Go Midland

My wife and I volunteered for a youth baseball tournament last weekend. The tournament is a fundraiser for a foundation my wife is on the board for. Wait, I'm not supposed to end a sentence with "for." That was just a terrible sentence. Let me try again.

"The tournament is a fundraiser for a foundation in which my wife is a board member." Nope, that doesn't sound right either. "My wife is a member of the board for a foundation and this is their yearly summer fundraiser?" Close enough.

You know that story I've told a dozen times about how my wife's former boss called her in January of 2020 and said "is there any way you'd consider a job in Champaign, Illinois?" and how that was the impetus for me to finally quit my job in St. Louis and give this Illini website thing a full-go in Champaign? The foundation here – the Chuck Wiley Athletic Foundation – is named for her husband who passed away from cancer in May of 2020. Wow, that's another terrible sentence. I'm not doing any of this justice. I'll tell you more about the foundation later when I learn how to write... good.

Over the weekend we were in Springfield, Missouri at the Wiley Athletic Foundation baseball tournament. There were 92 teams in the tournament and my wife and I were in charge of one of the tournament locations. We got the easiest one - the 13u tournament. As the tournament director said, the 13u coaches (and parents) have been doing this for years now and don't need much assistance. If you ever work a youth baseball tournament, work the 13u fields. Trust me.

Because our job was just to collect admission fees at the gate and coordinate the score cards with the umpires, I had a fair amount of time to wander around and watch some of the baseball. It's something I didn't really go through as a Youth Sports Parent myself. Our oldest son was cross country + wrestling. Our middle son was cross country + track. And our youngest was football + wrestling. So my entire experience with youth baseball was the one summer our youngest son played baseball (at maybe age 11?) before wrestling became his second sport. I never lived the traveling baseball life that many of you have lived.

Now, I've observed the traveling baseball life. I do stay in hotels, after all. We've all walked into a hotel lobby at 9:00 on a Saturday night to see the breakfast area filled with baseball parents having a drink or six and the players running around the pool (and the hallways). One time, in Michigan, in January, I walked into my Ann Arbor hotel to see a bunch of parents flooding the hotel lobby for an indoor softball tournament that weekend. Youth sports = a machine.

But this is the first time I've observed a baseball tournament up close. And I'll be honest - I went into it with a bit of skepticism. I've seen the videos of parents yelling at umpires. Social media only feeds us "watch this coach berate his 9 year-old shortstop" and very few heartwarming videos so I was expecting it to be a bit rough. It was not.

Instead, I found myself SPORTS!-ing all weekend. Meaning, I was fully drawn in by the things that always draw me in. Close games. Great plays. Cheering with one set of parents and then immediately feeling bad for the other set of parents. Being reminded that every walk-off hit is another parent's son on the mound giving up a walk-off hit.

And as I was doing that, I found myself drawn to one team. I have no idea why. My only interaction with this team was to take cash from their parents at the gate when they entered the facility (and maybe stand out on the field while they were packing up as I collected the official scorecard from the umpires). But I was, for whatever reason, 100% drawn in to Midland. I don't even know where Midland was from – there's no town named "Midland" in southwest Missouri – but I became a Midland guy. Not because they were going to win the tournament. Simply because I felt myself drawn into the "SPORTS!"-ness of the whole thing.

Midland had been run-ruled in their first game – I know this because I had to collect the scorecard and call it in – to a team that eventually made it to the championship game. One team with "wait, that kid is only 13?" players and another, clearly, with 13 year-olds. (I'm not suggesting that the other team had 16 year-olds; I'm suggesting that the other team, legally, had gathered a collection of several 13 year-olds in the area who already had facial hair.) I can appreciate a dominant team. I've been by the visitors tunnel when Ohio State emerges from the locker room.

Midland's second game was later in the day on Saturday. My wife was manning the entrance gate and I was collecting scores so I paused at the left field fence to watch the end of the second Midland game. It was clearly a close game because both sets of parents were getting louder and louder. And it finished with a big SPORTS moment, a walk-off hit in the bottom of the last inning to make the final score 11-10 (one set of parents rightfully losing their minds and the other set of parents on Immediate Hug Distribution protocol). I'm not sure what this says about me, but in that scenario, I'm always drawn to the losing team's parents. And this game was 417 Black 11, Midland 10.

Which had me paying close attention when the bracket came out for Sunday's games. Midland was the 9-seed, which meant that they missed the 8-team bracket that would determine the winner. They'd be playing in the "9th Place Game" against the 10-seed. As the Midland parents filed in and paid their gate fee, I found myself... nervous for them? A team from I-don't-even-know-where playing in a 9th place game for a fundraiser baseball tournament in southwest Missouri and I was nervous for them.

The first two games on the other fields ended quickly. I collected the scorecards and called them in (well, I took photos of the signed scorecards and texted them to the tournament director). I helped my wife at the gate with the wave of parents arriving for the second set of games and then I returned to the third field to watch the end of Midland-OBC and collect the scorecard. I heard an OBC parent mention that it was 5-5 in the final inning with OBC batting and my heart sank. Did I just suddenly adopt this team only to watch them lose on walk-off hits in back-to-back games? The first two batters were retired, but the third batter drew a walk. And then he stole second. One two-out hit from OBC here and Midland will lose.

