What about "Heaven?"

Absolutely, Frank... Man, I'd love to write that bitch up.

As for the question at hand, if you're wedded to the current structure, I'd drop the "It comes from Heaven" line, too. Ending on "anymore" is a much better hook -- and better yet, won't turn off any of your atheist readership.*

*A joke, kind of.

 

Don't think we don't appreciate your work, slap.
Well done.

 

I'm a huge Los Lonely Boys fan and I love that song, so certainly...

Oh... the reference to heaven? I don't have a problem with it, especially if the kid or interview subject mentions it. I'm not about to censor religion out of a story.

 

Ace beat me to it. I'd take the heaven reference out. Not because it's offensive, it's just a borderline cliche. I think the lede gets a lot stronger if you take it out:

Johnny Curveball counted on one thing before every baseball game, his father’s lessons from the stands.
“He would always yell ‘Follow through’ after every pitch,” Curveball said. “There was not a game I was pitching that he didn’t yell that. I still hear it.”
His father's voice doesn’t come from the stands anymore. Jimmy Curveball died Saturday. He'd battled liver cancer for six months. He was 53.

And so on ...
I'd try and tighten up those first couple sentences as much as possible. Give me a nice good flow as a reader, then punch me in the stomach with the dad's death. Surprise the reader with it. Use short sentences to tell me he died, it's like throwing an emotional combination at the reader (jab-jab-crunch).

In terms about writing about God and Heaven, I'd be less concerned about being taboo and more concerned about being trite (and I don't say this to be an asshole).