I Was Picked

by Howard Shapiro

  Think Western Oregon University versus Central Washington University in a women’s softball game in April 2008. After senior Sara Tucholsky hits a three-run home run, she tears her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) trying to get back to first base to touch it after missing it. Knowing that none of Tucholsky’s teammates can assist her in running the bases, Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace, two Central Washington players, carry Tucholsky to home plate, helping her touch each base on the way.

  Think John Challis on April 11, 2008 in the Freedom versus Aliquippa baseball game.

  It started with John’s back pain. John insisted Scott get him to the chiropractor; his back was killing him. Since John was traveling with the baseball team, they decided that Scott would meet him for the game in Aliquippa and take him to the chiropractor afterward.

  Scott got to the game in the second inning and stood along the fence on the third base line. Coach Steve Wetzel walked up to the coach’s box at the top of the third inning, looked at Scott, and said, “Look who’s on deck.”

  Scott looked down to the on-deck circle, and there was John, swinging a bat. John wore football rib pads to protect his liver and ribs.

  Scott turned to Steve. “Are you nuts?”

  Freedom’s baseball team was in a playoff run at the time. Steve replied, “Have faith and watch.”

  The pitcher threw a fastball and John got an RBI base hit to right center field. The whole team was happy for him, and the opposing team was too. His first base coach, Greg Kemerer, cheered him on and became very emotional over John’s accomplishment. “His brother passed away in the seventies while he was in school,” explained Scott. “I feel it brought back some memories.”

  From a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette video interview with John:

  All’s I remember is everybody was screaming. Must have only been twenty people there, but it sounded like more. I felt like Superman. I don’t know what Coach Wetzel was doing—he was on third base. I was looking for the ball. I was never one to look at the ball. I just wanted to get to first. I’m so slow as it is, I’m just thinking, oh, let me get there, let me get there, I want this so bad. Coach Kemerer, my first base coach, he’s halfway up the line like he’s going to hug me and carry me there. He was crying. I’m there—I’m three steps from the bag. “I did it! I did it!” I got there! I was so pumped! He’s hugging me and crying and . . . [the] whole team comes out because the plan was, if I get on, somebody’s running for me. I agreed to that because I can’t run that good, but to get that hit was special. As I said, I felt like Superman.

  Steve Wetzel, who was John’s coach and good friend, was a big part of John’s story. We spent a lot of time talking about the hit, the lead-up to it, and how it was the catalyst for the media frenzy that took off in the weeks afterward. Steve had met John in the winter of 2006 in the weight room at Freedom High. Steve had brought a student to work with the trainer, and as he recalled, “I was standing there, and all of a sudden I feel this elbow, and I look down and see these bright blue eyes and this big smile, and this kid says, ‘What’s up, big guy? Someday I’m going to be big like you.’ It was John Challis.”

  Steve helped out with the football team; he and John would stand on the sidelines together during the 2007 season. “I’d see John every day at football practice, and next thing you know, there was a true bond between us. He was sick then, and I’d stop over at his house a lot and we’d talk—John was more of a talker than someone who texted—and . . . one day I just asked him if he would be interested in coming out for the baseball team. The thing was, at that point he and I—our bond was getting pretty strong, but some of his very best friends were on the baseball team too!” Steve said.

  John participated in the team’s winter conditioning program and did the drills to the best of his ability. He would do a drill, and even if he had to sit down or throw up, he would get back in the drill. When the weather was decent they went outside, and Steve would hit fly balls. “I was a nervous wreck, wondering how I hit a ball to him.”

  One time, Steve hit him a blooper. John got behind it, caught it, and threw it back—just like a pro. “Come on, Coach,” he said. “Hit me a real fly ball.”

  “He said it nicely, and so the next time I hit one a little higher, and he groaned,” Steve recalled.

  Then the kid pitching, Adam Teets, said to Steve, “Just hit it. He knows he can do it.” So Steve hit him a major league fly ball, and sure enough, he shagged it. No problem.

