by Glenn Stout
Even still, Donny would grow frustrated at times, barking at Mr. Forney if Forney tweaked one of their drills or added additional steps. He would say, “Mr. Forney, I gotta go.” He always said that. And then he would leave.
The next day, he’d come back, and he’d work twice as hard.
“He was just such a good kid,” Mr. Forney said. “I know there’s more out there. They show up all the time. But they don’t have the will that he did—to fight through all the pain and struggle that it took to get him where he had to go.”
Mr. Forney and Donny remained connected through middle school, through high school, even when Donny went off to Vanderbilt.
Whenever Donny experienced any sort of problem, if he was ever struggling or aggravated or stressed, he’d call Abbott and say, “Mr. Forney, can I come by?” And the two would sit on the swing outside of Mr. Forney’s carport and talk about life, just life, rarely anything about baseball. They would talk the most about fishing—Donny loved to fish. And after hours on that swing, Donny would get up and say, like he always did, “Mr. Forney, I gotta go.”
Mr. Forney would usually respond, “But what about the problem?”
One day, in the middle of Donny’s freshman season at Vanderbilt, he came by Mr. Forney’s place seeking advice. Donny hadn’t pitched a single inning with the Commodores—sidelined with a lat injury—and he had begun to worry. Mr. Forney assured him it was only a minor setback. He would be fine.
“Donny, you like to fish and all that?” Mr. Forney asked.
“Yeah.”
Mr. Forney grabbed a couple of rods and some reels, handed them to Donny, and told him to go fishing with his father, to take his mind off of baseball and his injury. No stress. No pressure. Just a boat, a rod, and the open water.
“To me,” Mr. Forney says now, “it’s the worst thing I did.”
Months later, at Donny’s funeral in Clarksville, Teddy and Susan asked Mr. Forney if he would be willing to say a few words about their son, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. All he could muster was a single sentence, something private and personal—something he knew Donny would hear and would understand.
“Donny,” Mr. Forney said, “It’s my time to say ‘I gotta go.’”
II
“Donny, what do you got?”
That phrase is common coach speak from me to one of the players. I ask, and they respond—how they respond, you never know. I am essentially asking them, “How are you? What are you doing? What are you working on today? What do you got?”
For Donny, it was rhetorical.
“Donny, what do you got?”
He would just look at me with that crooked smile that leaned to the left and say, “What do YOU got?” and then just dance off with that lumbering jog of his . . .
Sitting behind home plate in late January, inside the offices at Hawkins Field, Collin Snider points to his left hand, tracing the area of his palm where his thumb and left index finger connect.
“My hand was bruised all the time,” Snider says, with a chuckle. “Right up in this area.”
A few inches below that area, on his wrist, is a tattoo: “DE41,” along with a date, in Roman numerals. June 2, 2016.
Snider remembers the day clearly. They all do. How could they forget? They can’t. They won’t.
June 2, 2016, was a sunny day in Nashville, with a high of 88 degrees. A practice day. Vanderbilt was getting ready to host UC Santa Barbara, Washington, and Xavier in an NCAA regional—slated to begin the next day. A little before 10 a.m., Vanderbilt pitchers gathered on the turf football field next to Hawkins Field to get loose and participate in long toss, Snider included.
Snider, then a sophomore, loved Donny Everett as a teammate, as a friend, as a person—but he hated catching him. “[It was] the scariest thing I did every single day,” he said, laughing. Snider had the bruises and battle scars to prove it. Donny threw so hard and with so much movement, Snider at times simply couldn’t see it, especially once they got to the portion of the drill when they were 60 feet apart and Snider had to squat down like he was a catcher. One day, Snider was so rattled, he stood up and said he couldn’t catch Donny anymore. Pitching coach Scott Brown (colloquially known as “Brownie”), told Snider to get back into his squat, then turned to the 6-foot-2, 230-pound freshman across from him and said, “Donny, that tells you everything you need to know.”
