Little Timmy

On This Day in "Sweet Stick" History.....

April 5th, 1982

It was a beautiful Monday afternoon in Charlottesville and the University of Virginia baseball team was wrapping up a series that day against the Wright State Raiders.

In an effort to reach out to the community, some of the players visited a local hospital and that's where Sweet Stick met ten year old Timmy Smithers. Little Timmy was in the hospital for food poisoning after eating some tainted egg salad, and this tugged at Sweet Stick's heart strings, for he too knew the perils of eating bad mayonnaise based sandwich salads.

In keeping with a long standing (but ill-advised) tradition, Sweet Stick promised to hit a home run for little Timmy if little Timmy promised to get up and walk out of the hospital. Little Timmy replied, "I'm not that sick man. The doctor says I'm probably going to leave tonight anyway."

In that afternoon's game Sweet Stick came up with two outs in the bottom of the seventh. In an effort to hit Timmy's home run he already struck out three times in the game, on a combined eleven pitches. Swinging hard at an 0-1 fastball, he slapped the ball the opposite way, to deep right field. The ball is sailing for the wall and Sweet Stick is thinking he has made good on his promise. As he approaches first the ball hits the wall, staying in play. Sweet Stick sees this and charges around the bases. The right fielder chases the ball down in the corner, scoops, turns, and throws. Sweet Stick, sensing his chance to still come through for little Timmy, ignores the third base coach's hold sign and barrels toward home plate, where he is thrown out easily.

Meanwhile, little Timmy Smithers, having already forgotten his visit from Sweet Stick, was watching the Orioles opening day game while waiting to be discharged from the hospital. Excited by and jumping up and down over their 13-5 win over the Kansas City Royals, little Timmy fell, hit his head on the sink in the room, suffered a brain aneurysm, and died.

After learning of little Timmy's tragic death Sweet Stick said, "I can't help but wonder if things would have been different if I had held up at third."