Son’s love of baseball results in special day

The question of what to be for Halloween typically is a big one, involving much serious consideration. As a first-grader in 2015, however, our son, Matthias, fell in love with baseball, and his answer

was easy: He was going to be pitcher Mike Clevinger.

That was Matthias’s first year of coach-pitch baseball, and he blossomed. It was beautiful to watch — as if he had suddenly identified a key piece of himself that informed every other part of his being.

As Matthias trick-ortreated that year, he handed out a look of disbelief for almost every piece of candy he received.

Oh, you’re a baseball player!

I’m Mike Clevinger. Mike who?

Cue Matthias’ look of disbelief. Back then, pretty much nobody knew about the long-haired right-hander for the Columbus Clippers. Our then-7-year old son couldn’t understand that — not even a little bit.

We started regularly going to Clippers games that summer. Matthias was drawn to Clev from the very start, and Mike has been a favorite in our family ever since. Shortly before Clevinger’s World Series debut with the Cleveland Indians in 2016, he signed Matthias’ Clippers ball cap while warming up down the first base line at Huntington Park. The signature has now nearly faded away, in part because Matthias’ ill-prepared parents had only a ballpoint pen on hand, but mostly because he has worn that cap so often.

Matthias eats, sleeps, and breathes baseball, from playing on our community travel team to collecting baseball cards to rounding up anybody he can find to play a pick-up game with his souped-up Wiffle bat. His love of baseball guides his reading choices, his screentime choices and, often, his

wardrobe choices. He is a Cleveland Indians fan to the bone, but he follows individual players and teams across the league and can talk stats like nobody’s business.

Last summer, Matthias developed a need for a very specific pack of Topps baseball cards. I didn’t understand his urgency until he pointed out a contest whose prize was the opportunity to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a major league game.

He bought the cards with his allowance, and we went home to compose responses to the five required shortanswer questions about his favorite team and player, beloved baseball memories and more. The contest was designed for a parent to enter on their child’s behalf, but Matthias gave the meat of each answer, and together we made them more interesting by using Juicy Words (a significant focus of thirdgrade writing the previous year). What followed felt like a drawn-out comedy of errors: submitting answers online and getting only error messages in return. I figured it was a lost cause.

Then, at the end of November, we got this news: Matthias won the contest for Progressive Field in Cleveland — there is one winner per major league ballpark nationwide — and he will be throwing out the first pitch at the Indians’ game against the Los Angeles Angels on Aug. 4.

It has been nearly half his lifetime since Matthias fell in love with baseball, and his goal is to play professionally. In a way, if he doesn’t make it to The Show, this first pitch is his dream come true.

The other day in the car, our daughter, a rising seventh-grader, was telling us about an opportunity at her school for students to shadow someone whose career path they would like to follow. She plans to email one of her previous teachers about this. From the back seat Matthias said quietly, almost to himself, “Looks like I’ll be emailing Mike Clevinger.”

Or maybe he can just ask him on Aug. 4.