On June 2, 2016, Snider took extra precautions. He asked junior catcher Jason Delay if he could borrow his catcher’s mitt—just for a little extra padding—and Delay obliged. Even still, Snider squirmed uncomfortably in his simulated catcher’s squat. Near the end of the workout, about an hour and 15 minutes later, Donny held up two fingers, as if to say, “Two more fastballs, then I’m done.”
As he walked up and down the field to monitor all of his pitchers, Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin saw Donny’s two fingers out of the corner of his eye and decided to move closer to the comically mismatched Snider-Everett battery. As Corbin inched closer, within batter’s box range, Donny threw one high and tight—very close to the coach’s body. Corbin glared at him, but Donny never made eye contact.
Fastball No. 1.
Now, Corbin was curious. He stepped even closer to Snider—standing firmly within the hypothetical batter’s box. Snider’s thinking, Is Donny actually doing this to him right now? but Corbin just smiled. Donny threw this next one even harder—and closer—just under Corbin’s chin, and the head coach flinched and fell back on his heels.
Fastball No. 2.
Workout over. Donny walked up to Snider and shook hands, still not making eye contact with Corbin—out of a sense of masculine pride. Then, Corbin asked Donny his signature question, the question he asks every player, every day, and the question Donny rarely took seriously.
“Donny, what do you got?”
Donny looked at Corbin with a sly smile and winked—a look Corbin will never forget.
“You got nothing, Coach.”
Corbin loved it—the confidence, the self-assurance, the competitive edge. In his eyes, that was a moment of growth, and it was the last moment the coach and his freshman phenom would share.
Around 11:15 a.m., practice ended and the team dispersed, players free to spend their afternoon however they chose, as long as they were back to their dorms by curfew.
Donny, fellow freshman right-hander Chandler Day, redshirt junior left-hander Ryan Johnson, and two of Donny’s Clarksville friends went to Chipotle for lunch, then went back to their dorms, gathered their fishing gear, and drove about 70 miles southeast to Normandy Lake, near the city of Tullahoma in Coffee County.
Corbin stayed put, preparing for the next day’s postseason action. At about a quarter to eight, when he had finished his NCAA meetings and was done poring over film, Corbin picked up his wife, Maggie, and the couple started driving toward Sam’s Sports Grill for dinner.
As they drove, Corbin’s phone began to ring. It was junior ace Jordan Sheffield. That was odd. Corbin’s players rarely, if ever, call him at night.
Corbin answered the phone.
“Coach, I just want you to know something. I’m not trying to alert you, but—”
It was too late for that.
Every pitch, any thrilling play or moment, even some routine plays, just for laughs—“Write it down, Donny!”
For the first two months of his freshman season at Vanderbilt, Donny was sidelined by a lat injury—nothing terribly serious—but serious enough to keep him off the mound until April 12. He ended up making just six appearances all year—two starts—going 0-1, 1.50 in 12 innings. As such, Donny had to find other ways to integrate himself with his new teammates, to be of some use. One way was through pitch charting; he became an avid pitch charter. Every day, whoever had the charts in his hands, Donny would come up to him and take them, and he’d write down every small detail during games. His teammates soon caught on to this. Even his coaches.
“‘Write it down, Donny!’ They loved that because it
just became an expression,” pitching coach Scott Brown said, laughing. “Someone would get a time on [a base runner], and they’d just be like, ‘Write that down, Donny!’
“They loved to tease him. And he would just take it and kind of smirk it off and laugh. It was almost like he was saying, ‘Yeah, whatever.’ But he would laugh about it, and they knew it was getting under his skin just a little bit, so they just continued it . . . He was at the center of poking fun because he just had that teddy-bear type personality.”
The VandyBoy veterans all made sure Donny’s head never got too big—not that that was ever a problem, anyway.
“We would never let him know that he threw hard,” joked junior right-hander Kyle Wright. “We would always make sure that he knew that we threw a pitch harder than him . . . If he hit 95-plus, we’d say the gun was hot or he hit the hot spot.”
