‘The kid is a bulldog’
Brian Kice has cerebral palsy … and works his drawbacks into the game
When pitches leave Brian Kice’s hand, they tend to do a dipsy-doo before reaching the plate. “My teammates call me Mr. Junk,” said Kice, a Santa Fe Prep eighth-grader who is getting his first varsity experience and making opposing batters do double takes.
Kice, a smidgen of an athlete at 5-foot-6, is one of those baseball addicts who has been playing since he was old enough to pick up a glove.
For most kids, that’s no big deal, but it is for Kice, who was born with cerebral palsy as a result of a mild stroke suffered while he was still in the womb, leaving him with hemiplegia — a weakness, stiffness or lack of control — that affected the right side of his body.
“It’s fairly mild in the spectrum of CP,” said Brian’s dad, David Kice. “But he’s had it his whole life. He was born with it. It affects the right side of his body. He has increased tightness in the muscles and reduced dexterity. When he was real little, the affect on his foot and leg were quite pronounced, as well as on his hand and arm. As he’s gotten older and after many years of physical therapy, what are mostly affected are his right hand and his vision.”
Brian underwent sessions of physical therapy, occupational therapy and either aqua therapy or equine therapy weekly until he was 6 and able to start school.
It was shortly thereafter that a
passion for baseball developed, leaving him determined to play like everybody else, even if he had to throw with his opposite hand.
“Just going out every day and playing the game is what really makes me happy and I enjoy that,” Brian said. “It’s been kind of hard, too. I’ve been playing almost nine years now. I’ve had a lot of time to work on fine motor skills. Swinging the bat, catching the ball and putting my hand over it so I can catch the ball. It’s been a challenge.
“One of the main things of me having CP, for me it’s minor. There are a lot of kids out there who have it a lot worse than me. I have it moderate and some kids are in a wheelchair and have to have an assistant.”
As a slight eighth-grader, Brian doesn’t exactly cast an imposing figure on the mound. The Blue Griffins were at first were reluctant to throw him games. But several weeks ago, he got his chance against Raton and performed well, and followed that up with a scoreless inning against Pecos last week.
“He throws a remarkable assortment of off-speed pitches,” said Prep co-head coach Mark Bixby. “He’s built a complete arsenal around a body that doesn’t always want to cooperate. He has sort of an unorthodox release and when the ball comes out of his hands, there are some wicked spins on that ball.”
Doctors originally told the Kice family that Brian would never be able to play sports, and he didn’t start walking until he was 18 months old. But there was not anything that was going to keep him on the sidelines, his dad said.
“If you could pick a sport that (you could play) with a limited dexterity in your hands, baseball would not be the one to play,” Kice said. “But it’s been great therapy for him.”
Though he’s one of the younger players on the Griffins, he’s become something of a role model for some of his teammates, Bixby said.
“We have a real scrappy operation in all kinds of ways,” he said. “The kids who are baseball players are definitely more of the minority, and they take on quite an active teaching role with the others learning the game. It’s a real ‘Bad News Bears’ kind of story, but it’s awesome.”
Brian has worked his drawbacks into his approach to the game.
“He’s told me his right eye doesn’t pick up as fast and he bats lefty, so oftentimes he’s a little late to pick up the ball, so he hits the ball to the opposite field,” Bixby said. “He’s taken a visual impairment and turned it into his approach. The mind-set is really cool in a lots of ways. As a player, he never said anything about being handicapped. ‘This is what I can do.’ He’s not dwelling on what he can’t do. The kid is a bulldog.”
Brian, who eventually would like to play college baseball, then become a sports announcer — preferably baseball — recognizes that he carries the flag for others who cannot. He uses his impairment as a means of educating others.
“I’ve gotten a lot of people saying stuff about it, some people calling me out, a lot people asking me what it is,” he said. “It’s nice for me to sort of be an educator that way and inform people what it is. That’s one more person that knows CP and how it affects your body.”
In the meantime, however, Brian would like be known simply for what he does.
“I think of myself as a normal baseball player,” he said. “I don’t think of myself as being any different.”