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'This is like my second home,' Tommy Sherman said about
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baseball, there are two kinds of pitchers: the strikeout pitcher and the control pitcher.
The strikeout pitcher is the flashy kind. The kind that throw fast balls at record speeds. The kind that end up in the hall of fame.
Tommy Sherman is not that kind of pitcher.
He's the kind who limps to the field. The kind who throws at two speeds: slow and slower.
But it turns out that in baseball it's not just the fast pitchers who are successful. There's room for the slow, brainy, tricky pitchers, too.
That's why Sherman, 19, says the pitching mound gives him the even playing field he rarely finds in real life.
Sherman has cerebral palsy. He was 3 when his parents, both baseball nuts, found out about the disability.
"You just naturally assume that when you have a child who has a problem with the way they walk or the way they move their body that sports are the last thing they'll do," said Sherman's mother, Susan Sherman.
But Sherman never doubted he'd be a baseball player. His father coached Sherman's cousin Chuck Shackleford on a Little League team, and Sherman became the batboy.
When he was 5, he insisted on playing T-ball. For years, he played and his dad coached.
But when Sherman went to high school, his parents assumed his baseball days were over.
"Not because we had a lack of confidence in Tommy, but because we had a lack of confidence in the coaches," Susan Sherman said.
Would a coach pick a player who could pitch well but whose running skills were described as "not pretty" by his own mother?
But again, Sherman's parents assumed wrong, and Sherman pitched at James Monroe High School.
He missed one season his sophomore year, after he had surgery on his right leg. Sherman still showed up at each game, his leg in a bright orange cast with black signatures--the team colors for JM.
Last year, Sherman graduated and, again, his parents thought his baseball career would end.
But, again, Sherman surpassed their expectations, landing a place on a local, semipro team, Meadows Farms.
And then he came to his parents with a new request. Sherman wanted to be a paramedic.
They had reservations.
"When you think of a para-medic or an EMT, you think of people having to pull people out of cars or having to lift heavy things," Susan Sherman said. "I told Tommy, 'I don't know if your body can handle that.'"
But Sherman wasn't used to letting his body make the decisions.
He showed up for marching band just months after his surgery. He set a personal record at a swim meet the day of a friend's funeral. He pitched two days after he was in a car accident.
And he's never once let a little thing like cerebral palsy get in the way.
"It's made me work even harder to do things, but I've made sure it doesn't stop me from doing anything," Sherman said. "All I look at it is that I've just got to work a little harder than anyone else."
So Sherman signed up to be a paramedic. His parents had just one caveat: They asked him to run at the Falmouth Fire and Rescue station, where Shackleford worked. Sherman had followed his older cousin into baseball 14 years earlier, and now he would follow him into the rescue field.
Susan Sherman said that, as a parent, she's always tried to balance her concern for Sherman with her desire to see him grow.
"If you're the parent of a child with special needs, it's easier to let them stay safe in a cocoon," she said. "But you really have to set your feelings aside, you know what you think is best for them, and really let them take the risks. Then, if they fail, be there to boost them up."
But Sherman has succeeded more often then he's failed, something that his mother attributes to the people in his life: his teammates, coaches and fellow rescuers.
But Sherman's teammates pass the credit back on to him and his spirit.
"He's got the heart of an absolute lion as a pitcher," said Derek Marsh, another pitcher on Meadows Farms. "He's got a gift that's not measurable on a radar gun He knows what to do and he goes out there and gets the job done."
To reach AMY FLOWERS UMBLE:
Email: aumble@freelancestar.com
| What is cerebral palsy?
Cerebral palsy describes a group of chronic conditions affecting body movement and muscle coordination. It is caused by damage to one or more specific areas of the brain, usually before, during or immediately after birth or sometime in infancy. People with the condition have trouble controlling coordination and the use of muscles. There are different types of cerebral palsy, and the disorder varies in severity. Early signs are developmental delays, such as late sitting, crawling, smiling and walking, and abnormal muscle tone. There is no cure for the condition, but some treatments help. For more information, visit ucp.org --information compiled from the United Cerebral Palsy Web site. |
