Penn State proud
Parkland grad Taylor hasn’t allowed cerebral palsy to stop him from having career in college
Parkland baseball coach Kurt Weber remembers in the winter of 2017 getting a call from Trojans assistant athletic director Bob Tice just before his team was set to begin an offseason lifting program.
“Tice told me there was a young man named Ben Taylor who has cerebral palsy and he wanted to work out with us,” Weber said. “So, I called Chad Waelchli, who is our lifting guy, and I asked Chad to put a workout program together for someone with cerebral palsy. So Chad worked on it and then Ben showed up with his father. Chad started to explain this separate program. Ben just said, ‘No, I am doing what they’re doing.’ And he went through our first couple of workouts and he was doing everything the rest of the kids were doing. And I said right then and there that Ben had to be in our program somewhere. We needed a kid like him.”
Weber made Taylor his JV team manager for two years and then assigned him to the varsity for his last two years. Unfortunately, his senior year in 2020 was wiped out by the pandemic.
Still, undaunted and determined to be involved in baseball, Taylor attended Penn State-Berks and became a student manager/assistant coach with that program for two years.
Pushing forward even more, Taylor became involved with the prestigious Boyertown American Legion program through the late Lee Mecherly and even got involved with the Reading Phillies and worked in their front office for a time.
From there, it was on to Penn State’s University Park campus where Taylor spent last spring involved with the club baseball program.
Now, some seven years after Weber first received that call saying a young man with cerebral palsy wanted to work out with the Parkland baseball team, Taylor
is a manager with the Penn State University varsity team. While that seems remarkable in itself, he’s only just begun.
“What Ben has done is impressive because when you’re a student manager at a Division 1 program it’s not like you tell them you want to help out and it’s ‘OK, here you go,’” Weber said. “He had to go through an interview process to earn his position. Ben was such an inspiration to us at Parkland and he still is. He doesn’t let anything stop him. I really believe he could be in the front office of a Major League Baseball team one day. He’s really smart and he really loves and knows baseball.”
Taylor said Weber and the entire Parkland varsity staff had a big influence on getting him to where he is in his career.
“I got to coach the South Parkland Legion team in 2019 which made it to the state semifinals and then got to coach at Penn StateBerks for two years which was kind of crazy to say the least,” Taylor said. “Our coach quit before the start of the season of the 2021 season and I was really the only one with baseball experience left on the staff and I tried my best to keep the program going. So I spent a year with the club team and now I am excited about being on the varsity staff as an advanced scout and in other facets.”
With Penn State, Taylor said he’s got his hand into everything.
“I’ve done on-field work with the team, I do scouting and video work, I am helping out with the recruiting process … it’s a little bit of everything,” he said. “I’ve had cerebral palsy my whole life but I’ve always loved baseball. I didn’t just want to be around baseball, I wanted to play at first. But unfortunately, it just wasn’t in the cards. Looking back, it was Coach Weber who was the one who got me to be a manager and it was him and pitching coach Randy Baer, who also went to Penn State, who really gave me a lot to do and got me involved. They were always giving me field work and drills to run, and they would take my input and it just kind of kept building.”
Taylor said baseball offers so many life lessons.
“I’m a Mets fan, so I have had a lot of disappointments over the years, but when you do have success in baseball and you’ve worked hard for it, it feels so rewarding,” he said. “I still help the Penn State club team out here and we made it to the national championship game last year. To feel and see the players have that kind of success, it just brings me great joy.”
As an advanced scout for firstyear Penn State coach Mike Gambino, Taylor said he’s one of seven who are like “spokes in the wheel. It’s really a team effort.”
During games, he tracks each pitch, including the spin rates. He even analyzes the bullpen sessions.
“We get the film and tag each pitch thrown for our pitching coach [Will Jauss] and as soon as the bullpen sessions are over we have to begin that process and get the information to the coaches,” Taylor said.
He attends every home game and expects to be on a few of the road trips. Penn State began the season by going 3-1 against Army and Monmouth last weekend in Cary, North Carolina and was scheduled to begin a three-game series at Stanford on Friday. The home opener is scheduled for March 15 against UMass-Lowell.
Taylor said Penn State will “surprise a lot of people because Gambino is a really good coach and there is a good coaching staff around him. They’re going to get the best out of these players and Penn State has been a lot of money into improving Medlar Field. We’re a football school, but we’ve got good volleyball and wrestling. There are a lot of good sports teams here and I think Penn State baseball is on the way up. It’s going to take a few years to get to the College World Series, but a nice foundation is being built.”
As for his own future, there’s nothing it seems Taylor can’t do.
“I’m pleased with what I’ve been able to accomplish,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun to get to be around the players to a certain extent at Penn State and I do my own radio show called the Ben and Ben Show with another kid named Ben Wasserman, I still help out the club team, which is set to go to Panama City, Florida, during spring break. I will be on that trip with them. So I got my hands full, but I enjoy it.”
He said his dream is to work in Major League Baseball.
“I’m never really satisfied and that’s what I tell the players I work with; I don’t want them to be satisfied until they’re the last ones standing,” Taylor said. “I got that attitude from Parkland because that was always our motto. We were never happy unless we were the last team standing.”
Taylor, who is a broadcast journalism major, said he has been blessed by strong support from his family and his coaches, and he was instilled with the philosophy that hard work will be rewarded.
“Coach Weber had my back at Parkland and coach Gambino has had my back here at Penn State,” Taylor said. “Those guys took a chance on me and I never wanted to let them down. They gave me the opportunity, but that’s where it starts. You take that opportunity and then you put in the effort or else you’re not going to be around. That’s what how I lived and that’s what I always tell people.”