  While John participated in practices, Steve did not put him in a game as the season progressed. He did, however, have John coach first base in a game the team played at PNC Park in 2007. Steve remembered the impact this had on John as the team traveled to Aliquippa for the April 11 game—a game that Steve had wrestled with the thought of getting John into. As he related to me, “I wasn’t sure I was going to let him bat. I thought a lot about it the night before, but wasn’t a hundred percent sure I’d get him in. So on the ride to Aliquippa, John said to me and all my coaches, he said to us, ‘You know what’s really cool, guys? That someday I’m going to be able to tell my kids and grandkids that I got to coach first base at PNC Park.’ I didn’t know what to say. . . . Here is a kid getting weaker by the day, and he says something like that.”

  John had already asked Steve to get him into a game. However, about a week before the Aliquippa game, John called Steve to tell him that he had got the results from his latest test, and they showed that the cancer had spread. “I don’t recall the exact percentage he said,” recalled Steve. “I think he said it had spread forty percent, and then he said, ‘Would you just put me in the game? Would you just let me feel like a normal kid?’ His voice then cracked, and then like five seconds later he said, ‘What are you and your wife doing for dinner?’ I mean, he switched gears that fast. Before that he had said something like, ‘Just throw me out in the outfield or something.’ ”

  Steve checked with Scott and Gina to get their permission to get John in a game, but didn’t tell them which game or what situation he would get him in. Medically, it was okay. John’s doctors had given him permission to play baseball.

  The stage was now set, and there were signs, unscripted signs, that this would be the time and the game to get John in. Some of the opposing team’s players had John’s No. 11 on their hats. “It was breathtaking,” Steve recalled. “There was another sign that I needed to let him bat.”

  The game started and everything was like normal. Then, entering the third inning, Freedom was leading 3–2, and the moment came. John was sitting there in the corner of the dugout, and Steve called, “Johnny, get your stuff on! Get your stuff on, you’re going to bat!”

  A big smile appeared on John’s face as he got ready. Meanwhile, Steve told his catcher, Adam, that John was batting in his spot this inning. Adam’s smile on his face said it all; he was honored. Next Steve went to the umpire and whispered to him that John was going to bat second this inning. He looked at Steve with watery eyes.

  The first batter came up and hit a double. Freedom had no outs, with a man on second. Steve called out, “Time blue! I have a pinch hitter, No. 11, Challis!” The pitcher looked at him as if unsure what to do, but Steve mouthed to him, “Just pitch.”

  Steve gave John the signs before he stepped into the batter’s box. Everything then seemed to move in slow motion. The pitcher fired in a fastball, and John was ready to go. He swung and cracked a single between first and second base—and it went into the outfield. John hustled down the first base line, yelling, “I did it, I did it, I did it!”

  “What a magical moment!” Steve said. “The game then stopped for about twenty minutes. One of sports’ greatest memories! John always said he got cancer to bring people together. Well, that hit seemed to bring many people throughout the country together.”

  John developed a great bond with many pro athletes and their organizations—and not just the local Pittsburgh teams. Particularly after Mike White’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article blew up, teams and the
ir players rolled out the red carpet for John.

  The relationship between the pro teams and John had begun shortly after he returned home from his first chemo treatment. Scott told me that all he wanted to do was make arrangements for John to do special things when he wasn’t in the hospital. He wanted to do things for John to hopefully keep his mind off being sick. His friend Dan Prunzik was a close friend with Sean Casey, who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates at the time. Dan called him in July, 2006, shortly after John’s diagnosis, with news that he had gotten John and the rest of the family into the Pittsburgh Pirates clubhouse and dugout.

  At the field, Scott remembered, Sean spent time with the family and then walked down to the end of the dugout and sat with John, just the two of them, talking for over twenty minutes. Later John told Scott how spiritual Sean was, and how good he made him feel. It would be the first of several times John would visit with the Pirates and their coaching staff. Sean and John remained friends after their meeting.

