I am a wide, flat river stone.
He crouches, poised to spring from me
to his next adventure.
More and more
I feel the emptiness of wet footprints.
adam wainwright will play for
3 years ago
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Watauga #6
It probably wasn't really a question of a 12-year-old's manhood. Playing our fourth game in two days, all of us mountain boys were wilting in the 99-degree heat. In that heat the fires of frustration are easily kindled, and the AAU baseball team I coached had done plenty to fluster me that weekend. But if we could've hung on to win our last game it would've salvaged the weekend to some extent, left us without a bitter taste for the ride back up the mountain.
The bases were drunk with two down, and we clung to a one run lead. "Roll us a ground ball," I shouted out to the mound, "and we'll get out of this thing." The pitcher obliged, and the batter sent a topspin bounder to third. Just knock it down, smother it, step on the bag and let's dump the ice from the coolers and head home. In his defense, he caught an in-between hop, and, unlike most plays at third, it wasn't a reaction play; the ball wasn't hit hard and he had a little time to think about it. Letting the ball play you was not an acceptable thought. Our third baseman abandoned his crouch, straightened up, and hopped a bit backwards as the ball careened off of his knee. When it was finally corralled by the glove of his neighbor, the short stop, the game was tied.
Their first base coach shrugged his shoulders apologetically. "Tough break." Our eyes met, and, inexcusably, regardless of the sweltering anger boiling within me on that unforgiving day, I replied, "That kid needs to get the beans beneath the frank."
I don't even remember how they finally put us out of our misery, but we lost the battle. What I do remember is that comment, and I've spent the last six years regretting saying it as the boy whose manhood was questioned proved time and time again that he is tougher than I'll ever be. Our third baseman that day was Will Dicus; no one knew at the time that a battle bigger than any baseball game was raging inside him.
A few months later Will, then 13, was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma. The prognosis was dire. A return to the diamond seemed unlikely, even insignificant in light of his new opponent. Will was competing for his next breath, and the doctors placed their bets on cancer.
Will, of course, had other ideas, and even after losing part of the bone in one leg to cancer surgery, he was eager to limp back out to the mound. Though he had played other positions when not pitching, on the bump is where he most excelled. Baseball, as the slogan goes, is life. And it turns out that baseball wasn't such an insignificant concern in the case of Will Dicus; it was the driving force that kept him climbing the bullpen mounds and defying the grim prognostications of the experts for so long.
"Sorry I'm late, coach. I had chemo this morning," said the wisp of a right-hander as he ambled in from the cold to join his teammates in the indoor practice facility.
"Feel like throwing a pen today?"
It was a stupid question. That five ounces of cowhide and cork was cancer's kryptonite in Will's right hand.
"Yessir," he said, already angling towards the mound.
It doesn't take long to find a volunteer to suit up to catch him. Over a year after his diagnosis, cancer had taken the zip off his once overpowering fast ball, and, now a member of the Watauga High JV baseball team, Will is learning how to pitch. At the tender age of 14 he's like a grizzled veteran who, after the mileage on his arm has robbed him of his best stuff, reinvents himself as a crafty control pitcher. Every practice pitch is pain and joy. Physical pain, to be sure, and mental anguish when the catcher has to move his mitt to snare a stray fast ball, or when the curve ball spins, screaming hit me as it meanders through the strike zone rather than darting down and away for a swinging strike. But, mostly, there is joy. Joy to be a part of a team, to wear that uniform, to compete. Joy to play the game you love. Joy in every never to be taken for granted breath.
We had a wealth of pitching that year; in fact, four of Will's teammates would go on to play college ball. Every night at home I'd fiddle with lineups and struggle over whether or not to pitch him in a game. I wanted to find the perfect time to ease him back out on the mound, but time and innings were commodities in short supply. Before cancer, he was always his team's ace, but now he didn't give us the best chance to win. But this is the JV baseball team, not the world series. How can you measure the joy it would bring him to get back on that hill against wins and losses? What if the opportunity you denied him means that opportunity is forever lost?
He and a few of his friends on the team got into a spot of trouble during the season. Boys being boys. Sometimes boys need a bit of extra "conditioning." I stood, arms folded, as his teammates ran from pole to pole on the outfield warning track early one Saturday morning. Behind me in the dewy grass, I hear the grunts of a 14-year-old young man, emaciated, skin pulled taut around his cheekbones from the cancer treatments, churning out pushups.
