Opening day, and that time a ribbon wasn’t the only thing that was cut

My daughter Abby has probably scored more runs than any player in the history of her baseball league. She’s also never won a game.

She’ll continue to add to those impressive statistics next weekend, when the Miracle League of Mercer County, New Jersey, opens its spring season and its 21st year of operation. Abby, who has Rett syndrome, has been playing in the league since it was founded — since, in fact, before it was founded. We have videotape of her playing on a scrubby, dirt ball field as part of a pilot program for kids with disabilities run by the Hamilton, New Jersey, YMCA.

That soon morphed into the Miracle League, thanks to financial support from the Rotary Club of Robbinsville/Hamilton, which paid for a barrier-free baseball diamond made of rubberized material suitable for runners, walkers, and wheelchair users. Kids with all sorts of physical and intellectual challenges signed on, and our first official Miracle League games were played in September 2005, when Abby was 8. Mercer County’s was the 15th Miracle League created in the United States. (The Miracle League movement began in Georgia in the late 1990s.)

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As far as her mother and I know, Abby is the last original member who has played continuously in the Mercer County league since its proto-, dirt-field days. If so, since every player bats and scores each inning (games usually last two or three innings), that means Abby has scored more runs than anyone in our league’s history. And since all games end in a tie, she has never won a game in more than 20 years.

Winning, of course, isn’t the point. Exercise and socialization are. Some of the kids have enough physical skill that they revel in putting the bat on the ball. Abby isn’t one of them. Rett syndrome has left her with poor hand use, so she needs help batting, and she doesn’t much care where the ball goes when it’s hit. As for fielding, for Abby that means roaming around the outfield, the infield, the opponent’s dugout, the bleachers, visiting or just offloading some of her restlessness. One time we put a tracker in her pocket during a game. She logged more than two miles.

Because of her seniority and her mother’s affection for a certain HBO series, Abby, who is now 29, is known around the league as the Mother of Dragons. Also because of her seniority, in 2023 after the original field was damaged by a tornado, Abby was given the honor of cutting the ribbon to open the rebuilt field. Because of her limited hand use, Abby needed my help wielding the scissors. After the ribbon was cut, I looked down and noticed that blood was pouring out of her hand and onto the brand new rubberized surface. I apparently nicked her with the blade somehow, a paper-cut-like wound that managed to be in just the right spot to bleed like crazy. Abby doesn’t register pain unless it’s a lot more serious than a paper cut, so she didn’t even notice that she was baptizing the new field in her own blood. I, on the other hand, still haven’t recovered.

Most of our two decades’ worth of Miracle League memories are considerably more pleasant than that one, and I know that next weekend when Abby walks through the tunnel of cheerleaders who greet the arriving players, she’ll be glowing. But, to me, the effect of the league on the players is only part of its value. Just as important, I think, is the buddy system in use during the games. Our league commissioner and his assistants go to great lengths to arrange for kids from the nondisabled world to turn up at the games. These volunteers might be from a local soccer club or high school softball team or church group; it’s a different group each game. The volunteers are paired up with the players, to help the disabled kids bat or run the bases or play the field.

I’m guessing that a lot of these volunteer kids don’t often encounter peers with disabilities in their day-to-day lives. By spending a morning or afternoon with Abby and her fellow players, they see and interact with a segment of humanity that might otherwise not exist for them. The players get a fun day in the sun; the volunteers get a broadened perspective.

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