A 2009 crash killed an Angels pitcher. How Kurt

“Wow!”

The efficiency needed no analysis past the exclamation. Kurt Suzuki bounded out of the visiting clubhouse at Angel Stadium to catch up with his good friend.

In 2009, in the first start of his first full major league season, the Angels’ pitcher threw six shutout innings against Suzuki and the Oakland Athletics. On Team USA, Suzuki had been his catcher.

Suzuki congratulated the pitcher, shared the exclamation and — because this is what mates do — gave him a exhausting time.

Before the solar rose, Nick Adenhart was useless. He was 22.

“I woke up the next morning to 10 text messages you don’t want to hear,” Suzuki said.

A drunk driver had blown through a pink gentle and into a silver sports activities coupe full of mates. He killed three of them, including Adenhart. One survived: Jon Wilhite, who performed baseball at Cal State Fullerton with Suzuki.

Sixteen years later, a eternally bond endures between Wilhite and Suzuki. When the Angels launched Suzuki as their new supervisor last month, Wilhite was in the viewers.

Their friendship is compelling. Their story is poignant. We’ll get to it, but first Suzuki ribs Wilhite for sporting long pants on a sunny autumn day in Manhattan Beach. Suzuki is sporting shorts and flip-flops.

“We’re by the beach, dude,” Suzuki laughs.

Suzuki eggs on Wilhite: Tell the story about the white swimsuit.

In 2004, Fullerton received the College World Series, with Suzuki as the All-America catcher and Wilhite as a redshirt catcher. In 2005, the Titans visited the White House.

“I didn’t own a suit,” Wilhite said. “I went to the Men’s Wearhouse in Hawthorne, just by myself, and this guy sold me on a white suit.”

On the day of the White House go to, his teammates thought the white swimsuit was a joke. Dear reader, it was not.

Wilhite stood in line with his teammates, ready to meet President George W. Bush. As the president shook Wilhite’s hand, he took a look at the swimsuit and deadpanned: “Bold move, son.”

Fullerton has received 4 College World Series championships, more than any other faculty in addition to USC, Louisiana State, Texas and Arizona State — elite by any normal, but frankly superb given the Titans’ standing as a financially challenged athletic program at a commuter faculty. The gamers believed in themselves, because they may not depend on anybody else to consider in them.

“It was like a brotherhood,” Suzuki said.

That drunk driver very almost killed Wilhite, too. You can get chills just by saying out loud the medical time period for what occurred to him: inside decapitation.

UC Irvine surgeons put his cranium back atop his backbone. At the time, UCI reported, only 4 other people had been recognized to have recovered from that injury.

Wilhite was in the hospital for weeks, in rehabilitation for months. Suzuki, then in his second full major league season, raised more than $50,000 for Wilhite’s recovery fund by tapping veterans for baseball memorabilia that might be bought or auctioned.

“Luckily, with the money raised, I was able to take a year and get myself physically as good as I could be,” Wilhite said, “before I went back to work.”

That money was not the most beneficial contribution Suzuki made toward Wilhite’s therapeutic.

When Wilhite completed his rehabilitation program, Suzuki was back in Southern California, in the midst of offseason exercises.

Hey, he told Wilhite, come work out with me.

“This is a guy that’s a professional athlete getting ready for his next year,” Wilhite said, “and I was struggling to walk.

“I showed up every single day, and I got stronger. That’s when I really made strides. I wasn’t just a patient. I felt like an athlete again.”

Even in those worst of instances, Suzuki was not above ribbing Wilhite. For both of them, it felt, effectively, regular.

“He was still getting his balance back,” Suzuki said. “I’m like, come on dude, don’t go falling on me or everybody’s going to be looking at us!”

Suzuki may have made a modest donation to Wilhite’s recovery fund. That would have been a pretty gesture.

Angels supervisor Kurt Suzuki, left, and Jon Wilhite had been teammates at Cal State Fullerton. “Would you just write your family member a check? No, you’re going to be there for him,” Suzuki said of how he’s supported Wilhite since the accident.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

For Suzuki, that wouldn’t have been enough. The Titans had been household, and to this day he remembers that Wilhite’s father attended follow just about every day, sitting in the entrance row, sporting that trademark white bucket hat.

“Would you just write your family member a check?” Suzuki said. “No, you’re going to be there for him.”

The Angels honor their best pitcher each 12 months with the Nick Adenhart Award. Suzuki can current it now, and share his reminiscences of Adenhart. Perhaps Wilhite may be part of Suzuki.

If he had been to do that, he would need to make sure to share his reminiscences of the other victims, too: Courtney Stewart, 20, a Fullerton classmate he described as good, enjoyable, and not at all scared to tease her ballplayer mates about their play; and Henry Pearson, 25, a law pupil and aspiring sports activities agent who Wilhite said never took a second for granted.

We met at Marine Park in Manhattan Beach, where Pearson and Wilhite performed youth baseball, and where a memorial reads: “On April 9, 2009, Henry Pearson, Courtney Stewart and Nick Adenhart were killed by a drunk driver. Jon Wilhite miraculously survived and recovered. They remain an inspiration to us all.”

Some days more than others, Wilhite feels the miracle of survival, of prayer, of fashionable drugs. I requested him how he explains what occurred to people who don’t already know.

“I usually don’t like to drop that bomb on people,” he said. “I usually try to be vague.”

He is aware of he’s the fortunate one. He tries to bear in mind that every day, but his thoughts never drifts far from the others.

“Three of the best people I know lost their life for a senseless act,” he said, “people with such promise.”

Thanksgiving is upon us, so I requested Wilhite if something got here out of this horrific tragedy for which he will be grateful.

He paused. The grief would possibly never absolutely go. He was not about to pressure an reply.

But, after a minute or so, he talked of the relationships he had constructed with the households of Adenhart, Pearson and Stewart, and the baseball group that supported him, and the close mates who stepped up to help him in his time of need.

“Like Kurt,” he said.