"Will, get up."
"Coach, I can't run, but I can do pushups."
"Will, get up."
"Coach, if my teammates are being punished, I want to be punished, too."
"Will, get up."
"Coach," he said, a few blades of cut grass clinging to his trembling arms, "I made the same decision they did."
I took a knee, looked him in the eyes. "Stop. This is supposed to be punishment for you, not for me. I can't watch you do this."
"What can I do instead?"
His teammates reached the pole. Sucking air, they asked how many more. "Keep running," I barked.
After much negotiation, Will reluctantly agreed that dumping out the thousands of baseballs in the practice building and sorting them into buckets--heavy, water-logged ones in this bucket, BP balls in another, balls for taking infield here, balls in good enough shape for a pitcher to use for a bullpen there--was an acceptable punishment. He didn't want special treatment.
WHERE THERE'S A WILL, THERE'S A WAY...EVENTUALLY
Spring time in the mountains is a hard time to play ball; the rain and snow resulted in a schedule logjammed with makeup games, and by the end of the week Will's number 6 would finally be called. We needed his innings; instead, we got more rain and his first start was washed away. But, finally, he got his shot.
"Will, go get loose," I said. There was the slightest hesitation; he had this look on his face that said, "Seriously, me? Now?" But he quickly shuffled out of the dugout and found the bullpen mound. His teammates actually cheered. Eventually I had to send someone to get him; apparently I should've told him to get loose QUICKLY. "Ask him if he would actually like to pitch in the GAME," I said. His teammates were on the field waiting for him as the gate behind the dugout finally opened, and Will's appearance was met with the thunderous approval of all the Watauga faithful in attendance. Perhaps he just wanted to make a grand entrance.
Despite the beauty of the moment--a young man proving the naysayers wrong and fulfilling his dream of pitching high school ball--his outing was not a thing of beauty. He walked a batter, allowed a few hard hit balls, but he preserved the shutout in a lopsided win over North Forsyth. Our opponents' parents and fans must have been scratching their heads. Why was everyone in our dugout and in our section of the stands hanging on every pitch in a game that had long been decided? Why had the volume level suddenly been cranked from whisper to roar? I coached baseball for more than 10 years, and I'll always remember those three outs more than any other moment. I wish those North Forsyth parents knew they were witnessing a miracle that day. After the last out both teams lined up on their respective foul lines and filed past each other, exchanging the traditional post-game handshakes and "good games." The opposing coaches were heaping compliments on me about what a well coached team we had when they sensed that something was amiss.
"What's wrong?" asked one coach, a leathered, stump of a man with white hair escaping from under his cap.
"Just stay with me a minute," I said, keeping my back to the team as they trotted down to the left field corner for our post-game talk.
"You ok?" said his younger, leaner assistant.
"Just give me a second."
I remember trying not to make eye contact. My turf shoes scratched at the dirt in front of home plate.
"That kid's got a bad deal," I choked out finally. The tears came. "The one that pitched the last inning, Dicus, he's got cancer."
"No way," said the stump. "Gosh, you wouldn't know it; he threw the ball well."
"You should've seen him before cancer. He threw harder at 12 than he does now, but he works so..."
The word "hard" was unintelligible, consumed by the high-pitched whir that accompanies the failure to hold back tears. There was so much more I wanted to tell them about Will.
I had my left arm outstretched, my hand clasping stump's shoulder. He was holding me up as my blurred eyes continued to monitor the progress of my feet. He broke the short silence: "What's his prognosis?"
"Not good. This could be the last time he gets to pitch."
"That's just a shame; it just ain't fair," Stump said.
"I know it. I know it. Hey, I gotta go talk to 'em. But do we one favor, ok?
"Sure, anything."
"Pray for Dicus."
With that I took off for the left-field foul pole. It was the shortest post-game speech in history, but I more or less held it together. I'm sure the more perceptive among them could tell I had been crying.