A couple of Vanderbilt flamethrowers would always gather at the end of the stretch line, in a sort of exclusive club. They’d call it “Velo Valley.” For months, they didn’t let Donny join; at least, not until he threw his first collegiate pitch. He touched 97 miles per hour in his first appearance, against Middle Tennessee State in April. Only then was he allowed in the Valley. Reluctantly.
As much as Donny’s teammates would make fun of him, they truly did relish his company. His lightheartedness was a form of social glue, even as a freshman. He’d routinely go fishing with teammates—Day, Johnson, Penn Murfee, and others. An avid Tennessee Titans fan and a season-ticket holder, he brought Wright with him to a couple of NFL games. If any player on the team had an issue with his car, Donny would happily be there to repair it. A group of players often played Call of Duty on their PlayStation 4s online, and Donny would jump into those online matches from his dorm room—sometimes to their confusion (“Who’s this Sweaty Goat guy who keeps wanting to get into all our games?”).
Perhaps Donny’s greatest cultural impact, though, was one the coaching staff wasn’t aware of for some time. The Fast Food Crew.
Donny, Snider, Wright, Day, Johnson, and Hayden Stone (on occasion; he’d never admit to being a member) would get together on the weekends after a team workout and eat fast food—Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Chick-fil-A. “Sometimes Sonic—on special occasions,” Snider said, laughing.
“We used it as an excuse for velo,” Wright added with a sly smile. “‘This is how we’re going to throw harder.’”
The specific term that the Fast Food Crew loved to use was “velo pouch.” They’d eat to build up their velo pouches.
“That doesn’t come from me,” Brown said. “I think they all took the old ‘mass times acceleration equals force,’ and I think they took the ‘mass’ part to heart, where they were like, ‘I can put a little extra mass right down there.’”
While not every member of the group participated every time, Donny always did. Sometimes, he’d even go by himself. Together with Day, a subcommittee of the Fast Food Crew was soon formed.
The White Castle Clan.
“In the spring, we started a Sunday tradition of going to White Castle,” Day wrote in a Twitter tribute to Donny last June (Day was not made available for comment). “We ordered six cheese sliders, five-piece mozzarella sticks, and a large Big Red creme soda.
“The best part was you [Donny] setting your retainer on the counter and the looks you would get. Still had the most affectionate smile without those two teeth.”
Donny loved Day; he had met the Granville, Ohio, native before college, on the showcase circuit. He loved his teammates. He loved Vanderbilt. He only threw 12 innings due to his injury, but there were no regrets for his decision not to sign. He rarely came home, which is what his parents had wanted; they wanted him to find a place where he was happy, where he could truly thrive. Even though he was there for only a few months, they marveled at how quickly their 19-year-old son grew into a man.
“I’d say, ‘You can bring your laundry home!’ Because I’d miss just doing stuff for him,” Susan said. “And he’d say, ‘I got it. It’s my responsibility.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t mind, bring it home!’”
One time Teddy and Susan came to Vanderbilt to visit, but they made the mistake of coming on a Sunday. A White Castle Sunday.
“No, Mom,” Donny said, “I can’t go to eat with you. I’m going to eat with Chandler. It’s our date.”
She understood.
“Donny loved Chandler so much,” Susan said, tearfully. “I texted his mom a picture, and I’ll never forget because she said, ‘They’re going to make great memories together.’”
Jordan Sheffield wasn’t trying to worry his head coach. But he did.
As Corbin continued driving with Maggie by his side, Sheffield told Corbin that his mom had heard something disturbing on the police scanner—that a Vanderbilt baseball player had gone fishing and drowned in a lake near Tullahoma.
“But I don’t see how that can be, Coach,” Sheffield said. “It can’t be a Vanderbilt player. It must be a mix-up.”
“Everyone’s back, right?” Corbin responded.
“Almost everyone.”
“Who’s missing?”
Sheffield proceeded to tell Corbin that Donny, Chandler, and Ryan had gone fishing after practice, but they had said they’d be back at the Towers—the dorm where the players were staying—by 8 o’clock.
