October is the final hurrah for baseball fans, though should the World Series go to seven games this year, November 1 will be the last game, which I believe is the first time November has been able to boast a post season game. Gettin’ chilly for fans, but I’m sure the excitement will keep them warm.
So, let’s talk baseball. I was a diehard fan in my youth, carting around a transistor radio to hold to my ear when my sister’s October birthday dinners out interfered with my focus on the playoffs. I should confess, along with a miffed attitude about missing the game, I did not join in the celebration of her special day with anything that could be called genuine spirit. I’ll blame it on the self-centredness of teenagers, but I was simply an avid baseball fan. The Oakland A’s were my team in those days, back before the Blue Jays joined the Major League in 1976. Since then, I’ve never wavered in my Canadian support, though I must say I’ve lost my grip on game stats and team rosters over the years. I’m dialled back in this year, almost too afraid to watch. I was driving downtown Toronto back in 1992 when the Jays won their first World Series, beating the Atlanta Braves in six games. Skydome (as it was then called) was open to the public to watch the winning game from Atlanta on the jumbotron. After picking up my dear friend Angie at the Delta Hotel for a brief visit, we inched our way along in downtown Toronto as fans swarmed the streets in celebration. Who knew then that the Jays would achieve back-to-back titles?
I was in love with all aspects of baseball. I loved the colourful sidearm pitches from Kansas City Royals’ Dan Quisenberry, known as the Underwater Wizard, where his knuckles nearly scraped the dirt as he delivered his wicked submarine pitches. Dennis Eckersley’s mean slider and Randy Johnson’s 6’10” frame and lengthy pitching career of twenty-one years. I smiled at the names loaded with fun like Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers.
But one pitcher stands out in my mind and that’s Jim Abbott. He was drafted straight out of high school in 1985 by the Blue Jays, but he didn’t sign and went to college instead. While at the University of Michigan, he won the James E. Sullivan Award for the country’s best amateur athlete. In 1988 he won a gold medal at the Summer Olympics when baseball was a demonstration sport. He was then drafted by the California Angels and joined the pitching roster in 1989, having never played a minor league game. His 1,674 games played spanned his eleven-year major league career with the Angels, Yankees, White Sox, and Brewers. He was a lefty, throwing a no-hitter while with the Yankees in 1993 against Cleveland. All this sounds like normal achievement, but this particular pitcher was born without a right hand and that’s where his greatest achievement comes into play.
Jim Abbott received thousands of letters during and following his baseball career and many of these letters were from children, children who, like Jim Abbott, were obligated to line-up in the column of “different.” Jim became a role model who allowed children with disabilities to see themselves as something beyond what others labelled them. Jim would understand the bullying these children were obligated to endure, would understand the urgent requests from parents who wanted to know how best to help their children spread their wings and learn to fly. Jim’s responses to these letters became almost a full-time job, a job in providing others with hope and he didn’t merely respond with letters, he responded with his time.
An eight-year-old Canadian girl from Windsor wrote to Jim in 1989, as she, too, was born with only one hand, and her letter was one Jim held on to. Tracey Holgate understood her disability as being wrapped up in a gift that no one wants, but a gift that “allows us to be people that have an empathetic heart, an understanding heart, and to see the pain in the people around us,” Tracey explained at age forty-four, having been inspired by Jim Abbott. He wasn’t just a baseball player to all who reached out to him; Jim was the “embodiment of hope and belonging,” Tracey explained to Mike Farrell and Jeremy Schapp who wrote “Inside the glowing legacy of Jim Abbott” published by ESPN in July 2025. “I think more people need to realize and understand the gift of a difference,” Tracey said.
“He allowed his light to permeate and that light, in turn, lit all these little children’s lights all over the world.”
Is there any greater legacy that each of us can strive for? I don’t think so.
wendistewart@live.ca
