‘NOTHING EVER CRUSHED MY DREAMS’
Wilson’s Holman, diagnosed with lymphoma 10 years ago, has recovered and become a dominant pitcher
When Erin Holman’s 18-yearold son takes the mound for the Wilson baseball team, she sees his 6-4, 190-pound frame, his 92 mph fastball, his filthy curveball and his stoic face.
And she remembers the days and months when she wondered if she would ever get to see him become a teenager, let alone an outstanding high school pitcher.
Ten years ago, Luke Holman was fighting anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a rare type of nonHodgkin lymphoma. He underwent chemotherapy treatment for a year. Some days were good and others not so good.
Now fully recovered, Luke says he doesn’t think about the bad days. His mother and his father, Craig, can’t help that they do.
“I think about it every single day that he’s still here,” Erin Holman said. “Those first three months when he was getting hit hard with the chemo, I was very scared that he was going to be hospitalized and that something was going to happen.”
Luke Holman is the cornerstone of a Wilson team that’s favored to win the BCIAA championship and to contend for the District 3 and PIAA Class 6A titles. A righthander, he’s signed a letter of intent to play at Alabama and hopes to be taken in the early rounds of this year’s Major League Baseball draft.
Two years ago, Holman pitched the Bulldogs to the county and district titles and was named the Berks League Player of the Year as a sophomore, a rare honor.
“This kid is going to play in the big leagues and he’s going to be an All-Star,” said Craig Holman, who pitched in the Philadelphia Phillies organization, including parts of four seasons in Reading. “He does stuff right now that guys like me, (former Reading teammates) Tyler Green and Mike Grace weren’t able to do. He’s that good.
“I didn’t teach him some of the things that he does. He just does them.”
Craig Holman often speaks about his family’s experience with his son’s lymphoma to parents of cancer-stricken children. He also loves to talk about baseball as the owner of the Holman Baseball Academy in Temple. He’s outgoing and chatty. His son is quiet, reserved and reluctant to talk about himself.
Luke’s Wilson baseball teammates embrace him, they say, because he’s so grounded. Several of them spoke of his humility.
“He’s the most humble dude I’ve ever met and the most down to earth guy I’ve ever met,” said senior outfielder Danny Estrada. “If you talked to him, you wouldn’t know he played any sports. He doesn’t talk about himself at all.
“He’s a great kid and obviously very talented. He can throw 90-plus (mph) and hit the ball 400 feet.”
As a youngster, Luke Holman tried many sports and played organized baseball, football and basketball. It was when he was playing quarterback for the Van Reed mighty mites that he began complaining about a stomachache, which wouldn’t go away.
He was diagnosed with lymphoma on Dec. 24, 2010, and began chemotherapy at Penn State Hershey Medical Center on Dec. 30, a week before his eighth birthday.
“It was terrible,” Erin Holman recalled. “Luke had no idea what was wrong with him. He was having pain in his abdomen during his first year of football. He was throwing up at home. I didn’t know why. It was horrible. I don’t think I ate for 10 days.
“When you think of cancer, right away your mind goes to the worst possible scenario.”
Craig Holman was equally devastated. He said he lost more than 30 pounds and cried daily. A decade earlier, he had lost one of his best friends to cancer, Steve Copeland, the uncle of Wilson basketball star Stevie Mitchell.
“When Luke was going through cancer, I prayed five times a day,” he said. “I had a tough time dealing with it. I’m a mean SOB sometimes. I cried that year more than I’ve ever cried. It changed the way I look at a lot of stuff. I live day-to-day now.
“I didn’t care if he played baseball. I didn’t care what he did, ‘Lord, I want him to live. I want him to grow up and have a family.’ “
Luke sometimes couldn’t walk to the bathroom at home because he was so weak from the chemotherapy, which had depleted his hemoglobin.
“I’m a nurse,” Erin Holman said. “I know a lot about a lot of stuff, but not chemo drugs and what they can do. He was white as a ghost. That part of it was very scary.”
Luke recovered completely after the year of treatment. He was ready to return to sports, still dreaming of reaching the major leagues. His father said he was one of the smallest kids on his teams back then. One oncologist said the chemo might have been slowing his growth.
Undeterred, Craig began teaching Luke the finer points of baseball, such as throwing curveballs and changeups, holding and picking off runners and throwing backwards in the count.
“Nothing really held me back,” Luke said. “Nothing ever crushed my dreams. I knew if I just put in a bunch of work I’d still have a chance. I feel like I had to put in extra work after chemo and everything. I got bigger and stronger. That helped a lot.”
He sprouted 6 inches as a freshman at Wyomissing, added weight and naturally began throwing harder. He’s now one of the taller players on Wilson’s baseball team and was a reserve on the Bulldogs’ Berks championship basketball team this year.
After several years of not playing basketball, he decided to try out this winter in order to spend more time with friends such as Mitchell, Mykel Huffman, Ryan Strobel and Alex Schutt. When Wilson lost to Reading High in the District 3 final last month and ended its season, Holman took it very hard even though he didn’t see time in the game.
“Losing that game has fueled me,” he said. “I’m not losing again. It’s going to be hard to beat us this baseball season because I’m not going to feel that pain again. I don’t want my baseball season to be cut short.”
The Wilson baseball team had high hopes last year before its season was canceled because of the pandemic. Since he last pitched in a high school game in 2019, Luke has worked on developing his changeup and his command so he can pitch more innings.
“He has three pitches that are plus pitches,” Wilson pitching coach Bill Underwood said. “In the past we’ve had guys who had decent velocity and had a decent curveball. He has a split-finger he can throw. He has the changeup, which is looking a lot better. His curveball is the best I’ve seen.
“He said he wants to reduce his number of walks. If his pitch count goes up, he’s out in the sixth inning. That’s a big one for him.”
His teammates call him hilarious, weird and ultra-competitive. His coaches say he’s a pleasure.
“He’s not a look-at-me guy,” Wilson coach Sal Raccuglia said. “He’s the guy who does everything a coach asks him to do. When basketball season ended, we had practice the very next day at 10 o’clock in the morning. He was there. He could have taken a few days off, but he showed up.
“It’s just great to see him thrive and to see what he’s doing now in his life after going through what he went through.”
Maybe Luke Holman was destined to be a great athlete. His mother, the former Erin Shockley, is enshrined in the Wilson Hall of Fame after an outstanding career in basketball and softball. His father grew up in Alabama, was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays and the Phillies and made it to the Triple-A level.
His sister, Jordan, played basketball and softball in high school and is one of the top hitters at Division III Covenant College in Georgia.
“I think I am,” Luke said, when asked if he’s a natural in baseball. “I feel like I’m athletic overall. If I do something, give me a week or two and I’ll be really good at it.”
Major league scouts have asked him several times why he plays baseball, if he does it to make his father happy or for himself.
“I want to do something that I love to do,” he said. “I don’t want to work at a place where I’m not happy. If I’m going to play baseball and get paid for it, that’s probably the dream job for anybody.”
Ten years ago, his parents dreamed only about seeing their son recover from lymphoma and regain his health.
“I think about those first three months all the time because of the way he looked,” Erin Holman said. “It scared the crap out of me. You know what can happen as a nurse. I think about that all the time when he’s pitching. It could have gone the other way.”