But they got out of it! I'm all in, now. I'm not sure if the assistant tournament director (a title I gave myself just now) collecting the scores from the umpires is supposed to have a favorite (in the 9th-place game, no less), but I'm fully sucked in. Let's do this, Midland. Bobby needs this dub.

A runner is placed on 2nd base for extra innings. And I can't give you the details of the top of the inning because I don't know any of the players' names (I feel like "and then the kid playing center stole second which means the other team intentionally walked the first baseman to get to either the third baseman or right fielder and he came through with a two-run double" doesn't read very well) but Midland scored three runs. The Midland parents, rightfully, went nuts.

OBC also got a runner on second to start the inning, but they couldn't bring him in. And they needed a lot more than that after Midland had scored 3. On the third out, giving Midland the 8-5 win, their players celebrated, rightfully, like they had just won it all. This was the last game of their season, I'd later learn, so even though it was a 9th-place game, they were headed into the offseason off a win. And, I have to think, for many players who only play up through 13u and then move on to school sports, this was their final game of youth baseball. Going out with a win.

Which the parents noted and celebrated accordingly. I had a job to do after the game (collect the scorecard), and this ump hadn't gotten the managers to sign off on the final score, so I went to the OBC coach beyond the right field fence first to get his signature and then I walked all the way around to the third base side to get a signature from the Midland coach. When I returned to the Midland sideline, they were just finishing their postgame huddle with coach down the third base line and their parents had something planned.

I didn't have my phone on me (it had the Stripe reader connected so I had left it with my wife at the gate) but later I was able to ask one of the Midland family members to send me the photo they took. You've already seen it up at the top of this article. When Midland came back from their down-the-line postgame huddle, the parents had built an arch for them to run through while they cheered:

I'm soft. I know this, you know this. People send me that "Kobe Bryant mouthing the word 'soft'" gif all the time when I expose my softness on Twitter. You know it, I accept it.

Which is why it won't surprise you that I had tears in my eyes watching the kids emerge from this celebration tunnel. It might not even surprise you that I have tears in my eyes while typing this right now. Walked-off Saturday, nearly walked-off again on Sunday, got out of the jam, scored three in the top of the 8th, kept 'em off the scoreboard in the bottom. And then were celebrated by their parents, as they should be, like conquering heroes.

I want to pause here and tell you about the foundation. It might not mean much to you, the Illini fan who reads this site, but I'm going to send this article to the people involved in southwest Missouri. If some of the Midland parents read it, I want them to know about the foundation they were supporting with their $5 at the gate each day.

Chuck Wiley was a pitcher in the Mariners organization back in the early 1990's. A lifelong Baseball Guy. He later lived in Springfield, Missouri and, after he passed away from cancer in 2020 (we attended his funeral on Zoom during the craziness of not being able to distribute hugs in 2020), his wife and friends started a foundation in his honor.

The goal of the foundation: to help kids wanting to participate in youth sports with the ever-increasing financial requirements to do so. That kid who is dying to play baseball but his family, after mom was laid-off, cannot afford the bat, gloves, spikes, and uniform required to participate? The foundation steps in and provides those things for that kid so that he or she can experience the joys (and, yes, often the sorrows) of youth sports.

My wife sits on the board (see, a sentence that worked!) and she'd want me to share the links right here. If you know of a family facing that need (yes, even in Illinois), get that family to this Google Doc where they can apply for one of their scholarships. And if you'd be interested in donating to the foundation, you can do that here. They also do a silent auction during the tournament each year, so I'll be sure to link to that on this website next summer when we go down there for the 2025 tournament.

Let's get back to Midland. I have one more point I want to make before I close this out.

We're all prone to "act like you've been there" fandom. Especially in college sports. When the Michigan State players were running off the field in Memorial Stadium directly below my seats back in 2022, having just seriously damaged our push for a Big Ten West title, I was filled with "yeah, go ahead, act like you won the Super Bowl but you're still gonna have a losing season" spite. We demand that sports celebrations align with the magnitude of the moment. Celebrate, sure, but never beyond those boundaries.

This was just the opposite. This was a parent-constructed cheer tunnel for winning a 9th place game. And it was glorious.

I have no issue with youth baseball teams that want to assemble the nine most mature 13 year-olds they can find in order to win tournaments. That's essentially what my college football team does. Find the largest 18 year-olds in the country and put them in orange and blue. The goal is to win.

But for me, in this situation, give me Midland. Give me the smiles coming out of the parent tunnel. Give me sports for sports-sake. Yes, wins and losses matter – I wouldn't be saying this if that OBC runner had scored in the bottom of the 7th – but give me the joys and sorrows that exist on that plane. Even with Illini basketball in the Elite Eight back in March and the Final Four on the line, I still exist right there. The reason we love sports so much exists right there. The joy of victory and the agony of defeat, regardless of the game's magnitude.

In this instance – in this 9th-place game – Midland got to experience the joy of victory. Their players got to celebrate stranding that runner on second in the bottom of the 7th and then making their opponent pay for that intentional walk in the top of the 8th.

And I got to celebrate a W for my new favorite team.