A league with
No
Losers
Barry Horn-
Staff Writer
The Dallas
Morning News
Conyers,
Ga.
Russell Slade sang between prayers those days and
nights he sat vigil by the bed of his comatose 4-year-old
son, Nicholas, at Scottish Rite Children’s Medical
Center in Atlanta. The prayers varied. The song never
did.“Take
me out to the ballgame,” the father would gently
sing over and over. “Take me out to the
crowd…”
On his motionless son’s bed, the father placed the
boy’s tiny blue and yellow vinyl baseball glove.
Nicholas had been admitted to the hospital in March 2000
so that tubes could be put in his ears to combat
infection, a relatively minor procedure compared with the
dozen or so surgeries he already had undergone. This
time, however, Nicholas began to have violent seizures on
the operating table.Two hours later, he was deep into a coma. Doctors feared
the worst. Me. Slade already witnessed one miracle with
Nicholas. Now, as he sang, he desperately hoped for
another. Once, Mr. Slade believed he’d buy a baseball glove
for his only son. He never dreamed he’d be able to
toss a ball around with Nicholas. He never thought
he’d see his son in a uniform, playing on a baseball
field. Nicholas was born without eyes. It’s called “bilateral anopthalmia,” the
doctors told Russell, a suburban Atlanta firefighter, and
his wife, Patricia, a jewelry store manager, soon after
their son was born. It is
extremely rare, the doctors said. There was, they added,
nothing they could do. As the numbness of the moment passed and the haze of
disbelief disappeared, a million thoughts began racing
through the father’s mind as he tried to make sense
of the news. One he distinctly remembers:
“I always dreamed of coaching my son in
baseball…I knew at that very moment my dream was
gone.” Indeed,
the father’s dream remained dormant for almost four
years. Then in the spring of 1999, a physical therapist
told Mrs. Slade that a baseball league for disabled
children had started up in the area the previous year.
The league welcomed all comers. Rosters were lined with
blind players and players in wheelchairs. There were
players with muscular dystrophy and Down syndrome,
multiple sclerosis and autism. Children once sentenced to
the sidelines were actually playing baseball.
They ranged in age from 6 to 18. The children had diverse
disabilities and needed different kinds of assistance:
hitting a baseball, rounding the bases, crossing the
plate, making it safely back to the dugout. In its
embryonic stage, the undertaking was lovingly referred to
as “the Hodgepodge League.”
When Mrs. Slade told her husband about the league, Mr.
Slade assured her there was no way their son- forced to
undergo at least two procedures annually to fit ocular
prostheses in hopes that his facial tissue would develop
normally- could play.
But mother knew best. Mrs. Slade persisted and, finally,
her husband relented. And so Mr. Slade bought a blue and
yellow vinyl baseball glove and a ball. The next order of
business was explaining to his son what the ball and
glove were for and the wonderment they might bring. Then
came the moment of truth. Mr. Slade rolled the ball to
the boy in the yard. Nicholas found the ball after it
bounced off his body and rolled it back. Over and over,
father and son rolled it back and forth.
“I’m telling you, the smile on his face was
something to see,” Mr. Slade recalls. “There
was something about baseball. It was almost
immediate.” Mr.
Slade drove 10 miles from his home in Covington to
Conyers in the spring of 1999 and signed up Nicholas to
play in the hodgepodge that everyone was now calling the
“Miracle League.” “I
never dreamed something like that was possible,” the
father says. “It was truly a miracle. Nicholas’
face lit up every time we’d go off to play.”
But now the darkness had returned. It was a year later,
and as his son lay comatose in the hospital, Mr. Slade
prayed there might be a second season and sang the words
that had made his son the happiest.
The first pitch
About a week after Nicholas lapsed into a coma, there
was stirring in his bed. Mr. Slade excitedly began
talking to Nicholas about going home, sleeping in his own
bed, playing in his own bedroom- a shrine to the Atlanta
Braves- and attending the Miracle League season opener
the next week.
Nicholas finally sat up, and the Slades has what they
called their second miracle. Before the night was over,
the Slade family was singing “Take Me Out to the
Ball Game.” Once again, Nicholas’ voice was
part of the choir.
On April 16, 2000, Nicholas threw out the first pitch of
the Miracle League’s third season- and the first in
its state-of-the-art ballpark. There wasn’t a dry
eye in the house.
“I love baseball,” says Nicholas, now 7, as his
hands excitedly examine a visitor’s face. “I
fell good when I play.” Sitting
across the room, his father, a son of the South, is
proudly sporting the New York Yankees shirt he wears when
he coaches Nicholas. “For most parents, youth sports
have lost their meaning,” Mr. Slade says.
