Charles Krauthammer is one of my heroes. For years my wife and I watched Fox News’s “Special Report With Bret Baier,” where Charles softly delivered his insights on politics with impressive and often sardonic wit and intelligence. We grew to rely on his electronic companionship and his political navigational skills. He knew where true north pointed; and although he could bite, he seldom barked.

Now he has announced he has a few weeks to live. Our pain is sharp.

Charles is a serious baseball fan. His final declaration that “my fight is over” recalled for me the moving exit speech by Lou Gehrig, who—on July 4, 1939, dying of his eponymous disease—called himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” It is important to play the game well, but it is also important how one leaves the arena.

For most of his life, Charles was a quiet daily witness that the Fates can be cruel. He surely endured untold suffering, and this latest medical report seems like piling on, to use a football term. He surely had a full dose of suffering when he broke his neck diving into a gym pool during his first year at Harvard Medical School. Despite that injury, which paralyzed his legs totally and his arms partly, he finished his medical training on time with the class of 1975. He became a psychiatrist and turned to journalism when editors noticed his talent for writing. His weekly column in the Washington Post became a Beltway staple.

Many admirers who watched Charles on Fox News did not know he was sitting in a wheelchair. I noticed because I also “ride” a chair and am limited. Charles never spoke of these issues, but I felt a special bond and wrote him a fan letter years ago to commend his remarkable political commentary and his courage. Like him, I had experienced a paralyzing injury—I broke my back in a fall while at college—though mine was less severe than his.


It turned out he knew of my history for the same reasons I knew of his. When he replied to my letter, he was gracious and shared his personal insight on our youthful misfortunes. He wrote that he and I were fortunate—sort of—to have suffered our injuries when we were so young. We might have had more difficulty recovering had we been hurt at an older age. His wise diagnosis had the ring of his psychiatric training.

Past great political pundits—Walter Lippmann, H.L. Mencken, Arthur Krock—were not the presence that Charles Krauthammer became with his daily Fox News appearances. He is the finest of our current political translators and commentators, well-suited for our age because of his contrast with it. The prevalence of bloviating, uncivilized screamers makes Charles’s self-effacing reserve especially refreshing. Slyly irreverent yet respectful and civil, he has a classic education and is literate when those attributes are being devalued. He is an inspiration: We wish we knew what Charles knows.

In his famous prayer, Cardinal John Henry Newman asked God to grant him each night “a safe lodging, and a holy rest and peace at the last.” It is that “peace at the last” we wish for our friend Charles Krauthammer. We saw him fight so well, and now he tells us his fight is over. May peace come to this fine man, who led his life in such a noble manner, and set such a shining example.

Mr. Vincent was commissioner of Major League Baseball, 1989-92.