To The Ball Player Who Saved My Son's Life

I've tried to find your Mom at ball games since the incident but I've been unsuccessful. I've rehearsed the conversation a thousand times, what I would say, and how I would deliver the words slowly, so I wouldn't cry and freak you, a 12 year old kid, out completely.

Tonight I understand you're playing on an All Star team, against a team in which we have an amicable interest. My husband and son are at this game right now, but I stayed home to play on the computer and watch Ghost Adventures. But now I wish I would've come to the game so I could look at you and smile, and maybe tell you something that - if silly to you - is so, so important to me.

But a this-decides-who-goes-to-district-championships-ball-game may not be the right venue for what I need to say anyway, so here goes.

Four months ago during that inter-league ball game, it was my son's first season in the majors division, and he was still ten years old. My son is, I would say, small to medium size in a division where there are many players bigger - or as big as - their coaches. I've heard people refer to you as "The Beast" because you hit bombs, your long balls go far, and you, as I witnessed that night, hit hard. In tonight's All Star game, you've hit a three-run and a two-run home run, both before the 3rd inning. Wow.

But that getting-dark-early night in late March, you made what seemed like a meaningless decision at the time, but you saved someone's life.

Because you used a wooden bat.

The line drive you hit took my son down on the pitcher's mound so fast I couldn't believe there wasn't a body-shaped dent on the hill. My son stayed down there for what seemed like twenty years while the paramedics assessed him, slipped a gurney beneath him, taped him down for safety and wrapped his neck (this is when I began to cry that night, but I don't say this to make you feel bad).

I didn't notice you, or anyone else, after my son fell. What I remember is being in the emergency room with our league president and something being mentioned to me about "the kid who hit Alex" and how you, and your family, were so concerned.

I made myself a mental note to ask the league president, Phil, to let you know my son, I was being told, escaped severe head trauma somehow.

"It's because of the wooden bat," my husband said in the waiting room of Children's Hospital. "What do you mean?" I asked, because, I admit, I knew very little then about why metal bats were so expensive and preferred by young ball players. "The batter was using a wooden bat, if he wasn't," my husband paused then and didn't finish his sentence. But I understood it to mean that had you chosen to put your strength behind a metal bat, my son may not be asking for a popsicle or which episode of Wizards of Waverly Place was being shown in his cordoned-off area in the ER. My son may have been

You understand, right?

When we got home from the ER that night, and I had to wake my son Alex up every two hours to check on him, I passed the time by reading online news sites. That very night, I read an article about Gunnar Sandberg, a 13-year-old pitcher who was in a coma after being hit by a line drive 12 days earlier while pitching, the batter using a metal bat. The title of that article was something like "ball player clings to life." I read that article, placed my hands over my face and wept, realizing the miracle that happened just hours earlier.

And right then, you became one of my favorite people in the entire world. Ever.

Because you, for a reason I will probably never know, used a wood bat when batting against my son as he pitched, a little guy facing big, able players like you. After the incident that night, the game was called, people I barely knew texted us and my cell phone rang non-stop, and the concern displayed was, honestly, very flattering to my son. He took it all in, smiling goofily at the attention of nurses and fellow players, and we all knew we'd dodged a bullet.

But the concern that mattered most was yours. Your family's. I made our league president promise me that night that he would contact your family by way of your league president and let them know that my son was fine. Mild concussion. Few headaches. He got back on the mound after that game, during the same season, and pitched 5 times. He pitched in one of his All Star games, too.

I'm a Mom. The parent of a ball player. We never realize the risks we've been exposed to sometimes until it's too late. There are, I believe, "it's a miracle" incidents, divine intervention, moments of strong intuition in everyone's lifetime - unexplained decisions to do one thing instead of the other for no apparent reason. In case you didn't know it, the wood bat was one of yours, his, ours. I know you're using a metal bat in tonight's game. But you didn't on March 23, 2010, and how come? Doesn't matter now. I just want you to hear me say thank you.

This will have to suffice. If I could talk to you right after the incident, I would tell you

You did nothing wrong. You didn't hurt anyone intentionally. Random things happen and this one turned out okay. Maybe you'll never understand why I need to tell you this until you're a parent too, but thank you, thank you, for making that seemingly meaningless decision of using a wood bat because that choice impacted my son's health, his life, and probably saved it, and therefore, saved mine, and his fathers, too. And please, don't let this incident mar the sport for you in any way [fast forward to July 2010 and evidently it hasn't! Good for you, kid!]. There are risks in everything we do. And because of an unexpected incident in which no one wanted to be a participant, I'm bittersweetly aware of how fragile and miraculous life really is, and I love more completely now.

I asked my husband tonight to perhaps approach your parents after the ball game and give a summarized version of this speech to them but I got an "Oh come on honey, I don't wanna do that...". So this is it. The official appreciation letter to you that you'll probably never read.

But I needed to pen it.

I can't remember the ball hitting my son in the head, all I remember is seeing my gray Ugg style boots running down the bleachers towards the field where he laid, huddled by the coaches who got to him before I did. I remember a district umpire telling me I was handling it well, and my father telling me to calm down when I yelled at the 911 dispatcher (to whom I later apologized, by the way). Mostly I remember the feeling in my chest when I learned the had-it-been-a-metal-bat scenario. I felt like someone had punched my heart so hard that it shot outside my body and landed somewhere else, and for a moment, I couldn't find it. For just a moment, my spirit and body felt the emotions of that scenario, but my eyes found my son's face, and he was looking at me; alert, conscious, alive.

These things happen and I don't know why, but I'll take away the best, and worst, lessons from it that I can. Not a day goes by that I don't thank you, many entities and divine beings for the miracle that was my son leaving the hospital that night. I've done some research on the metal vs. wood bat debate, read the statistics, and become a wood bat advocate.

You, unnamed player from an anonymous little league, started in motion a miracle when you simply picked up a bat. However far your ball playing goes, you get to say that, always.

And I, except for your own parents, will be your biggest fan.

Thank you.