PEOPLE Reporter Plays Catch with a Grieving Dad: 'I Was Crying Before We Even Started'
Courtesy Dan Bryan People Staff Writer Jeff Truesdell, at left, with Dan Bryan
The reporter is not supposed to be the story.
But as I reported on Dan Bryan, a Missouri dad working through the shattering loss of his son Ethan, a 16-year-old high school baseball player, by playing a game of catch with a different person every day for a year, my need was clear: I had to know how it felt to be on the receiving end of his throw.
"I would love to have a catch with you sir!" Dan, 46, replied in an email.
By then we'd already spoken on the phone for an emotional 90 minutes. Dan choked up. I choked up. But I didn't then uncork the personal well of emotions that steered me to share his story and its inspirational theme about the healing power of human connection.
Ethan, a sophomore on the varsity team at West County High School in Park Hills, an hour south of my St. Louis home, had been driving home from baseball practice on Sept. 16, 2020, when he swerved to avoid another vehicle and ran head-on into a pickup truck. He died at the scene. Somehow — he doesn't recall — a devastated Dan was given his son's baseball gear from the wreck, including Ethan's ball and glove.
About an hour before the crash, after his workday as a city administrator, Dan had caught up to the last part of that practice. His final memory entailed watching Ethan clobber a ball that bounced over the right field fence, driving in two runs to end the scrimmage. Returning to home plate to retrieve his bat, Ethan had looked up to greet his dad from a distance with a smile and a big wave.
"He'd never done that before," Dan told me. "That showed me he was having an absolute blast. He was just enjoying life."
Courtesy Dan Bryan Dan Bryan with his son, Ethan, in 2019
Dan began his year-long catch ritual — both to honor Ethan and keep his memory close — after being given a book titled A Year of Playing Catch, by an author named, uncannily, Ethan D. Bryan. The book described the author's whimsical account, prodded by his teenage daughters, of tossing a baseball with a different person 365 days in a row. And it inspired Dan, who'd helped to coach Ethan from the age of 5, to apply the author's lessons to his own journey.
"Tossing this ball is going to be my vehicle to open up and talk about Ethan," Dan recalls thinking. "I have comfort in baseball, I have comfort in playing catch, and it allows me to bring those positive memories back of Ethan. That's what's going to make me heal."
Since Jan. 1, 2022, Dan has used his son's ball and glove to play catch with more than 230 people to date, chronicling his catches on his Facebook page and in selfies with his catch partners. He christened the project Baseball Seams to Heal, attracting people from as far away as California, Florida, Texas and Israel — even entire teams — to reach out and join him.
From its start as a vehicle to find others who shared a link to his son, Dan soon discovered that he was cultivating a community of people who, like him, saw a way to bond while on their own paths toward healing. He now sometimes schedules two or more catches a day, as people gobble up the invitations he posts online. And while inclement weather sometimes pushes the catches into a church hall or gym, most people want to play on the high school field where Ethan excelled.
Paul Nordmann Dan Bryan with his son Ethan's glove and baseball that he uses in his games of catch
Dan shared with me the date when he'd be catching there with two other men, one after the other. Over the pop of the ball hitting glove-leather, as each man and Dan talked about the common ground that brought them together, I sat back and listened.
"In the Jewish tradition, memory and connecting to the past, and holding on to the legacy of those who came before us, is so important," said the first, Len Pader, 39, whose mother died unexpectedly around the same time as Ethan. Pader was visiting his wife's family in Missouri from his home in Israel, and booked a catch after reading about Dan online. He walked away elevated by "a moment of joy, not sadness," he said. "The way he's so connected to Ethan through baseball is a very beautiful thing."
The second man had a closer tie: Mike Newhouse's daughter Katlynn, 17, and Ethan were classmates. She was killed April 2, 2022, also in a car crash. Newhouse, 47, didn't want to intrude on Dan's grief. But when Dan extended the offer for a catch, Newhouse was grateful to have it, and the tears that at first rolled down his cheek gave way to a smile as he recalled for Dan his daughter's silliness and giggles on TikTok.
"I hope I didn't share too much about my side, it was supposed to be about you," Newhouse apologized afterward, offering Dan a humble and reserved thank you. "It actually was a lot easier to talk than I thought while throwing that ball."
Watching their exchange, I felt my emotions take over as my catch with Dan came next. I began to cry before we even started.
Trembling and looking down, I surprised myself by telling him, "I guess it's my turn to share."
Courtesy Jeff Truesdell People writer Jeff Truesdell, left, with his husband Nelson Figueroa in 2011
Nine weeks earlier I'd found my husband and partner of 34 years, Nelson Figueroa, dead from a heart attack in our home, I said. We also loved baseball. I took Nelson to see Field of Dreams. He bought me a DVD of Bull Durham. We had a trip planned to see the Triple-A affiliate of our beloved St. Louis Cardinals play in Memphis, and on the very day Nelson died we booked still another baseball road trip. I talked about Nelson's warmth, his remarkable past as a Cuban émigreé, his incredible character, and his eagerness to move with me from Florida to Missouri so together we could care for my aging parents, including my dad who'd tried out for a major league team as a much younger man.
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"Everyone has a baseball memory," Dan had told me.
I told him: "Baseball is something that's really meaningful to the two of us as well. So hearing you talk, hearing you play catch with these individuals, hearing the stories of how this simple gesture connects people with you, with your son, with your journey, with the others who are looking to share parts of their journeys, is just really meaningful to me in a very profound and sort of spiritual way."
Dan handed me the extra glove he always carries — I don't think I've thrown a ball since my Little League days — and we backed about 10 yards apart in the grass. Very quickly his gentle manner helped me to access my emotions differently. Because I already knew so much of his story by then, he listened for mine by simply opening the door for me to talk about Nelson and allowing me to walk right through.
Courtesy Jeff Truesdell Nelson Figueroa, left, with Jeff Truesdell in 2009
In the game of catch, the back-and-forth rhythm of the toss takes you out of your head. You have to be in the moment and aware of the ball, providing a focus that simultaneously clears away the filters on whatever else you're trying to hold back. The words just tumble out.
"There's been a lot of catches that I've had where my partner will say, 'I didn't plan on saying this, but ...' And then they'll go on to tell their story," says Dan. "A lot of times, I don't think they come with the courage to share. But somewhere along that toss, they find it within them, the need, desire, whatever it is, just to open up."
I have discovered what Dan already knows. Well-intentioned people don't know what to say. They've shared their sympathies, but after that? How many times can they say it? They fear touching the nerve. They don't want to make you feel bad. So they avoid it. Then you start to check yourself and shut down, not wanting to be a burden, when all you really want to talk about is the person who's gone, because doing so transports you to the safe haven of memory where you can laugh and smile again.
Dan has found his way to that place, and created a way for so many others, me included, to get there.
"It's not about the catch," he says, "it's about the conversation. Sometimes people just need someone to listen, and I'm humbled it's me."
It may only have started with a catch. But Dan linked my loss with a comforting new baseball memory, one I'll not soon forget.
Nor will I forget Dan or Ethan Bryan.
