SI writer tells of a baseball team persevering after the tornado devastated their coach’s home:
Baseball is all about getting home. But what happens when you get there and it’s gone?
It happened to Hueytown (Ala.) High School baseball head coach Rick Patterson on Wednesday. He walked to his house only to find a tornado had taken it.
Pitchers love making saves. But what happens when the save you have to make is your sister’s life?
It happened to 15-year-old Hueytown JV pitcher Brandon Miller that same day. He was hiding under a mattress in the hallway of his house, wearing his baseball helmet, when a twister took the roof off. Then it started to take his 14-year-old sister, Sara. He reached up and grabbed her in the final fraction of the moment.
High school sports is about playing for love of school. But what happens if your school closed for a week because nobody can drive the roads to get to it?
You keep playing is what happens.
In the eye of all that, Hueytown carried on in the Alabama 5A state playoffs Monday, splitting its first two games with Briarwood Christian in the best-of-three second round. Afterward, each Briarwood player donated $20 to Patterson to help out.
And you think your team has distractions?
“Boys, if you wanna help me, keep winning,” Patterson told his players before the games. “Because as long as we keep winning, I don’t have to think about the rest of my life.”
The rest of his life is scattered over blocks and blocks of Pleasant Grove, Ala., where he and his wife, Debra, were supposed to be living. But two months ago . . .
Read the rest here.
