More From Jackie

2 reassuring signs that Steve was still Steve after his hemorrhage:

1.  When Steve was in the hospital after his stroke, a woman came in to assess his degree of brain damage.  She asked him to name all the animals he could in a 1-minute period.  He was silent for about 40 seconds, and then said:  “vole.”  At about the 53-second mark, he came out with “x-ray fish.”   She left.  We looked at each other.  It was pretty scary and sobering.  Then he got a twinkle in his eye and said to me, “Well, OK, so not so good on quantity, but I  think I deserve extra points for originality.”

2.  The first outing he took after he got out of the hospital from his brain hemorrhage was a baseball game at Candlestick Park with his dad, his brother, Bruce, and his then brother-in-law, Loren.  They went early and tailgated.  At a point when everyone had fallen silent for a little while, Steven looked around and then remarked, “Sitting here in a huge asphalt parking lot, eating cold hotdogs, breathing toxic fumes from SUVs, surrounded by drunk red-necks yelling at each other--it just doesn’t get much better than this.”  Bruce told me it was at that moment he knew Steve was still there.