  Following Bill Allmann’s article in the Beaver County Times in August 2006, the Freedom community and several neighboring areas got behind John and the Challis family by holding fundraisers. Everyone in the area wanted to help John and the family in any way they could, and on September 30, over a thousand people from Freedom and the neighboring areas went to PNC Park to support John as he threw out the first pitch at the Pittsburgh Pirates game.

  This was a very special night. Joe Shouse, the Challises’ mailman, had arranged Freedom Area Night at the Park, and the crowd roared as John stepped up and threw a perfect strike.

  Joe Maddon, former manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, called on June 25 and talked to Scott. He told him that he was in a hotel in Miami, crying because he had just seen John’s story on ESPN. He said the Rays were coming to Pittsburgh that Saturday (June 28), and he wanted the family to be his guests. He had to meet John. He said that he would make all of the arrangements. There was only one problem, as Scott recalled. “John had no idea who Joe Maddon was,” he said. “He didn’t know any of the players either. He had to do a crash course on the team just in case he was asked about anyone. And so when he needed a crash course on something, I had to do one too, because he would ask me for the answers.”

  The Rays game came around on Saturday. Since John had already been at PNC Park earlier in the week to speak to the Pirates before a game against the Yankees—more on that below—it felt like he was already part of the Pirates team, so much so that a few of the Pirates were busting John’s chops for being in a Rays jersey and sitting in their dugout. “It was very comical!” recalled Scott. A couple hours later, John, Steve Wetzel (whom the Challises invited), Gina, Lexie, and Scott went to Pirates president Frank Coonelly’s private box to watch the game.

  While in the Rays’ dugout, Scott had been able to get a couple of unsigned baseballs for John. Scott said to John, “Why don’t you sign these balls? One to Joe Maddon and one to John Russell, the manager of the Pirates.” John refused and said, “Why would they want my autograph?” Scott insisted, and Steve convinced John to sign them. Scott asked Mr. Coonelly if he could get someone to get them to the managers, and he had the Pirates general manager, Neal Huntington, take them when he happened to stop by. They never thought anything more about it.

  Then three years later, there was a story on ESPN about Joe Maddon. The crew was taking a tour of his office. In the interview segment, Joe talked about people who had inspired him. He mentioned Jackie Robinson and Lance Armstrong, whom he had pictures of, and then he went to the other side of his office. In a big picture frame over his couch was a jersey with John’s name and number on it, the baseball that John had signed at that Pirates game all those years ago, and the dollar bill he had signed (Joe fined him a dollar for calling his team by their old name, the Devil Rays).

  John really had made an impression on Joe. In October 2008, after John had passed, Scott received a call from Italy, where Joe was on his honeymoon. Scott remembered the call: “He said, ‘Mr. Challis, could you do me the honor and accept the Chuck Tanner MLB Manager of the Year Award for me in Pittsburgh?’ ” Gina and Scott asked Steve Wetzel, John’s baseball coach, to join them for the event. To this day Joe has been a friend of the Challis family.

  The Rays wasn’t the only team John made an impact on; he developed a close relationship with the Pittsburgh Pirates. One June, John spent the day as the team’s honorary manager. He spoke to the Pirates before their game against the New York Yankees and wrote on the dry-erase board, “Have Fun. That’s the reason we play the game.” Then John took out the lineup card and threw out the first pitch.

  Former Pirates first baseman Adam LaRoche said, “We needed that [speech] bad. We need that as a constant reminder of how lucky we are to play baseball, and he said it best. It’s not how many hits you get, whether you win or lose. Take advantage of it and do not take it for granted. None of us knows when our last game is going to be. You hear it from the coaches, but to hear it from someone who has been through what he has and as young as he is, it just means the world to us.”

  Scott told me how the Pirates went all-out for John, and that even though John had thrown out the first pitch and been a guest of the team before, this visit made a huge, far-reaching impact on the team and everyone he came in contact with. “The Pirates sent a limo for the family, first class all the way. John had his own locker and two uniforms, and he spoke to the team. I didn’t know what to expect. John sat in the Pirates locker room and was introduced by John Russell, the manager of the Pirates. He said, ‘This is the young man you guys watched on ESPN yesterday.’ Manager Russell had had the team watch the ESPN Outside the Lines segment from June 8, knowing John would be there this day.”