Will's ERA his freshman year was 0.00. One game, one inning pitched, and no runs allowed. But it wasn't his last game by a long shot. When his health allowed, he contributed a few innings over his sophomore and junior campaigns, actually throwing a no-hitter against Freedom in a JV game and gutting out five innings in his lone varsity start, a win over a good West Wilkes club. When you looked at his stuff, it was hard to figure how he got anyone out. It must have been his will, his determination, his competitiveness, his passion, his confidence, how he cherished each pitch. Most of all, it was those eight guys with him out there who absolutely refused to let him down. Maybe it was divine intervention, but somehow his teammates made plays behind him that they couldn't otherwise make. It was like the deep green canvas of the outfield grass had been repainted with streaks of Watauga blue. Guys were flying around, making plays.
But the end of Will's story didn't play out the way the Hollywood script writers would have written it. The ever advancing cancer had spread throughout his body, viciously attacking the lungs, squeezing the air from him. Each day required a stronger cocktail of pain meds, and Will wouldn't get to take the ball his senior year. I've been away from the program for a few years now, not by choice, but by necessity. I have my own son, whose mother left us when he was 20 months old, to care for. Even if I wouldn't be there to witness it, I had been certain that Will would get the ball on senior night and, with his teammates, find a way to win the last chapter of the epic tale he had woven for so much longer than any of his doctors had expected. I would tune it in on the radio, read about in the paper. The tears would flow all over again. Instead, I read an article about how Watauga's senior night, usually the last home game of the season, had been moved up; it would take place on the night of one of the first games of the year. The article didn't say it in so many words, but I knew Will didn't have long. Even without the prospect of pitching as motivation, baseball sustained him. He supported his team as they claimed the conference championship. He fought on through the year, but when Watauga got upset in the first round of the state playoffs, bringing an unexpected early end to their season, Will was lost. His mother posted in her online journal what her son had told her: "It's all over." And a little over two weeks later it was.
Will's mom signed off every journal entry with the same three words: "Hug your kid." It hurt to hear the news of Will's passing on Monday. As a father, I tried to imagine being in Will's parents' position. As a coach, I grieved for the young men I forged bonds with on the baseball field. But no tears came. When I finally lumbered off to bed, I found myself pausing in my doorway before glancing across the hall and taking a detour. I crept into Silas's room, wedged myself into his bed and wrapped my arms around him. Then, the tears came. I felt the loss. I felt their loss. There was no miracle ending for Will Dicus, but the lessons from his too-short life will make a lasting difference in the countless lives he touched. Thank you, Will, for teaching me to never take my son for granted.
Hug your kid.
The bases were drunk with two down, and we clung to a one run lead. "Roll us a ground ball," I shouted out to the mound, "and we'll get out of this thing." The pitcher obliged, and the batter sent a topspin bounder to third. Just knock it down, smother it, step on the bag and let's dump the ice from the coolers and head home. In his defense, he caught an in-between hop, and, unlike most plays at third, it wasn't a reaction play; the ball wasn't hit hard and he had a little time to think about it. Letting the ball play you was not an acceptable thought. Our third baseman abandoned his crouch, straightened up, and hopped a bit backwards as the ball careened off of his knee. When it was finally corralled by the glove of his neighbor, the short stop, the game was tied.
Their first base coach shrugged his shoulders apologetically. "Tough break." Our eyes met, and, inexcusably, regardless of the sweltering anger boiling within me on that unforgiving day, I replied, "That kid needs to get the beans beneath the frank."
I don't even remember how they finally put us out of our misery, but we lost the battle. What I do remember is that comment, and I've spent the last six years regretting saying it as the boy whose manhood was questioned proved time and time again that he is tougher than I'll ever be. Our third baseman that day was Will Dicus; no one knew at the time that a battle bigger than any baseball game was raging inside him.
A few months later Will, then 13, was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma. The prognosis was dire. A return to the diamond seemed unlikely, even insignificant in light of his new opponent. Will was competing for his next breath, and the doctors placed their bets on cancer.
Will, of course, had other ideas, and even after losing part of the bone in one leg to cancer surgery, he was eager to limp back out to the mound. Though he had played other positions when not pitching, on the bump is where he most excelled. Baseball, as the slogan goes, is life. And it turns out that baseball wasn't such an insignificant concern in the case of Will Dicus; it was the driving force that kept him climbing the bullpen mounds and defying the grim prognostications of the experts for so long.
