending the entire extent of what is happening to us, accepting it, and still looking for the positive aspects of life. Even in laughter, the heart may suffer, and joy may end in anguish, according to a verse from the Bible in Psalms.
Since so many people have written so movingly about the difficulties the family is facing in the wake of Wednesday’s terrible news, allow me to briefly describe the Chris Snow I knew.
Just a few years out of Syracuse, the Melrose, Massachusetts, native joined the Red Sox beat in 2005, and it was one of the most competitive in the nation. Matt Mazz. Patrick McAdam. Shaughnessy, Dan. Silverman, Mike. Cafardo, Nick. Bradford, Rob. Aleks Speier. A. Brown. Andrew Edes. Simon Gammons. Chris had no fear of any of them, even the best to ever do it.
His broad, cheery, inviting, mischievous smile caught your attention. It had a sly undertone of Sacha Baron Cohen or Jack Nicholson. It was the kind of smile that simultaneously disarmed and terrified you from a competitive standpoint. What does he understand that you do not?
Snow, though, covered the Red Sox with an edge belying his youth, as players and coaches quickly realized, because he posed the toughest questions without even the slightest trembling.
I’ll never forget a young Snow reaching over an uncooperative Manny Ramirez when the latter refused to talk to the media and urging him to grow up and quit holding his teammates responsible for his transgressions. The only reaction Manny, a superstar who is almost ten years Manny’s senior, could make was a subdued “OK,” but Snow could not have cared less.
He shrugged and, of course, smiled as he continued, “Someone needed to say it.” He wasn’t in this line of work to meet people.
There’s no doubt that if he had continued in journalism, he would have joined ESPN’s Jeff Passan and The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal as a frequent MLB Network baseball analyst. That kind of talent was his.
Instead, he made a nearly unheard-of career change, deciding after two years covering the Red Sox that he’d like to be Theo Epstein than write about him. He then joined the Minnesota Wild to start a two-decade NHL career that ultimately led his young family to Calgary.
Congenital ALS was first identified in 2019, and one of the first characteristics it claimed was his smile—a cruel cosmos acting with indifference. The mischief moved to his eyes, which twinkled as his face drooped. Even when his dominant right arm withered and he had to make do with his left, he continued driving to work, hitting his children’s fly balls, and doing push-ups.
I sincerely hope that this narrative has a nice ending, but ALS prevents that from happening. Following a bout with pneumonia, he spent six days on a ventilator before Christmas. During this time, his disease opportunistically advanced, making the endless a remote possibility and more of a distinct reality. His wife finally confirmed this reality on Thursday morning after she wrote, “Chris will not wake up.”
The words barely feel genuine when they are typed. They don’t seem to apply to the Chris Snow I knew, the journalist with an endless future who chose to pursue a different goal.
We should all learn from the fact that he approached both his life before and after becoming ill with the same “you only live once” mentality.