[dropcap]S[/dropcap]even-year-old Noah Wilson lived ten minutes from my hometown. Right smack dab in the middle of Olathe, Kansas. I didn’t know him, but we shared a common obsession.

Baseball.

Noah was a Kansas City Royals fan, like me.

For Noah, I understand his obsession started last year. Kansas City was having a great season, pistol-whipping half the American League. Noah watched games from his hospital bed, where he was being treated for sarcoma. And I’m told he rarely missed a game.

When Noah’s team made it to the 2014 World Series, his daddy nosed around for tickets. No luck. Ticket prices were over a thousand dollars. Noah would have to settle for T-shirt instead. Cancer is expensive.

Well, somebody important caught wind of Noah’s story. They whisked him off to the World Series and gave him VIP treatment. Noah met the team, got autographs, and even got to smell Alex Gordon’s locker.

Sadly, the damn Giants won the series.

But 2015 started off to be quite a season, Noah’s team was hot. White-hot. They were the best in the league, with the greatest pitchers baseball had ever seen. This was going to be Noah’s year.

One midseason Friday night, when the Royals whooped Oakland, they say Noah was up running around crazy. Maybe because Royals fans love to hate Oakland. Then, that Saturday, Noah became light-headed and was admitted to the hospital. He missed Monday’s ballgame. Finally, that Tuesday Noah lost a long fight.

“We laid there with him,” Noah’s father told the newspaper. “Prayed and sang with him. There was no sign of agony.”

And so, while Royals fans celebrate one of the most dramatic World Series games in history; while we watch Wade Davis, Eric Hosmer, and Mike Moustakas parade downtown in Chevy pickup trucks; while we wear blue during the holidays, instead of green, because it’s been thirty years since Kansas City won a World Series.

Take a moment.

And thank Noah for talking God into it.