"Sorry I'm late, coach. I had chemo this morning," said the wisp of a right-hander as he ambled in from the cold to join his teammates in the indoor practice facility.
"Feel like throwing a pen today?"
It was a stupid question. That five ounces of cowhide and cork was cancer's kryptonite in Will's right hand.
"Yessir," he said, already angling towards the mound.
It doesn't take long to find a volunteer to suit up to catch him. Over a year after his diagnosis, cancer had taken the zip off his once overpowering fast ball, and, now a member of the Watauga High JV baseball team, Will is learning how to pitch. At the tender age of 14 he's like a grizzled veteran who, after the mileage on his arm has robbed him of his best stuff, reinvents himself as a crafty control pitcher. Every practice pitch is pain and joy. Physical pain, to be sure, and mental anguish when the catcher has to move his mitt to snare a stray fast ball, or when the curve ball spins, screaming hit me as it meanders through the strike zone rather than darting down and away for a swinging strike. But, mostly, there is joy. Joy to be a part of a team, to wear that uniform, to compete. Joy to play the game you love. Joy in every never to be taken for granted breath.
We had a wealth of pitching that year; in fact, four of Will's teammates would go on to play college ball. Every night at home I'd fiddle with lineups and struggle over whether or not to pitch him in a game. I wanted to find the perfect time to ease him back out on the mound, but time and innings were commodities in short supply. Before cancer, he was always his team's ace, but now he didn't give us the best chance to win. But this is the JV baseball team, not the world series. How can you measure the joy it would bring him to get back on that hill against wins and losses? What if the opportunity you denied him means that opportunity is forever lost?
He and a few of his friends on the team got into a spot of trouble during the season. Boys being boys. Sometimes boys need a bit of extra "conditioning." I stood, arms folded, as his teammates ran from pole to pole on the outfield warning track early one Saturday morning. Behind me in the dewy grass, I hear the grunts of a 14-year-old young man, emaciated, skin pulled taut around his cheekbones from the cancer treatments, churning out pushups.
"Will, get up."
"Coach, I can't run, but I can do pushups."
"Will, get up."
"Coach, if my teammates are being punished, I want to be punished, too."
"Will, get up."
"Coach," he said, a few blades of cut grass clinging to his trembling arms, "I made the same decision they did."
I took a knee, looked him in the eyes. "Stop. This is supposed to be punishment for you, not for me. I can't watch you do this."
"What can I do instead?"
His teammates reached the pole. Sucking air, they asked how many more. "Keep running," I barked.
After much negotiation, Will reluctantly agreed that dumping out the thousands of baseballs in the practice building and sorting them into buckets--heavy, water-logged ones in this bucket, BP balls in another, balls for taking infield here, balls in good enough shape for a pitcher to use for a bullpen there--was an acceptable punishment. He didn't want special treatment.
WHERE THERE'S A WILL, THERE'S A WAY...EVENTUALLY
Spring time in the mountains is a hard time to play ball; the rain and snow resulted in a schedule logjammed with makeup games, and by the end of the week Will's number 6 would finally be called. We needed his innings; instead, we got more rain and his first start was washed away. But, finally, he got his shot.
"Will, go get loose," I said. There was the slightest hesitation; he had this look on his face that said, "Seriously, me? Now?" But he quickly shuffled out of the dugout and found the bullpen mound. His teammates actually cheered. Eventually I had to send someone to get him; apparently I should've told him to get loose QUICKLY. "Ask him if he would actually like to pitch in the GAME," I said. His teammates were on the field waiting for him as the gate behind the dugout finally opened, and Will's appearance was met with the thunderous approval of all the Watauga faithful in attendance. Perhaps he just wanted to make a grand entrance.
Despite the beauty of the moment--a young man proving the naysayers wrong and fulfilling his dream of pitching high school ball--his outing was not a thing of beauty. He walked a batter, allowed a few hard hit balls, but he preserved the shutout in a lopsided win over North Forsyth. Our opponents' parents and fans must have been scratching their heads. Why was everyone in our dugout and in our section of the stands hanging on every pitch in a game that had long been decided? Why had the volume level suddenly been cranked from whisper to roar? I coached baseball for more than 10 years, and I'll always remember those three outs more than any other moment. I wish those North Forsyth parents knew they were witnessing a miracle that day. After the last out both teams lined up on their respective foul lines and filed past each other, exchanging the traditional post-game handshakes and "good games." The opposing coaches were heaping compliments on me about what a well coached team we had when they sensed that something was amiss.
