Summary: <p> I want to tell you a story that has a coda and a second coda. </p> <p> The context is college baseball. If college baseball is not your thing, if you have never followed college baseball, not to worry. The story, which I heard on ESPN Daily Podcast, is about life.</p> <p> There is a college in North Carolina called Wake Forest, which has a historically mediocre baseball team called the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. The team last won the College World Series 70 years ago.</p> <p> In 2010 a man named Tom Walter became the coach at Wake Forest. The lifeblood of college athletics is recruiting star high school athletes. In Columbus, Georgia there was a star outfielder named Kevin Jordan. In baseball parlance, Kevin Jordan was a 5-tool player. He could do everything that is required to shine on a baseball diamond: hit to get on base, hit for home runs, run, throw, and play superb defense. As a teenager Kevin Jordan was one of the most highly recruited high school baseball stars. He was drafted by the New York Yankees. He was courted by the most powerful and prestigious college baseball programs, which Wake Forest was not. And he was courted by Tom Walter, the new coach of Wake Forest. As Tom Walter would put it, calling Kevin Jordan was his first call.</p> <p> As college coaches in all sports do, Tom Walter paid a recruiting visit to the Jordan home, meeting this young star outfielder and his parents. Tom Walter promised the parents: if Kevin comes to Wake Forest, I will take care of your child. I will watch over him. Both Kevin Jordan, and his parents, believe Tom Walter. The family made the surprising, unexpected decision to say no to the New York Yankees; to say no to the college powerhouse programs; and to say yes to a mediocre college baseball program that had last won a College World Series in the 1950s. They did so based on their intuition that Tom Walter was a mensch.</p> <p> Roll the film forward. In Kevin Jordan’s senior year in high school, he started to lose weight. He could not eat. He could not hold anything down. He became slower, weaker. He went to lots of doctors, and they could not diagnose his problem. Meanwhile, his performance on the baseball diamond dropped precipitously.</p> <p> That fall he went to Wake Forest to begin his freshman year. He no longer looked or acted like the superstar athlete he once was. He was very sick. At last he was diagnosed with having a rare auto immune kidney disease. He was in kidney failure. He took 35 pills a day, and was on dialysis three times a week, just to be able to stay alive. The only way he would survive is if he were to get a kidney transplant.</p> <p> But there was a problem. There is far greater need for kidneys than availability of kidneys. If a person needs a kidney transplant, but does not have a kidney donor, they go on a list, which is very crowded with other people who also need kidneys. Kevin Jordan did not have time. If he did not get a kidney, he was not going to survive.</p> <p> All the members of his family were tested, but there was no match. Tom Walter stepped up and said: I’ll get tested. Long story short, Tom Walter was a match, and when he discovered that he was a match, he did not hesitate. He agreed immediately that he would donate one of his kidneys to Kevin Jordan.</p> <p><br></p>
