Thomas Williams’ story got more screen time at Coors Field than Trevor Story. How crazy is that?
“I did?” Thomas asked with a grin after throwing out the first pitch for Rockies-Red Sox on Monday at Coors Field, the night Story, the former Colorado All-Star, returned to 20th and Blake. “That’s awesome. That’s so funny. I didn’t expect it at all. I miss him. I hope he gets better.”
For Williams, each day is better than the last. A chain of blessings that runs across three time zones, 25 years and two hearts.
The one bouncing between his throat and his chest Monday at Coors was a gift, implanted when he was six months old.
The Williamses know the donors were from Oklahoma. They know there was a car accident. But the giving family was anonymous. They’ve stayed that way, decades after the fact, even though Thomas is now 25, with a wicked fastball and a wicked smile. Even though Jim and Gigi, his parents, wrote them letter after letter of thanks, love to angels unknown.
“We really grieved for that family, and we still do. And it’s a very hard thing to do,” Gigi Williams told me. “It’s a bittersweet call to get — as happy as you are for your child, there’s a family out there that’s grieving.
“And to me, it’s just amazing that a family in the midst of that grief could sit, just take a step back, and say, ‘You know what? I’m going to help somebody else.’ It just blows my mind — they’re dealing with an unbelievable tragedy. But we’re thankful. We hope that they know something good comes out of such a hard situation for them.”
•••
The kid on the scoreboard, smiling from the jumbotron, wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for strangers, for a family’s selflessness. For a Hail Mary thrown high and far while The Good Lord ran a skinny post.
Gigi recalled the winter of 1998, the heads-up from a nurse about five days after Thomas was born.
“I had a fever, so they were afraid I had an infection due to the C-section, so they left us in a couple more days,” Thomas’ mother recalled. “Which was a huge blessing. Because it was two days later that the nurse came in to discharge him and said something wasn’t right.”
Jim and Gigi’s newborn was struggling to get blood to his extremities. Scans showed why, a checklist of awful that included narrowing of the aorta, a hole between two upper chambers and multiple holes between his ventricles and his lower chambers.
“He had a double outlet right ventricle,” Gigi explained, “so his aorta and his pulmonary artery — both came out of the right side versus one out of each side. The ultimate driver to transplant was, his left ventricle never fully developed … he had a hypoplastic left ventricle.”
Thomas was listed for a new heart on Dec. 3, 1998. A donor was found 65 days later. The family got a call at 9:04 a.m. on a Sunday, while the family was watching “Sesame Street.”
‘The transplant nurse on call that day said, ‘Hey, we have a potential heart for Thomas,'” Mom said. “‘They’ve only evaluated it over the phone, but we still need you to bring him, get ready.’
“And I mouthed to my husband that this was the call. And he just kind of went into his ‘I’m Superman’ mode.”
“It was a blur,” Jim recalled. “You know that at that point you’re in execution mode … it was like falling out of a plane, quite honestly.”
•••
Dad had flown plenty already. Jim’s retired Air Force. He and Gigi moved from Colorado Springs to Seymour, Tenn., a suburb of Knoxville, once the nest was empty.
The kid on the scoreboard with the new heart works in HR for the Department of Defense these days. Thomas spends 100 days per year on the road, give or take.
Like the ninth inning at Coors, it’s rarely boring.
“I guess traveling for baseball in college kind of prepared me,” the younger Williams cracked.
Thomas pitched at Johnson University in Tennessee four years ago. As a righty, he topped out at 79-80 mph. German Marquez went back on the injured list before the game, so the big club might need him to stick around.
“Just get it from A to B,” Thomas told himself on the concourse.
As Story waved quickly to the Coors crowd and turned back to the visiting dugout, Thomas fired a strike to Dinger. A to B.
“He played really well here. He had a great start to his career,” Williams said of the former Rockies All-Star. “I just want to make sure he’s at a place where he’s successful.
“Yeah, I do miss him. But we have (Ezequiel) Tovar now. I’m kind of turning that page. I’m more excited over Tovar and a lot of young guys.”
Speaking of young guys, there’s a YouTube video of Williams from 2002. He’s three years old in the clip, a happy tyke in a yellow shirt, wandering around joyfully in one shot, cradled by Gigi in another.
All grown up, Thomas spoke at the 25th annual Donor Dash this past Sunday. Oh, how his greatest gift fluttered.
“I was more nervous speaking (than pitching),” Thomas said. “The hard part is out of the way.”
And the best part?
The best part is yet to come.
To register for organ donation, or for more information on Donor Alliance, please visit https://www.donoralliance.org
Want more sports news? Sign up for the Sports Omelette to get all our analysis on Denver’s teams.
Want more Rockies news? Sign up for the Rockies Insider to get all our MLB analysis.