"What's wrong?" asked one coach, a leathered, stump of a man with white hair escaping from under his cap.
"Just stay with me a minute," I said, keeping my back to the team as they trotted down to the left field corner for our post-game talk.
"You ok?" said his younger, leaner assistant.
"Just give me a second."
I remember trying not to make eye contact. My turf shoes scratched at the dirt in front of home plate.
"That kid's got a bad deal," I choked out finally. The tears came. "The one that pitched the last inning, Dicus, he's got cancer."
"No way," said the stump. "Gosh, you wouldn't know it; he threw the ball well."
"You should've seen him before cancer. He threw harder at 12 than he does now, but he works so..."
The word "hard" was unintelligible, consumed by the high-pitched whir that accompanies the failure to hold back tears. There was so much more I wanted to tell them about Will.
I had my left arm outstretched, my hand clasping stump's shoulder. He was holding me up as my blurred eyes continued to monitor the progress of my feet. He broke the short silence: "What's his prognosis?"
"Not good. This could be the last time he gets to pitch."
"That's just a shame; it just ain't fair," Stump said.
"I know it. I know it. Hey, I gotta go talk to 'em. But do we one favor, ok?
"Sure, anything."
"Pray for Dicus."
With that I took off for the left-field foul pole. It was the shortest post-game speech in history, but I more or less held it together. I'm sure the more perceptive among them could tell I had been crying.
Will's ERA his freshman year was 0.00. One game, one inning pitched, and no runs allowed. But it wasn't his last game by a long shot. When his health allowed, he contributed a few innings over his sophomore and junior campaigns, actually throwing a no-hitter against Freedom in a JV game and gutting out five innings in his lone varsity start, a win over a good West Wilkes club. When you looked at his stuff, it was hard to figure how he got anyone out. It must have been his will, his determination, his competitiveness, his passion, his confidence, how he cherished each pitch. Most of all, it was those eight guys with him out there who absolutely refused to let him down. Maybe it was divine intervention, but somehow his teammates made plays behind him that they couldn't otherwise make. It was like the deep green canvas of the outfield grass had been repainted with streaks of Watauga blue. Guys were flying around, making plays.
But the end of Will's story didn't play out the way the Hollywood script writers would have written it. The ever advancing cancer had spread throughout his body, viciously attacking the lungs, squeezing the air from him. Each day required a stronger cocktail of pain meds, and Will wouldn't get to take the ball his senior year. I've been away from the program for a few years now, not by choice, but by necessity. I have my own son, whose mother left us when he was 20 months old, to care for. Even if I wouldn't be there to witness it, I had been certain that Will would get the ball on senior night and, with his teammates, find a way to win the last chapter of the epic tale he had woven for so much longer than any of his doctors had expected. I would tune it in on the radio, read about in the paper. The tears would flow all over again. Instead, I read an article about how Watauga's senior night, usually the last home game of the season, had been moved up; it would take place on the night of one of the first games of the year. The article didn't say it in so many words, but I knew Will didn't have long. Even without the prospect of pitching as motivation, baseball sustained him. He supported his team as they claimed the conference championship. He fought on through the year, but when Watauga got upset in the first round of the state playoffs, bringing an unexpected early end to their season, Will was lost. His mother posted in her online journal what her son had told her: "It's all over." And a little over two weeks later it was.
Will's mom signed off every journal entry with the same three words: "Hug your kid." It hurt to hear the news of Will's passing on Monday. As a father, I tried to imagine being in Will's parents' position. As a coach, I grieved for the young men I forged bonds with on the baseball field. But no tears came. When I finally lumbered off to bed, I found myself pausing in my doorway before glancing across the hall and taking a detour. I crept into Silas's room, wedged myself into his bed and wrapped my arms around him. Then, the tears came. I felt the loss. I felt their loss. There was no miracle ending for Will Dicus, but the lessons from his too-short life will make a lasting difference in the countless lives he touched. Thank you, Will, for teaching me to never take my son for granted.
Hug your kid.
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