“That’s always a tough situation anyway, but then I found out he had a wife in California and she was coming here, too, which I hadn’t counted on.” “My first year as a host, I had a kid who was dropping down from the major leagues and wanted to try and restart his career here,” Walker recalls. He hadn’t yet met Vicki, who was then living in Lexington, and learned the hard way that there can be as much heartache in baseball as there is joy. Walker is a small business owner who started hosting Florence players after reading an ad in a local newspaper. He’ll turn 30 during the season and is at peace with a career that never took him to The Show. He’s now one of what he calls “the old guys” on the Y’alls, saying he came back for one more season simply because he loves baseball and wants to win a Frontier League championship. He was “that kid” in high school-starting quarterback on the football team and point guard on the basketball team after, at age 12, pitching in the Little League World Series. “I’m really in it for the kids.” Jordan Brower returned for one more independent league season, thanks to support from Vicki and Scott Walker.īrower is, purely and simply, an athlete with a winning smile and an easygoing manner. I would say I’m not a baseball fan,” Scott Walker admits, as Jordan Brower breaks into a knowing grin across the table and shakes his head. He’s going to make a great father one day.
She’s just offered him a carefully crafted masterpiece from her coloring book, and he stops in the middle of an answer to my question to look down at her and say “pretty” to the beaming upturned face. “I love him,” she says softly as she snuggles in Craport’s lap and buries her face in his shoulder. At 24, he’s had a taste of minor league ball and hopes to catch the attention of Major League Baseball scouts who frequently attend independent league games.įor now, though, he has his own room in the Wise family’s Alexandria home, which comes with 4-year-old Lila. Wise’s “boy” this year, as he was the last full season the Frontier League played ball, in 2019, is Trevor Craport, a talented young player who sometimes mans the hot corner at third, sometimes patrols the outfield, and sometimes dons the chest protector and mask for a turn behind the plate. “They are our boys.” She coordinates with team management and her host families to assign players to local homes, fill in gaps when players are released, and mediate any issues that arise. “They become members of our family,” says Micha Wise, the team’s host family coordinator. The Walkers are just one of more than a dozen Northern Kentucky families who, every spring and through the summer, open their homes to players with the Florence Y’alls, an independent professional baseball team previously known as the Florence Freedom. But, she says wistfully, she didn’t really know what she was missing until she met Scott and their “baseball son,” Jordan Brower. Vicki’s children are grown now and running base paths on their own. Her story isn’t unique, but to Vicki and every other mother and father with similar memories it’s a special chapter in the book of parenthood. “It was so much fun,” she recalls, sitting with her husband, Scott, in their Ft.
Stuff them in the back seat and barrel to the ballpark, where she couldn’t wait to see them on the field with joy on their faces. Make sure the boys have all their equipment. In summers gone by, Vicki Walker had a weekend routine she loved. Trevor Craport with the Wise family: (from left) Scott, Micha, and Lila
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