“Youth sports are meant to be fun for the kids. How
much fun can that be? It has become a business.” In
our league, we’re just happy seeing our kids get a
little sun on their faces, get off the sidelines and do
something that other parents and their kids take for
granted,” he said.
“Sometimes it’s hard for our kids to use the
muscles they have to use for baseball. But it’s not
too hard for them to use muscles they need to
smile.” With 35 enthusiastic players and 70 anxious
parents, the Miracle League opened on a grass and dirt
field in the spring of 1998. It was more a happy
confluence of events than any grand design.
A sports
juggernaut
But opening day was only the first baby step to result
from one man’s act of kindness and the
community’s response. Today, the Conyers league
boasts 200 players. Originally a Saturday only league, it
now scheduled games Tuesday and Friday nights, as well,
to satisfy demand.
A league in Alpharetta (Ga.) 50 miles up the road, opened
in September. Play is already underway in Myrtle Beach,
S.C.
Every mention in the media brings scores on inquiries
from around the country. CNN has ventured to Conyers to
cover the story. So have Atlanta television stations and
the PAX cable network. The morning after the Miracle
League was featured on HBO’s Real Sports in
July 2001, the phone began ringing. Diane Alford, the
league’s executive director, says she answered 1,400
inquiries from that exposure alone. All asked the same
question: “How can we start our own Miracle
League?”
Today, there are plans for 80 leagues from coast to
coast, including three in Texas. There have been 37
groundbreakings for specially equipped stadiums; an
additional 42 are planned by the end of next year.
“Our goal is to have a league in all 50
states,” Ms. Alford says. “Our dream is to have
a league in or around every city. The need is everywhere.
If we could do it, anyone can.”
Once a sleepy farming town in Rockdale County, 20 miles
east of Atlanta, Conyers has boomed into an affluent
suburban bedroom community. But it has been a bumpy ride.
Conyers reveled in its glory during the Atlanta Summer
Olympics in 1996, playing host to the Games’
equestrian events. The city, however, gained notoriety in
May 1999 when a student at Heritage High School went on a
shooting rampage, wounding six schoolmates one month
after the shootings at Colorado’s Columbine High
School..
Five months later, PBS broadcast a documentary several
years in the making called The Lost Children of
Rockdale County. It examined the lives of troubled
teens from well-to-do families living in and around
Conyers. While PBS cameras were magnifying the tales of
teen sex and drug abuse, a youth league baseball coach
made what he describes as “one small step,”
though some might consider his actions a giant leap of
faith.
After he came up one player short for his Mariners roster
of 5 and 6 year old boys in the fall of 1997, Eddie
Bagwell asked the younger brother of one of his players
to join his team in the Rockdale Youth Baseball
Association. The coach had kept a watchful eye on Michael
Moore during the previous spring season. The 5 year old
had come to all of big brother Clayton’s games and
practices, watching quietly from the sidelines.
It didn’t matter to Mr. Bagwell when he extended the
invitation that Michael had cerebral palsy and used a
wheelchair. It was the sadness of sitting on the
sidelines in the boy’s eyes that Mr. Bagwell
remembered most when he asked if Michael might like to
complete the roster that included the coach’s
youngest son. “Why pick him?” asks Mr. Bagwell,
a real estate appraiser at the time who now owns a
sporting goods store. “Why
not?”
Using
his clout
Because it was fall baseball- a sort of secondary season
that coaches in Conyers used more for instruction than
competitive play- Mr. Bagwell says he didn’t
hesitate to include Michael. Besides, Mr. Bagwell had
been recently elected president of the baseball
association and was more than willing to test his new
powers if someone objected to his plan. “Who as
going to argue with me?” he asks. “I was in
charge.”
His other Mariners players accepted Michael immediately,
Mr. Bagwell reports. There was only one problem:
Teammates argued over who would push his wheelchair
around the bases and help him in the field. Although he
never heard a negative word from the kids, Mr. Bagwell
encountered some opposition from rival coaches. Other
coaches didn’t fear for the safety of the boy in the
wheelchair. Instead, they conjured up notions that he
somehow might give the Mariners a competitive advantage.
“There are always some people who are going to be
ding-dongs,” Mr. Bagwell recalls, the smile of a
bridge player about to lay down a trump card working its
way across his face. “I told one coach who
complained to write a letter to the president of the
league. I told him it would wind up on my desk and
I’d get around to looking at it just as soon as the
season was over.”
