born 1 February 1970

Asuman Dabak, Manisa, Turkey, actress

James Delap, Ely, England, child actor

Malik Sealy (died 20 May 2000), The Bronx, New York, NBA basketball player/actor

Moni Luzi Beyer, Karlsruhe, West Germany, TV actress

Stefan Betz, Landshut, West Germany, writer/director/actor

Yasuyuki Kazama, Nagano, Japan, driver

Malik Sealy was something special. A lanky shooting guard, he had a steady college and pro career, culminating in a major contribution to the Minnesota Timberwolves’ first fifty-win season in 2000. He also laid the groundwork for an acting career in his sporting retirement, appearing opposite Whoopi Goldberg in 1996’s Eddie, and in a couple of TV guest spots.

His father was a bodyguard for Malcolm X; Sealy was named in El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz’s honor. For everyone–like me and every name on the page here–who ever turns thirty-nine, at this moment in life it is worth reflecting upon the horrifying coincidence that the hateful and deliberate bullets aimed at both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. deprived each man the privilege of ever counting himself forty years of age.

Malik Sealy got thirty years to live, only. He was killed on a spring night by a head-on collision with a wrong-way-bound drunken driver, on his way home from dear friend and teammate Kevin Garnett’s twenty-fourth birthday party. The driver that killed him, Souksangouane Phengsene, has been jailed, released, re-arrested, re-jailed, re-released, and arrested and jailed a third time for drinking and driving since then. Rot on, Mr. Phengsene.

For my part, tomorrow will mark the 20^th anniversary of my own nearest-death experience. I was a passenger in a car that was sideswiped at high speed by an eighteen-wheeler on the Connecticut Turnpike. Considering the gnarling that the Acura endured, it’s a miracle not one of us in the vehicle was hurt. Luck plays such a defining role in everybody’s life. I’m grateful to Today’s Winner for reminding me to count myself ultrafortunate for being here to write this at all.