At this point, a twinge of panic set in. More than a twinge.
“Can you try to find out where Donny is, and the rest of the boys?”
Corbin hung up the phone and immediately called the sheriff’s office. He got the dispatcher.
“Can I speak to the sheriff there?”
“I’ll have him call you back. What’s your number?”
Five minutes later, Corbin and Maggie were in the parking lot outside of Sam’s, sitting in the car. Waiting. It was about 8:30. They hadn’t eaten.
The phone rang.
The sheriff, in as calm a voice as he could muster, began speaking on the other line.
“Coach,” he said, introducing himself. “I just want to let you know that Donny Everett was found dead tonight in 25 feet of water.”
Time stopped. Earth stopped spinning. Corbin stopped listening. Maggie could hear the sheriff’s voice from the passenger’s seat. Silence. Cold silence. What do you do? What do you say? What do you feel? What can you do?
Corbin called Sheffield back.
“Could you please gather the kids in the dorm?”
Deputy Charles Taylor of the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department received a call just before 5 p.m. on June 2, 2016. Another deputy, Brandon Reed, soon joined him on the scene.
Five young men—Donny Everett, Chandler Day, Ryan Johnson, and two of Donny’s Clarksville friends were fishing at Normandy Lake near Fire Lake Bridge on Mountain View Road, according to a release from the department. Everett’s four fishing companions told police that Everett was on the west side of that bridge and had decided to go into the water in an attempt to swim to the other side.
Everett made it halfway across before he started to ask for help. He was smiling, and his friends thought he was “joking around,” according to the report.
At one point, one of the boys jumped into the water and pulled Everett several feet, but he told police he wasn’t a good swimmer and was struggling to stay afloat. When it seemed like Everett was no longer struggling, the boy let go and swam back to shore. The group, as a collective, still thought Everett was joking.
When the boy looked back, Everett had gone underwater. He didn’t resurface.
“He went fishing with those rods I gave him,” Forney Abbott said. “And he decided to swim, and not being familiar with cold water and mountain lakes, he was thinking summertime, it was warm, he could get in the water and go across. Well, I’m sure that cold water shut him down. Because it’s 50-degree water and his muscles just didn’t work, and the others didn’t understand what was happening to him.”
When Reed arrived on scene a little after 5 p.m., he went into the wate
r and tried to locate Everett, with no luck. The sheriff’s department launched a boat to help with the search. Divers from the Coffee County Rescue Squad entered the water at 6:38 p.m. to search for Everett, according to the report. At 6:47 they dove again, and at 6:49 they found Everett’s body in 25 feet of water, about 15 feet from the shore line.
“People say, ‘Why the heck did he try to swim across?’” his old high school coach, Brian Hetland, said. “He was carefree. He was Donny. It was in the late afternoon, getting ready to close it up and go on back and get ready for the game. It wasn’t like he was there at midnight, or swimming at 1 in the morning, all crazy and messed up.
“It wasn’t nothing like that. It was just being a normal teenager. Doing normal stuff. Doing what he liked to do.”
Teddy Everett had to work in the morning. He’d always get up at 3 a.m., make the 45-minute drive to the post office in Nashville, and work the early shift. He and Susan were already in bed when the sheriff knocked.
It was 9:30 p.m. The sheriff kept knocking. And knocking. And knocking. And knocking. And knocking.
Susan remembers every little detail from that day, June 2, 2016. She remembers calling Donny. She remembers texting him. She remembers not hearing back. She remembers telling Teddy she thought something was wrong. She remembers thinking something had to be wrong. She remembers the sound of the knocking on the front door. She remembers the feeling of dread.
Teddy remembers nothing.
Corbin and Maggie never got out of their car. Tim pulled out of the parking lot outside of the restaurant and started driving back toward Vanderbilt’s campus.
As he drove, Maggie’s phone rang. Tim could hear the wailing on the other line. It was Chandler Day and Ryan Johnson. They were standing in Tim and Maggie’s front yard.