Safety issue
Mr. Bagwell’s Mariners didn’t win a single game
of coach pitch baseball that fall season, and he still
winces when he mentions that fact. But it will be a
season that the coach and his players will never forget,
even though Michael and his family moved away soon after
and remained out of touch.
“Michael got to wear a uniform and play with the
other kids,” Mr. Bagwell says. “He
couldn’t catch the ball or throw the ball, but he
sure tried.” Mr. Bagwell pauses, his mind replaying
scenes from the season. “But then again there are
not many 5 and 6 year olds that I have met who can catch
and throw properly.”
The spring season of 1998, however, was another matter.
Baseball is a more serious game in the spring. As a
member in good standing of the Dixie League Association-
a Southern version of Little League- Rockdale Youth
Baseball could not field a team with a player in a
wheelchair who needed help to play. It was in the rules.
“It’s a safety issue as much as anything, Mr.
Bagwell says. “A baseball field can be a dangerous
place.” But Mr. Bagwell was not willing to see the
sadness return to a boy’s eyes. Once again, he
wielded the power of his office. As league president, he
offered an alternative. His association controlled 10
baseball fields. If there were enough disabled children
who wanted to play, and a system to protect them from
hard hit balls could be devised, his baseball association
would provide them a home.
Like most of his neighbors, Mr. Bagwell never gauged what
the response might be. All around they saw parents
working diligently to build their healthy children into
trophy athletes whom they could brag about around the
water cooler. But they never considered how many children
there might be who never ventured anywhere near the youth
sports fields.
They never dreamed that the latest census figures for
Georgia would reveal that 8.2 percent of the population
ages 5 to 20- 158,000 boys and girls, young men and young
women- were classified as having a disability. Relying
mostly on word of mouth to recruit players, the fledgling
league embraced 35 pioneering children- enough for four
teams- before opening day.
With no cutoff date for signing up, by season’s end
the league had swelled to 60 players who could not wait
to put on their uniforms and play baseball on sunny
Saturday mornings. Though the players’ smiles were
captivating and their parents’ joy contagious, there
were plenty of tears in the stands.“The first thing the kids do is steal your
heart,” says Ms. Alford, the league’s executive
director. “But you watch them play and watch them
having fun, and they’ll have you bawling like
you’re at your mama’s funeral.”
The Miracle League’s first season in 1998 taught the
people of Conyers two important lessons: There was high
demand for what the league was offering, and a regular
baseball field can be a minefield for a child uses a
wheelchair or a walker. Subsequent
research told league organizers that there were almost
80,000 disabled children in the Atlanta area alone unable
to participate in youth sports.
Meanwhile, protective parents were leery about allowing
their children to play on a field where a pebble in a
base path might as well be a boulder. Even the slightest
elevation change can tip a wheelchair or trip a blind
player.
A dream realized
As preparations were being made for the league’s
second season, two Rockdale County Rotary clubs joined
forces to form the Rotary Miracle League Fund. The goals
were to spread the word about the league so more children
might participate and to build a field that might better
accommodate players.
With the help of local Lions and Kiwanis clubs as well as
area churches and youth groups, more than $1 million was
raised to build a special field in the midst of
Conyers’ sprawling youth baseball complex..
When Nicholas Slade threw out the first pitch of the 2000
season, he did it at a spanking new McMiracle field with
its cushiony $190,000 synthetic turf designed to ensure
slower bounces. There is also a special sprinkler system
to keep the field cool on hot Georgia days as well as
wheelchair accessible dugouts, restrooms and concession
stands.
That McMiracle Field, which pulled a $300,000 donation
from McDonalds, stands in the heart of the complex is no
accident. “We want our children to go to the same
ball fields as their sisters and brothers and
friends,” Ms. Alford says. “We want to expose
them to mainstream America and expose mainstream America
to them.”
Games’ format
The games themselves are tightly formatted, having
changed little from the league’s original opening
day. Miracle League pioneers devised two inning games in
which every player gets to bat twice. Coaches lob balls
to batters. For players who have trouble making contact
or cannot see pitches, the ball is set up on a tee. Those
who still have problems hitting the ball are assisted by
a “buddy.”
Every player is assigned a buddy to help him or her in
the field and at bat. At first, most nervous parents
elect to be their child’s buddy. As they become more
comfortable with the league, however, they often
relinquish the role to a player from one of the other
youth league teams and retreat to the stands to soak up
the atmosphere. There are no strikeouts in Miracle League
play. When a ball is hit, the batter can take as many
bases as he or she pleases. Some can make it around the
bases without resting. Others may have to pause at a base
to catch their breath. There is no rule that disallows
passing on the base path. Everyone scores in the end.
