November 18, 2014

Winners Announced for Tom Walter/Pete Frates Award

RICHMOND, Va. – A college baseball coach who nearly lost his life to a rare skin disease and a pitcher who carried his team from the losers’ bracket of its conference tournament to the NCAA tourney headline the 2014 winners of CollegeBaseballInsider.com’s fourth-annual Tom Walter/Pete Frates College Baseball Inspiration Award.

The award, renamed this year to include former Boston College star Pete Frates, recognizes examples of inspiration in college baseball.

Bethune-Cookman coach Jason Beverlin (pictured above) and Georgia Southern reliever Jason Richman (left) lead the 2014 class of winners. Joining them are Louisville superfan Michael Todd Esser, Ohio State pitcher Zach Farmer, Portland pitcher JR Bunda and Vanderbilt student managers Josh Ruchotzke and Mike Portu.

The award, started by CollegeBaseballInsider.com (CBI) in 2011, is named for Tom Walter, the head coach at Wake Forest who donated a kidney to freshman outfielder Kevin Jordan before the 2011 season, and Frates, whose courageous battle with ALS captured the nation’s attention with this summer’s ice bucket challenge. 

“Inspiration comes in many forms, and we’re honored to highlight an exceptional group of student athletes and coaches,” said Sean Ryan, co-founder of CollegeBaseballInsider.com, which has covered Division I college baseball since 2002. “Each of our winners, as well as our other finalists, has impacted not only their teams, but also their communities. We congratulate and thank them for inspiring on and off the baseball diamond.”

2014 Tom Walter/Pete Frates College Baseball Inspiration Award Winners

At the conclusion of the 2013 season, Bethune-Cookman head coach Jason Beverlin contracted cellulitis, a skin infection, on his elbow. Less than two weeks later, he was back in the hospital with the worst rash of his life. Doctors prescribed new medication, and the rash temporarily subsided before coming back and covering his whole body. Beverlin was experiencing fevers and flu-like symptoms, and his skin began to blister and peel. About three weeks after he initially went to the hospital, Beverlin returned and was diagnosed with toxic epidermal necrolysis, an extremely rare skin condition (one in 1.4 million people a year) often caused by a drug reaction. Patients can lose up to 30 percent of their skin, and the disease has a 30-to-40 percent mortality rate. Doctors at the burn unit at UF Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville, about 100 miles from Bethune-Cookman’s Daytona campus, said Beverlin’s case was one of the worst they had seen. But after three weeks of painful recovery, his skin returned and he was able to return to coaching the Wildcats.

Georgia Southern had just lost its first game of the Southern Conference tournament when coaches received a disturbing phone call: Sophomore pitcher Jason Richman’s mother had passed away. Eagles coach Rodney Hennon told Richman they would do whatever it took to get Richman from Charleston, S.C., to his home in Alpharetta, Ga., but after speaking with his father, Richman decided to stay and play in the tournament. The lefty made six appearances in the tourney, allowing one run in 13.1 innings as Georgia Southern stormed out of the losers’ bracket to claim the title and advance to the NCAA Tournament. Richman was named the tourney’s Most Outstanding Player in what Hennon called “one of the most amazing performances I have ever seen.”

Ohio State’s Zach Farmer was in the midst of a stellar freshman campaign when his season was cut short in late April. Farmer, who was 6-4 with a 3.28 ERA in 10 appearances (nine starts), was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and lost for the season. Within days, teammates Ohio State athletic department members rallied to find ways to support Farmer. A website, ZF11.org, was launched to provide information and resources to help Farmer and his family. Senior co-captain Tim Wetzel led teammates and staff members to become part of the Be The Match registry when none of Farmer’s family members were a match for a bone marrow transplant – 37 team members and staff were swabbed to become part of the Be The Match registry, and OSU held an on-campus swabbing, and the baseball team also held a drive at the last home game for fans to join the registry. Farmer was discharged from the hospital on May 28 and found a bone marrow match and had his transplant in August. He is approaching five months of being cancer free and has plans of returning to classes and playing for the Buckeyes in 2016.

