Like father, like son
On Father’s Day weekend, Patty Biggio is the secret behind son Cavan’s rise to the majors to follow in his dad’s Hall-of-Fame footsteps
As Cavan Biggio follows in dad Craig’s footsteps to the big leagues, mom Patty is there to give the same love and support.
Before the hoopla that greeted the most homecoming of homecomings for Cavan Biggio, who had spent his boyhood shagging flies in Minute Maid Park, then served as an Astros bat boy while his dad sealed a Hall of Fame career with more than 3,000 hits, then starred on St. Thomas High School’s state championship teams under his dad’s obsessive coaching, then rocketed from Notre Dame up through the Toronto Blue Jays’ farm system, then made his Major League debut last month, and then competed against the Astros on — wouldn’t you know it — Father’s Day weekend, someone felt especially responsible for making Cavan feel at home.
She planned to transport him from the Blue Jays’ arrival point in Houston at 4 a.m. Friday to somewhere comfier than a roadtrip hotel. She made his bed, stocked his bathroom with deodorant and doublechecked that his childhood room was exactly as the 24-year-old rookie had arranged it last. All that was left were the groceries.
“He loves breakfast,” said Patty Biggio, whose menu planning went far beyond that. “I’m friends with the meat counter guy and the fish counter guy. They’re the all-stars.”
On a weekend at Minute Maid Park that feted Craig and Cavan Biggio, Major League Baseball’s newest father-son connection, there was Patty, doing what she had done for decades as the wife of a pro ballplayer and, now, a mom to one.
“It’s not an easy lifestyle at all,” Cavan said. “She let my dad be himself and focus on that baseball player that he had to be. That goes a long way with how he was able to perform. Things that she did were just as hard as what he did.”
She described herself as “in the background,” then clarified her point.
“I probably shouldn’t have said it that way,” she said. “Craig was a great baseball player. That’s what he did. Being the mother and a wife, that was my role, my job, one that I embraced and loved.”
At Central Market, her shopping cart brimmed with fine foods: artisan salty black licorice made in Oregon, beef tenderloin, carrots, extra-large eggs, kettle-cooked chips, heirloom grape tomatoes, Italian cheeses, lamb chops, New England-style coffee cake, nectarines, nonpareils, orangeflavored La Croix, oven-ready sourdough pizzas, pineapple-chili preserves from France and thick-cut bacon.
“That’s nothing,” she said. “You should see my carts usually.”
Still buzzing fourteen hours after wheeling through the aisles, Patty zoomed over to pick up Cavan with a predawn hug, and although it was a route she had driven “thousands” of times, she wound up driving the wrong way on Interstate 45 and in the opposite direction on a one-way street.
“Cav and I figured it might be our only time alone together this weekend,” she explained. “Just was so excited to see Cavan I lost my mind for a few minutes.”
Patty usually is not the type to think far ahead, to fret about what might come next for a family devoted to a profession that rarely steadies anyone with a 20-year career like Craig’s. From the beginning of their relationship in the 1980s at Seton Hall University, where she, an Italian gal from New Jersey, and Craig, a Long Island guy, went from being friends at the campus pub to dating longdistance because of his grind in the minor leagues and hers in nursing school, Patty always felt comfortable living in the moment, whichever way it sent the Biggios.
“There’s a story with my friends that he was chasing me before I was chasing him,” she said.
Five days of nursing coursework, 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. emergency room shifts, and weekend nights spent waitressing at a steak spot called the Stuffed Shirt did not leave time for Patty to follow baseball. Listening to one of Craig’s games on the radio, she heard that he struck out looking. Later she asked him: “What were you looking at?”
She moved to Houston when Craig broke through with the Astros, but the couple did not envision settling in the South. They bought a house that had been constructed in 1906 near the Jersey Shore. They prepared for a future with few guarantees. Patty did not have to know the strike zone to understand the attrition rate of professional athletes.
“I didn’t have any expectations that this would happen,” Patty said.
Craig becoming an Astros icon might have guided the life he and Patty built together, but it did not define it.
“I just knew that it was not about what he did,” she said. “It was about who he was. We never talked about how this would be my life, that I would be a Major League wife. I never had any clue what that even meant.”