  Russell turned the microphone over to John. The first thing that came out of John’s mouth was “You guys make a lot of money for what you do.”

  Scott had no idea what he would say next. John was always the kind to tell it the way it was, and he did. He noted how they were kids’ heroes. He told the team not to take careers for granted. He pointed to one of the Pirates and said, “You might go to the doctor’s tomorrow and find out you have a ten-pound tumor in your stomach.” John struck a nerve with a lot of the players. He and Adam LaRoche—one would think they were best of friends. All Adam had to hear was that John was a deer hunter. He called John after their meeting several times to chat.

  After John’s speech, he and Scott visited the Yankees locker room. John met Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Joba Chamberlain. Joba took off a necklace he was wearing and put it on John. A-Rod signed a bat for him. It was an exciting moment.

  All the different media wanted John to wear a transmitter on the back of his uniform, but the weight pulled at John’s pants, so he asked a few of them to take it off. He went back in the clubhouse with John Russell and other members of the club and had a press conference. The Pirates were struggling at the time and the media people asked John if he had given John Russell any tips. He said, “Tell the guys to have fun, that’s why we play the game. Quit worrying about statistics and have fun.”

  “To hear my son talk to the press corps the way he did made me very proud of him,” said Scott. “I did worry the press would ask him a question, and he would give an answer that they weren’t ready for.

  “Kimberly Jones, who is a field reporter for the YES Network in New York, grabbed John for an interview in the Pirates dugout. She was very kind to our family, and she interviewed John and really brought the best out of him. She had other reporters from New York speak to him too.”

  Receiving that signed bat from Alex Rodriguez would set the stage for what would be John’s last trip. He wanted to see a game at Yankee Stadium. One of John’s baseball coaches provided the game tickets, and Scott contacted Jason Zillo, the executive director of communications and media relations for the Yankees (whom he had met when the Yankees were in Pittsburgh), to ask him where to stay in New York that would be close to the stadium.

  Jason t
old him that he would call him back, which he did about thirty minutes later, telling Scott that the Yankees would like to put them up in a Midtown hotel. They flew into Newark, and Jason had a driver meet them at the airport and drive them to the Sheraton Hotel in Times Square. John and Scott walked around there for a while, but went back to the hotel room, as John got very tired.

  “Dad, do you know what I would really love?” John said to Scott. “A piece of cheesecake.”

  Scott set off in pursuit of a slice of cheesecake. It was late at night, so he first went to a deli around the corner. The clerk told him the cheesecake cost twenty-three dollars. “I just wanted one slice,” Scott explained. The twenty-three dollars was for one slice. Scott tried five other places, and it was the same price everywhere. “Because of my frugal ways, I walked almost five city blocks until I found a piece of cheesecake for twelve dollars. I still thought that was high living in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, but I bought it because that is what John wanted.”

  Scott returned to the room by midnight. John thanked him, took two bites, and fell asleep. Scott just smiled.

  As Scott told me, the next day both he and John got to see the New York media up close and personal. At ten-thirty in the morning, Scott received a call from Jason Zillo, telling him that Alex Rodriguez wanted to have them come to his penthouse.

  Scott asked John if he was interested in going, and John’s response was “If I’m up.”

  Scott told him he needed an answer. John said, “All right.”

  A car picked them up. Scott recalled, “Driving up Park Avenue was a real experience. We get out and we are led to Alex’s penthouse. We went upstairs and it was beautiful. Alex was very kind to us.”

  Alex introduced them to his friends, Kevin Kernan of the New York Post, Jason Zillo, and a cameraman from ESPN. Alex gave John and Scott a tour of his penthouse and then gave John his game jersey to wear.

  John asked Alex all kinds of questions about his heritage and his children. He told John that his kids liked being at their other home in Miami. Scott took a picture of Alex and John, and then they were off to Yankee Stadium, Alex grabbing his lunch from the fridge before they set off.