For the uninitiated, the 12U Frisco, TX franchise of the STIX Baseball Club is a special team. Travel baseball gets a bad rap, sometimes deservedly so, as do all youth sports. I’ve written about this here before - What Did You Sign Up For?. But I always have to stop and remind people that this team is just not the same as other teams. There’s a long list of things that make the STIX stand apart, beginning with the fact that 7 of the original 9 kids that joined our team in the fall of 2011 are still wearing STIX laundry. Nate joined in before we kicked off our first real season in the spring of 2012. Because those 8 originals include twins, that’s seven families that have spent the better part of every weekend together for more than half the year since January 2012. That’s seven families that have travelled together – to Waco, to Colorado, to Austin. That’s seven families whose kids have sleepovers, and whose parents all like to hang out with each other – sometimes vacation with each other. That’s six other families that I have spent more time with than almost anyone else for the last four years.
When I started this team in the late summer of 2011, I had a few distinct modest goals – to give my son a chance to play with friends while learning to play the game correctly, and to do so with class and dignity and while learning to respect coaches, umpires and parents. I knew what kind of work would need to go into it, and I had a plan. When the next spring rolled around, I took on Will’s 13U STIX team along with my great friends Kris and Matt, and had wisely recruited coach Joe and coach Blake to help out with the STIX 9U. Luckily, Ben did not need a coach (for the time being that is). Within a month of kicking off the Spring 2012 season, we got news of Kelly’s diagnosis. Kris made sure that all the coaches, including Joe and Blake, knew what was going on and that they would need to pick up the slack as necessary.
There would be many extraordinary moments on the diamond
that season, beginning with the first 13U game of the season between Chad
Jolley’s and Greg Hampton’s team and ours, where both teams donned their Team
Kelly jerseys and we all met on the mound to start the game and prayed
together. A few weeks later, the TK
jerseys would be back on the diamond for what would become an important STIX
tradition. Every first weekend in May, Triple
Creek in McKinney hosts a tournament called Strikes Against Cancer (Strikes Against Cancer)
that is the brainchild of Geordon Cox.
Geordon began the tournament as a way to honor his mother and join her
in her 4-year long battle against cancer.
Today it remains one of the biggest events in north Texas, and in 2012,
both Sam’s and Will’s STIX teams played in the event donning Team Kelly
jerseys. Ben’s team played in the event
as well, and Ella had a softball game that weekend. Kelly saw each of them play, taking in 11
games over that 2-day span (Play Ball!)!! All while struggling through the side effects
of a 48-hour cycle of Folfirinox chemotherapy!
Pardon my French, but what a badass!
A little over a year later, the STIX would finish fourth out
of 14 in the Super Summer NIT, their best tournament performance to date. Pool play began on Saturday June 1, and the
head coach was AWOL and Sam was noticeably absent from the lineup that
day. Sam spent most of the day, along
with his siblings and the coach, lying next to his mom loving on her and
talking to her, and saying goodbye. The
next day, as close friends and family busied themselves about the house taking
care of me and my kids, word began to come down about the run the STIX were
making in bracket play on Sunday. “On to
the semifinals!” was the word we got, and Sam looked at me and said he wanted
to play. I called coach Joe and told him
to pencil Sam in to the lineup and asked Pops to get him to the park. Of course they were wearing their Team Kelly
jerseys, and word had spread throughout the ballfields that day about who this
team was and who they were representing – the story was fairly well known in
those days. When Sam came to the plate
for his first at-bat, the GP Airhogs’ catcher called time out and the crowd,
opposing coaches, umpires, and STIX all gave Sam a standing ovation. We lost that one 7-6, but I still remember
Joe saying it was the most moving baseball moment he’d ever witnessed.
Like me, Kelly loved the diamond. We made and shared memories there, and we met
and hung out with most of our dearest friends there. I knew I needed to put down my fungo after
that season, because I needed to focus on my family and picking up the pieces
after Kelly’s passing, but it was hard.
So much of our energy had gone into baseball in general, and into this
STIX team in particular. For three
seasons these families had made up a vital contingent of Team Kelly and had helped
to carry my family through some of our toughest moments. To my relief, coach Joe took the head
coaching job (reluctantly at first) and since then has added (I like to think I
get some credit for this in terms of “front office” influence) Ryan and
Preston, his twin sons, Beau Williams, and a host of roving instructors made up
of current and ex-pro ballplayers. And
the best part is they still let me hit fungo and catch-in sometimes!
This coming weekend, STIX Baseball 12U will play in its 4th
consecutive Strikes Against Cancer tournament, and for the 4th
consecutive year I am honored that the kids, coaches and parents have decided
to represent Kelly. We updated the
laundry a little:
One of the great blessings of this blog is the ability to go back to certain moments and just remember - the struggles, the pain, the joy, the laughs and the tears. While I try to avoid attaching too much significance to specific dates, I often return to a period of time, within a week or two of the current date, but during that time when she was still here - just so I can remember the story. While looking back for baseball pics and stories, I ran across a different kind of post. Just a little over two years ago she wrote to her sister in the middle of the night, and Carol posted here: Text From Kelly. It's good for me and my children to be reminded that in the worst moments of her life she always boldly turned her energy outward through prayer and thanksgiving. I've never been that selfless and that brave, but I want to be!
I hope in some small way that for the parents, coaches, and especially our kids, as we don these Team Kelly uniforms this weekend and beyond, we remember to open our hearts and give something of ourselves to those around us - those who suffer in pain and fear and despair because of their own illness or that of a loved or lost one - and that we play the game the right way. The only way. The Team Kelly way!
Good luck this weekend! Hit 'em where they ain't!