Patty’s relationship with baseball took shape clearly once she had her sons, Conor and Cavan, and was in full swing by the time she had her third child, daughter Quinn.
“The boys grew up in Minute Maid Park — literally,” Patty said. “That was their playground. Cavan even said to me, ‘You did, too.’ I said, ‘No, I grew up in the Astrodome.’”
She tended to arrive late, around the sixth inning, preferring to converse or walk around with Ken Caminiti’s equally baseball-indifferent wife, Nancy, but her children — easy to spot in their No. 7 Biggio jerseys — turned their mom into an active participant. She noticed how Cavan blocked out the cacophony of ballpark entertainment, sat on one foot to give himself a boost, meticulously watched games, and years later would recall the most intimate details of what had transpired on the field.
“Cavan is self taught,” Patty said.
He had to be. He had to watch. Craig either was too busy or too terse for lessons.
“He didn’t really give me that much advice,” Cavan said. “Very simplistic man, very straight to the point, especially when it comes to baseball.”
When Cavan's swing needed fine-tuning, his dad could not fix it.
“He was able to do something so well at such a high level for so long to where he’s not able to put it into words because he just did it,” Cavan said.
Patty was a novice, but she was available. She nourished Cavan’s growing passion.
“All he wanted to do was hit off a tee,” she said.
He used it constantly. Sometimes he brought it around like it were a stuffed animal. At a family party, there was Cavan in the corner of a room placing the ball on the tee and hitting. When the softer youth baseballs shredded from overuse, Cavan taped them back together and continued hammering away.
“He’d hit the ball so hard,” Patty said. She had to get the walls repainted every six months.
Cavan increased the challenge, ditching the tee, throwing the ball up to himself and creating competitions in his mind.
“He’d do it for hours and hours and hours,” Patty said. “Nobody would be allowed in the room. You couldn’t be involved in his game. It was all in his head.”
When Cavan signaled for a live arm, Patty stepped in.
“I’m terrible,” she said. “I can't throw a baseball.”
She tossed underhand and ducked Cavan’s line drives. Patty braved a deep-seeded fear from her childhood. She broke her nose playing monkey in the middle with her three brothers.
“I took the baseball off my face,” she said. Cavan appreciated his mom’s devotion without knowing the full extent of it.
“She wasn’t the one the fans were cheering for at night, but she didn’t need that,” he said. “That’s just the selflessness that she has. Goes to show how big her heart is.”
For all of her husband’s time constraints and high standards, Patty credited Craig for showing their son all he would need to glean and get a shot at the majors.
“Cavan learned a lot about respecting the game,” she said. “Craig was very humble. I see that in Cavan. The character of the man is in all my children.”
She also sees some of Craig’s mannerisms in the way Cavan puts his hand on his hip, holds his glove, steps to the plate and keeps his foot in place in the batter’s box. Aside from those, Cavan carved out his own path.
“They’re different players altogether,” Patty said. “Their personalities are completely different. Craig was hyper, ready to go, and played baseball more rugged, like a football player. Cavan is very calm.”
She said Cavan is at his best in 3-2 counts because of his poise. She watches him step out of the box and can recognize him thinking about the next pitch.
Last month she organized a surprise gathering of 16 family members and Cavan’s lifelong friends to see him play against the Lehigh Valley IronPigs in Allentown, Pa.
She prepared by — how else? — loading up a cart at a grocery store in New Jersey. Then she got a phone call that immediately rerouted all the plans farther north.
It was Cavan. He was emotional. He was not heading to Allentown. He told his mom that the Blue Jays were calling him up to debut in Toronto.
Patty screamed in the baked goods section. A stranger came over and asked her if she was OK.
“No, this is really good news,” she told the man, and returned to her son. “Oh my goodness, Cavan. Oh my goodness. You worked so hard. I'm so proud of you.”
On Friday, dressed in a jersey sewed together with equal parts Astros and Blue Jays materials, Patty watched Cavan take batting practice. The clearest difference between the father and son is in Patty’s expectations. She never let herself forecast Craig’s career. But she knew that Cavan — the boy who sat on his foot for a better view, who bludgeoned her walls for fun, who taught her to face her fear of comebackers for the sake of love — would be a major leaguer taking his hacks at Minute Maid Park someday.
“And he’s done it,” she said, adding an untruth. “All on his own.”