On the sidelines with dan sousa
By Dan Sousa
LoudounPrepSports.com Editor
Leesburg (May 2, 2007) – Park View High School senior Matt Griffin
finds inspiration from above when he takes the mound for the Patriots.
You can actually see it as Griffin always looks at the inside of his
cap before he pitches.
Inside the cap are the initials of his grandfather who passed away
in 2001 and the initials of a 4-year-old cousin, who tragically died in
2002. A week ago, Griffin added a “VT” to his cap in honor of those who
lost their lives in the Virginia Tech campus shootings. That event had
hit close to home for Griffin as his older brother attends Tech.
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A week ago Griffin was able to work almost nine innings of shutout
baseball against Loudoun County and then he had the game-winning hit in
the 11th inning of the 1-0 victory that put the Patriots into first
place in the AA Dulles District baseball race.
The team celebrated by giving Griffin the game ball. Unfortunately
for Matt and the Griffin family, the happy times were quickly clouded
as a close uncle of Matt’s passed away and the family made the long
trip to Lake Ronkonkoma on Long Island in New York for the wake and
funeral.
An emotional Griffin took his game ball with him and on Monday he
laid it in his uncle’s casket. Ginger Griffin, Matt’s mother, says her
son was very close to his uncle and that by Monday evening he was
literally sick to his stomach.
Griffin also had another emotion churning inside him. His baseball
team was back in Virginia preparing for yet another big game, this time
at Heritage High School on Tuesday.
His aunt had no doubt that her husband would have wanted Matt to get
back and play. In fact, she told him that Al would be watching Matt
right alongside his grandpa and that it was important for him to go
home and pitch.
The rest of the family was not prepared to return yet so Matt begged
his 23-year-old sister Kim to drive him back to Sterling in time for
school Tuesday morning.
So Matt and his sister loaded up at 10 p.m. Monday night and headed
out from Lake Ronkonkoma to make the long trip home. At 4 a.m. Tuesday
morning they arrived back in Loudoun and a bleary-eyed Matt was on time
for school and good to play.
Ginger and her husband Bob wondered “how in the heck he was going to
pitch after the day he had”. Matt had the support and backing of his
teammates, however, who did the best to cheer him up and be there for
him. True teammates are there for you, on and off the field.
By Tuesday evening, Griffin was ready to take the mound against the
Pride and this time he had added a new set of initials to his cap, “AP”
for his uncle.
Bob and Ginger, who never miss one of Matt’s games, were actually on
the Verrazano Bridge when the first pitch was thrown Tuesday. Kim
called her parents and gave them an inning-by-inning account so they
could keep up with Matt and his Park View teammates as they drove back
from New York.
It is a lot to ask of a young man to go through what Matt went
through and then go out and perform up to his ability in a high school
sporting event. How did he handle it?
Like always, Griffin let the inspiration from above guide him and it
carried him through as he hurled six shutout innings and he added what
appeared to be merely an insurance run with an RBI hit in the bottom of
the sixth inning, but it turned out to be the game-winning run when
Heritage score twice in the top of the seventh before falling 3-2.
There may come a time 30 or 40 years from now when Matt Griffin
won’t be able to recall the details of all the wins and losses while
playing high school baseball. What we tend to remember most are the
relationships and part of being on a team. Griffin will no doubt
remember how his teammates were there for him in tough times and when
he looks at his old ball cap with those initials under the bill, he
will recall that he pitched with inspiration from above.
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