{"id":2992,"date":"2018-06-28T14:05:28","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T18:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=2992"},"modified":"2018-06-28T14:05:28","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T18:05:28","slug":"a-whole-new-ball-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/a-whole-new-ball-game\/","title":{"rendered":"A Whole New Ball Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was an inside fastball, and Jake Gronsky \u201914 never had a chance. This was in Peoria, Illinois, back in the summer of 2015, and Gronsky was in his second season as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals\u2019 minor-league system. He\u2019d been struggling to find his rhythm at the plate, and then, just as he finally got it going, came that pitch\u2014and a broken metacarpal on his left hand. Just like that, he was out for the season.<\/p>\n

He swears it\u2019s one of the best things that ever happened to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a hard thing to go through,\u201d Gronsky says now, \u201cbut if that never happened, I never would have gotten to know Josiah.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, it was on a visit to the Cardinals\u2019 single-A affiliate in State College, Pennsylvania, where the team sent him to have his hand checked out, that Gronsky met the kid who would change his life. He was in the State College Spikes\u2019 clubhouse, catching up with some familiar faces from spring training, when \u201cthis kid comes bouncing through the room,\u201d Gronsky remembers. \u201cAnd the whole place just stops.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Jake Gronsky and Josiah Viera at spring training in 2016. Photo by Dave Bohner.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The kid was Josiah Viera, a tiny, baseball-loving 10-year-old boy whose uniqueness was immediately apparent. Josiah was born with Hutchinson-Gilford progeria, a rare genetic disorder that essentially causes the body to age at eight to 10 times the normal rate; those afflicted rarely live past their teens. But if Josiah\u2019s body was fragile, his spirit was buoyant\u2014and, to hear Gronsky tell it, infectious. The two developed a bond, and over the next two years Gronsky grew close with Josiah and his family\u2014particularly Josiah\u2019s grandfather, Dave Bohner. Eventually, their friendship would lead to a joint conclusion: Josiah deserved to have his story told.<\/p>\n

The result, published in March, is A Short Season: Faith, Family, and a Boy\u2019s Love for Baseball<\/em>. At its heart is Josiah, the sports-obsessed kid who was all but adopted by the minor-league team two hours from his rural Pennsylvania home. Gronsky and Bohner are listed as the book\u2019s co-authors, but Gronsky says he served mostly as the medium for a story that has shown no limits in its ability to inspire. \u201cA lot of people, when they see Josiah at a game or with a team, it\u2019s like a charity event\u2014they think people are doing so much for him,\u201d Gronsky says. \u201cBut really, they have it wrong\u2014he does so much for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The connection that Gronsky made with the family that first summer was strengthened through the following offseason: Once a week over that span, Bohner would drive to Danville, Pennsylvania, to bring Josiah\u2019s older sister to dance classes at a studio run by Gronsky\u2019s mom, and the two men would pass the time with coffee and conversation. That\u2019s when Gronsky learned Josiah\u2019s story wasn\u2019t the only one the family had to tell. \u201cDave had this incredibly rough childhood, and then he had this imperfect child come into his life, and it brought the family back together,\u201d Gronsky says. \u201cIt\u2019s one of the greatest stories I\u2019ll ever hear in my life. Those talks were like going to church for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

They became something more the following March when Gronsky was released by the Cardinals. Suddenly, he was a 20-something college graduate whose dream of reaching the Major Leagues was nearing its end. He needed to figure out what was next. It was around that time that Bohner offered a challenge: I don\u2019t want Josiah to ever be forgotten. Gronsky told him he was crazy, that his grandson\u2019s bravery and spirit had already touched too many lives. But Bohner insisted. \u201cHe said, if it\u2019s not written down, people will forget,\u201d Gronsky remembers. \u201cSo I said, \u2018You\u2019re right, this story\u2019s too good not to write. Let\u2019s write it for us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Gronsky, Viera, and Dave Bohner at the State College Spikes\u2019 \u201cJosiah Viera Day\u201d in 2016. Photo by Karen Gronsky.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Josiah\u2019s journey had been shared before\u2014ESPN first featured him back in 2010, when he was just six years old\u2014and writers had approached the family asking if they\u2019d be interested in putting his story in print. Gronsky knew the story better than anyone, in all its heart-warming and heart-wrenching detail. The only problem: He wasn\u2019t actually a writer\u2014at least, not yet.<\/p>\n

In fact, Gronsky had always thought of himself as a writer, certainly since he\u2019d taken Chad Dell\u2019s class as a Monmouth freshman. Dell, an associate professor in the Department of Communications, had seen Gronsky\u2019s potential and encouraged him, even as Gronsky pushed off the possibility of making a career of it. \u201cI was a baseball player\u2014I lived, breathed, and slept baseball,\u201d says Gronsky, a three-time all-conference pick who finished fifth in school history with 237 hits. \u201cWriting was always my escape, and I knew I wanted to do something in writing, but I didn\u2019t think the opportunity would come this soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Accepting the task, Gronsky immersed himself in it, educating himself on relevant medical research, conducting extensive interviews, and detailing the lives of Josiah and his family, as well as four of Gronsky\u2019s teammates who were similarly impacted by getting to know the boy. Throughout, he says he never lost sight of the primary goal: To record the truth of their experiences\u2014\u201cto just get it right,\u201d he says\u2014because Josiah and his family deserved nothing less. The rest\u2014a book deal, promotion via ESPN, a line of hats and t-shirts that he and Josiah designed together\u2014has been an unexpected blessing.<\/p>\n

Josiah is 14 now, and the cruel math of what progeria has done to him physically is undeniable; as Gronsky notes, \u201cHis body is like 100 years old or more.\u201d But Josiah started high school last year, and emotionally, he does his best to be a typical kid. \u201cHe\u2019s a teenager, so of course he\u2019s got a phone now,\u201d Gronsky laughs. \u201cWe stay in touch, and I know he\u2019s excited about the book, but he\u2019s more excited about having sleepovers with his friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gronsky now lives in Philadelphia, where he works in digital marketing, and he\u2019s already on to his second book project, co-authoring the autobiography of 2006 World Series MVP David Eckstein. He\u2019s come to terms with the end of his playing days, but the former second baseman is still passionate about the game, and would love to continue finding ways to combine that connection with his passion for writing. But he knows he\u2019ll never have another project that means as much as his first book\u2014or another subject who taught him as much as Josiah has.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time he walked into that clubhouse or stepped on the field, he understood that we may not have control over how our life unfolds,\u201d Gronsky says, \u201cbut we can always choose how we live.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With his professional baseball career over, Jake Gronsky is focusing on his other passion: writing. His new book, \u201cA Short Season,\u201d tells the true story of his friend, Josiah Viera, a boy with a rare disease and an even rarer ability to inspire everyone he meets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":3007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Features","issue":"Summer 2018","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2992"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3552,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992\/revisions\/3552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}