There is no scoreboard perched above the right field
fence. After all, what would a state of the art baseball
field be without a scoreboard? But runs are never
recorded. Neither are hits and errors. In the Miracle
League, everyone leaves the field a winner.
Mr. Bagwell says that several of the coaches who
originally complained about his using a player in a
wheelchair have volunteered for Miracle League duty.
Having his own business in the community, he says, makes
him reluctant to name names.
“But I will tell you this: There are those who have
been involved in our youth baseball association for years
who are scoundrels- overzealous dogs- when it comes to
competition. But this has changed some of them. This has
changed everyone who has taken the time to get involved
all for the better.”
Assuming the
risks
Twelve-year-old Lauren Gunder has emerged
as the unofficial poster child for the Miracle League,
speaking on behalf of many compatriots who have
difficulty communicating. A seventh grade honors student
in Lawrenceville, a 45 minute drive from Conyers, Lauren
is a vivacious and quick-witted Miracle Leaguer who lives
and dies with her Atlanta Braves.
Lauren bats right-handed and throws right-handed. “I
do everything right-handed, except read,” she
reports. “I read Braille with my left hand.” Lauren
was born with osteoporosis, a disease that leaves her
bones brittle and ready to snap at even the slightest
touch. The disease has even affected her hearing and
sight. Watching her Braves on television can be a chore.
But snuggling up with a radio on her pillow and listening
to a Braves game is always a pleasure.
Like most parents, the Gunders came to the Miracle League
cautiously. They fretted over Lauren’s playing, even
on a specially designed field where the smallest seam
could be devastating to a brittle boned girl in a
wheelchair. Always before, whenever Lauren came home from
school with fliers or sign up sheets for soccer or
basketball or baseball, her parents had to say no.
But Jesse and Jenifer Gunder weighed the risks and
rewards for their daughter- who, doctors told them, would
be lucky to make it to her first birthday- and played a
hunch. They understood that even with her father as her
buddy and alongside her every step of the way, her
wheelchair could tip over. They understood there could be
trips to a local hospital and a six-hour dash to
Charleston, S.C.; to see the world-renowned specialist
whose experimental treatment has kept Lauren alive.
But they also understood her desire to do something her
“normal” friends do and to talk about it at
school. “When a child has a disability, that child
always wants to do the things he or she can’t
do,” says Mrs. Gunder. “Lauren wanted to play
baseball. We finally said OK.”
Says Lauren, “What I like best is that I can swing a
bat by myself. I don’t need anyone to help me. There
aren’t a lot of other things I can do by myself In
the Miracle League, I get to live my dream of playing
baseball just like my friends.”
In April 2000, on opening day of McMiracle Field, Lauren
was introduced to several dignitaries. She was happy to
meet so many from the Atlanta Braves organization, but
she was smitten only by Brian Jordan, an outfielder, who
took the time to trade stories with her about their
respective games. Lauren was devastated when Mr. Jordan
was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers before the 2002
season.
Touching them all
The Dodgers were in Atlanta in May when
Lauren celebrated her 12th birthday. She and her family
went to the game at Turner Field. Before the game, Lauren
was invited onto the field to renew acquaintances with
Mr. Jordan. As she stepped from the stands to the field-
a drop of not more than a couple of inches, her mother
reports using her thumb and curled index finger for
emphasis- Lauren’s right leg snapped. She broke her
shinbone and had to be rushed to the hospital.
Her spring 2002 Miracle League season was over after two
games. The fall 2002 season wasn’t any better.
Lauren broke her right thighbone stepping out or her
wheelchair- a routine step- just before the season and
spent most of the season in a body cast.When she started
in the Miracle League, Lauren stood when she bated and
hopped into her wheelchair to round the bases after
hitting the ball. But her bones have become more brittle,
and her doctors now demand that she bat from the
wheelchair.
In her first at-bat of the season, the ball the pitcher
threw had a beeper implanted to help her gauge where it
was. Like a veteran major leaguer facing a new pitcher,
she didn’t swing. Rather, she judged the timing of
the pitch. On the next pitch, Lauren hit a line drive and
circled the bases. “I can’t wait for the season
to start up again in April,” Lauren says. “I
have a lot of things to make up for.” She motions
for her interviewer to come closer. She bends forward and
whispers conspiratorially. “The doctors say
I’ll have to bat in a wheelchair. But I’ll be
standing at the plate again. Come and see me.”
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