Louisville has made two straight trips to Omaha. Although he hasn’t delivered any game-winning hits or game-saving plays, Michael Todd Esser clearly has left his mark on the Cardinals. Esser is a 42-year-old who hasn’t let cerebral palsy slow him down in becoming one of the Cardinals’ biggest fans. He’s become a fixture at practices and games, inspiring Louisville players and coaches with his kindness, passion and friendship. As Jeff Greer of the The Courier-Journal wrote earlier this year, “The players consider the Louisville native with cerebral palsy one of their teammates. He’s become the heart of the program.” (photo courtesy of Darrell Russell)

Portland’s JR Bunda was working out with two teammates in December 2012 in preparation for the 2013 season. His heart stopped, and his teammates and athletic staff members and trainers kept him alive by performing CPR until fire fighters arrived to continue the rescue. Bunda spent two days in a coma. He returned to the mound a few months later only to see his season end after just 11.2 innings because of a blood clot in his left arm. After the NCAA accepted an appeal for a fifth season, Bunda returned to the Pilots in 2014 and completed a full season as a reliever, going 1-0 with a 3.65 ERA in 24.2 innings.

National champion Vanderbilt didn’t have to look far for inspiration during its historic season. Student managers Josh Ruchotzke and Mike Portu provided plenty of it. Ruchotzke (right) was in seventh grade when an infection caused his body and organs to shut down. Months later, doctors determined the infection came from streptococci bacteria (strep) and led doctors to amputate both legs below the knees and parts of his hands. After returning to the diamond and becoming an all-conference second baseman as a senior in high school, he enrolled at Vanderbilt and became a manager on Tim Corbin’s squad. Portu (left) was born with a heart defect and had three surgeries in his first days of life. When he was a senior in high school, he needed another heart surgery, and in 2012, while at Vandy, he developed a blood clot on a new valve and had to be put on blood thinners. Initially encouraged by Commodores pitchers Jared Miller and Philip Pfeifer to become a manager as a freshman, Portu has been a student manager and bullpen catcher.

Other finalists for this year’s honor included:

• BYU senior outfielder Kelton Caldwell played through Type 1 Diabetes his final two seasons.

• Georgetown senior first baseman Steve Anderson, who lost his mother to cancer when he was 8, spearheaded the Hoyas’ effort in raising $46,000 for the St. Baldrick’s foundation.

• Canisius sophomore first baseman/outfielder Brett Siddall played through the loss of his 14-year-old brother to non-Hodgkin lymphoma. 

Past recipients of the award include:

• 2011 – Walter was honored along with Georgia outfielder Johnathan Taylor and Arizona State outfielder Cory Hahn, both of whom were paralyzed during games in the 2011 season, and Bayler Teal, a 7-year-old boy whose battle with cancer inspired 2010 and 2011 national champion South Carolina in 2011.

• 2012 - Marty Gantt of College of Charleston, who was born with an underdeveloped right hand and overcame the disability to become the 2012 Southern Conference Player of the Year; Mike Kent of Clemson, who was weakened by preparations for a bone-marrow transplant for his brother but pitched against doctor's orders and helped the Tigers to a key win over Maryland; Alex Silver of Texas, who returned to the Longhorns after battling Stage I Hodgkin's lymphoma; Carter Smith of UT Martin, who was born without a right hand but made an impact as a pitcher for the Skyhawks; and Tanner Vavra of Valparaiso, who became a star despite two severe injuries to his right eye that left him totally blind in that eye.

• 2013 – Frates was honored along with Davidson head coach Dick Cooke, who overcame numerous injuries, including bleeding on his brain, broken ribs and a collapsed lung to coach the Wildcats after a severe car accident; Minnesota pitching coach Todd Oakes and pitcher Jordan Jess, with Oakes received a bone marrow transplant and Jess became a bone marrow donor to a needy recipient; Illinois State pitching coach Bill Mohl, who lost his wife to a rare form of cervical cancer during the season and came back to help guide the Redbirds to a conference title, raising $25,000 on his own for cancer research; Cody Stevens of Northwestern, who returned to action after being hit by a pitch in the head and needing emergency surgery for a blood clot that nearly took his life; and the UTPA baseball team, which befriended a pair of young children needing bone marrow transplants and held numerous bone marrow and blood drives in their community.

(photos courtesy of Media Relations Offices)