Story by Dave Dye of Fox Sports Detroit/foxsportsdetroit.com
(AP Photo)
Jason King lost his mother to cancer during his senior year of high school. Less than three years later, he tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, underwent Tommy John surgery and missed the 2010 season.
All the heartache, pain and misfortune only made King, a switch-hitting third baseman at Kansas State, more determined than ever to live out his dream of playing professional baseball.
In difficult times, King often thought back to his mother’s request in her dying days: “Don’t mourn my death, put a smile on your face and move forward.”
That message was posted on the refrigerator in the family’s home in Dublin, Ohio. Carrying out his mom’s motto is a big reason King will fulfill his dream later this week when he joins the Detroit Tigers’ minor-league system.
King, through it all, kept moving forward. He was selected in the fourth round by Detroit in the recent major league draft. He is expected to begin his pro career Friday with the Connecticut Tigers, a Single-A short-season affiliate.
“I’m proud as hell of him for staring adversity in the face and saying, ‘I’m going to win,’ ” said Jeff King, Jason’s father and a former baseball player at Ohio State from 1982-84.
Jason King, who turned 22 on Tuesday, chuckled as he reflected on the start of his pro career.
“I’ve been pretty much groomed for this from birth,” he said.
His dad put a batting cage in the basement of their home and taught his two sons to become switch-hitters from the first day they could swing a bat.
Meanwhile, King’s grandfather on his mother’s side was a former Ohio State football player. Frank Ellwood played quarterback for legendary coach Woody Hayes in the mid-1950s and later was an assistant on Hayes’ staff before becoming the head coach at Marshall.
“I had it coming at me from both sides my whole life,” Jason King said, laughing.
The family changed forever in July 2005, when Jason King’s mother, Susan, was diagnosed with colon cancer. She died Nov. 7, 2006.
Her 16-month battle with cancer was difficult to watch, but it did give the family time to prepare. And Susan prepared her kids to excel when she was gone.
“She was giving them very positive forward-looking visions,” said her husband.
The gist of her messages: “You’re capable of achieving greatness in whatever you put your mind to. Don’t let my loss affect your ability to achieve greatness.”
“Whenever it was tough,” Jeff King said, “we always refocused on what she told them from that perspective. I told them, ‘She’s always going to be watching, so you better keep doing what she taught you to do.’ ”
Jason King, who chose not to sign after being selected in the 48th round by St. Louis as a high school senior in 2007, has a reputation for being intense and driven — so intense and driven that his greatest assets would become negatives and work against him.
His mother was the one who tried to pick him up when he was being too hard on himself.
“That’s something I’ve had to become better at as the competition has gotten better,” Jason said. “Dealing with failure, keeping things in perspective. Probably the thing college did for me the most was teach me how to do that.
“My mom always was the one who would keep me level-headed when I would push myself to the limit. I think she’d be really proud of me that I’ve learned how to do that myself and that I’m enjoying everything more.
“It stinks that she’s not here. That’s not how it’s supposed to be. I just wish she was here to be able to celebrate it (getting drafted) with me and the rest of my family.”
The first day of the early signing period for high school players in 2006 happened to fall on Nov. 8, one day after Susan King’s death. Jason King signed his letter-of-intent with Kansas State while in mourning.
“That’s usually a big celebration for most kids,” Jeff King said. “It was just an administrative task, at best, on that particular day for Jason.”
Jason King said he chose Kansas State over Ohio State and other schools because he wanted to play against stronger competition in the Big 12 to prepare himself to compete at a higher level.
He left the support system around him in Dublin and made the adjustment to living on his own.
“I just tried to think about if my mom was there what she would want me to do,” King said. “Once I started thinking about it like that, it was pretty easy.
“I was going to keep on pushing myself to keep getting good grades and keep having success on the field. That’s what she would have wanted me to do, not sit around and be sad.”
His first two years at K-State went well but more adversity struck in the summer of 2009 when he was playing catch before a game and “felt something pop” in his arm.
Most of the pain at first was in his forearm. King said he continued to play for about two weeks before he couldn’t even throw the ball 60 feet.
As it turned out, he had torn a muscle in his forearm. Once the pain and swelling from that injury started to subside, King realized he had damaged the elbow, too, and would undergo the ligament-replacement surgery, a rarity for a position player, in October 2009.
The rehabilitation program took nearly a year. There were times while doing exercises to try to regain the range of motion in his throwing arm that he questioned whether he would ever be the same player again.
But he continued to fight, something that comes natural for him, and he made it all the way back, just like many others following the same type of surgery.
Originally projected as possibly a sixth-, seventh- or eighth-round pick this year, King moved up after a strong finish to his comeback season. He went 10 for 16 (.625) in the Big 12 tournament and ended up with a .326 average with 10 home runs and 59 RBI in 61 games.
What’s more, he carried an amazing 3.96 grade-point average as a marketing major for his college career. King failed to earn an A in only two classes (both Bs). He plans to complete the final 12 credit hours required to graduate in the near future.
“It’s always been just as important to me,” King said of his academics. “My dad was an academic All-American in college. Ever since I was in elementary school, he was harping on me about grades. I made it a priority at an early age and just stuck to it.”
The Kings held a family reunion throughout the recent Kansas State baseball season. Jason’s younger brother, Jared, was a freshman on the team.
Their father, a retired partner in a venture capital firm, loaded up his mobile home and lived on the road while traveling all over to watch his two sons play ball.
Jeff King called it part of his “RV bucket list.”
For Jason, it was a special time together, culminated when the Tigers made him the 137th pick overall.
“It really makes all the hard work you put into it, feel like it’s worth it all at once,” King said. “After I blew out my arm, there were times, just like anyone, I thought, ‘Wow, I might never play again.’
“Just trying to get back on the field to getting picked in the fourth round, that’s pretty far apart. To go from being that low to this high, it’s been a roller coaster of emotions.”
What he did was continue to persevere, refusing to let adversity keep him from success.
It took him six starts, but Royals rookie Danny Duffy has his first major league win. The lefthander gave up two runs on four hits over six innings in front of over 100 family members and friends from his nearby hometown as the Royals beat Oakland 7-4 in the series opener.
