Baseball was never really my game. My grandson, Dallas Braden, used to laugh at me whenever we’d play catch in the front yard of the little house in Stockton where I helped raise him. “Flamingo,” he called me, each time I wound up and made an awkward toss. That’s what I was thinking about last May 9, sitting in the stands between home and third base at Oakland-Alameda County Stadium, when Dal, now a big-league starting pitcher for the Oakland A’s, took the mound in the ninth inning in a game against the Tampa Bay Rays and threw his first warm-up pitch.
The fans were going crazy. Not one Tampa Bay batter had reached base against Dal. The A’s led, 4-0. He was three outs from throwing a perfect game, only the nineteenth in baseball history, out of tens of thousands of games played. Tears were running down my cheeks. My hands were clenched in prayer.
As Dal straightened his cap and got down to business, a tingle passed through me. Jody would be so proud, I thought. Dal’s mom, Jody—my daughter—died of melanoma 10 years ago, when Dal was in high school. He went into a tailspin that spring. I don’t care about anything, his attitude seemed to say. Not even his God-given baseball talent, the talent he swore he’d use to lift his mom out of difficult times.
Dal had no other close family. His father was out of the picture. It had been up to me to get him past his grief, to set him back on a solid path. But how do you replace a boy’s mom?
Dal and Jody had lived with me off and on since Dal’s birth. Dal and I were as close as could be. Many nights I rocked him to sleep, sitting in my rocking chair. Still, I wasn’t his mother.
Together, they’d been through harder times that I’d never known. Jody was a single mom who never finished high school. She worked as a housekeeper, first in a motel and later on her own, cleaning private homes. They moved around some. There were lean times when Jody needed help.
“Mom, I just hate asking you for money,” she said one time when she was a little short.
“Hush,” I said, and gave her what I could. What’s a mother for?
Somehow, Jody made sure Dal never did without. She took him camping, kept him in baseball gear, attended all of his games, tried to keep him focused on school. It wasn’t easy. Dal himself will tell you he was a handful, a big, strong, athletic boy. Jody had one ironclad rule. “Whatever you start,” she told Dal, “you have to finish.”
When Dal was seven or eight, he played quarterback in a youth football league. He got knocked around a few times and wanted to quit.
Jody sat him down. “Dal,” she said, “if you don’t want to play football next year, that’s fine. But you’ve made a commitment to this team for this year, and you’re not going to quit. You won’t get anywhere in life by quitting.” He took that lesson to heart—until the day his mother died.
I remember the day Jody was diagnosed with cancer. It was in October, in Dal’s senior year. He and his mom were living in a tiny apartment not far from me. Jody was in the shower a few days before and felt a lump under her arm. We went to the doctor and he took a biopsy. “It’s spread to your lymph nodes,” the doctor told us.
I was the one who told Dal. I sat down with him in their living room and said, “You know, we went to the doctor today. Your mom has melanoma—cancer.”
He refused to believe how ill she was. “She’s sick, but the doctors will take care of her,” he insisted in that way that teenagers sometimes deny reality.
She underwent surgery, and then alpha interferon treatments, and it began to hit home. One night Dal called, crying, and said, “Gran, can you please come over?”
I rushed to the apartment. He was in the kitchen, cooking shrimp. He had stuffed towels under Jody’s bedroom door. “I don’t know what to do,” he said, through his tears. “I’m trying to fix dinner, but the smell is making Mom sick. Do I stop cooking? Do I throw it away?” I felt so bad for him. I took the pan off the stove and tried to get the smell out. “Let me look after your mom. I don’t think she’s hungry right now. You eat your dinner,” I told him.
Jody went downhill pretty quickly after that. She died in March, in her sleep. Dal didn’t take it well. He kind of sleepwalked his way through the rest of his senior year. He’d already been accepted to San Joaquin Delta College, a junior college here in Stockton, to play baseball. But it was clear all his spirit had drained out of him. I couldn’t get him interested in much of anything.
One day, shortly after his high school graduation, I found him alone in his room. He was living with me by then. It was the middle of the afternoon, and he was lying in bed. “Don’t you have a game today?” I asked. Dal was pitching that summer for an American Legion team.
“Gran, I just don’t feel like playing baseball anymore,” he said.
I sat down on the bed with him, unsure what to say. I closed my eyes and asked the Lord for guidance. What came were the words Jody used to say.
“Dal,” I told him, “do you remember what your mom always taught you? You do not quit. You’re a baseball player. You made a commitment to the team. You’re supposed to be on the field now. So get up, get your uniform on and let’s go.”
I went with him down to Billy Hebert Field in Stockton. Dal did pitch that night. But keeping him focused, keeping him going, wasn’t easy. About a month before the San Joaquin Delta school term began, he came to me. “Gran,” he said, “I don’t want to go to school there.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because everywhere I go, I see Mom around every corner,” he said. “I don’t know what to do.”
Lord, I’ve got to get this boy in school, I prayed. I’ve got to keep his life going. I got on the phone and called every college around Sacramento, an hour’s drive from Stockton. I wanted him to go away to school—to help him learn to stand on his own—but not too far away. Over the phone, I kind of sold Dal to the baseball coach at American River College, a junior college in Sacramento. “You won’t believe the talents this boy has,” I promised the coach.
Dal wasn’t that enthusiastic. “Dal,” I told him, “you have to go to school, and there’s no two ways about it. This is what Mom wanted—for you to have a future with a good job, for you to keep playing baseball.” A few days later I put him in the car, and we drove up to tour the campus. We met the coach, and as the three of us walked through the quads, over to the ball field, you could see Dal’s juices start to flow. It was like a part of him was waking up again, his spirit fighting through his grief. I whispered a silent prayer of thanks.
Dal spent two years there, and drove home maybe three nights a week. He did well in school. I was so proud of him! He earned his associate’s degree and a full baseball scholarship to Texas Tech. At the end of his junior year the Oakland A’s drafted him.
So many memories. I thought of each and every one as he readied to throw his first pitch in the ninth, and I thought of Jody, how proud she would be, on Mother’s Day, of all days. All around us, people were getting quieter and quieter. I was so nervous, I couldn’t watch. I got out of my seat. A friend I was with asked, “Where are you going?” I didn’t say a word. I left my purse in my seat and just started walking.
The first batter lined out to first base. Two outs to go.
I headed down the stands, toward the A’s dugout.
The next batter flew out to deep left field. Two hard hit balls, one out to go. I climbed on top of the dugout. I knew I shouldn’t, but I just wanted to be as close to Dal as I could get. Lord, I prayed, I know you and Jody are watching over him. I know he can feel your presence, because I sure can. Help him.
And then the third batter swung and hit the ball to the shortstop. He threw to first base for the final out. Dal did it! A perfect game! Baseball history!
With the help of one of the security guards, I made it onto the field. Dal’s teammates, coaches, reporters, everyone, was rushing the mound, mobbing him. It was like the final scene in Rocky, where Rocky is crying for Adrian. “Where’s Gran?” Dal yelled.
I made my way to him, fighting the throng, my cheeks streaked with tears. Dal lifted me in the air. “Mom would be so proud of you right now,” I said. “She’s watching and she’s so proud.”
“I know,” Dal said, and he kissed me. “Happy Mother’s Day.”
Mother’s Day. I’d almost forgotten. It was Mother’s Day.
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