TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – It was a home run long in the making for Preston Ritchie.
“I had three times this year I hit the top of the fence,” laughed the rising senior at Chiles High School.
It wasn’t just any home run, the hit was a walk-off grand slam for the first long ball of his high school career.
“I was like oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” said EN Bass, Ritchie’s teammate on 5 Star National Tallahassee, their travel ball team. “All the crowd and all the parents – they’re like P!”
“As a coach, you don’t see those kind of scenarios,” said head coach Cyle Figueroa. “It was something written out of a book.”
Because baseball is poetic like that, and for Preston and the Ritchie family, you couldn’t have scripted that moment any better.
“She is the foundation of our family,” said dad Jason about wife Kim. “For her to go through this just isn’t right. It doesn’t feel right.”
Kim Ritchie receives chemo as part of her treatment for breast cancer.(Alison Posey/WCTV)
Last fall, Preston’s mom Kim found a lump in her breast.
“I had just had a clear mammogram in March.”
The diagnosis? Stage two breast cancer.
“Never thought it was going to be this close,” said Preston. “Never thought it would hit somebody this close to you. She told us she was going to fight as hard as she can and get through it. That’s who she is.”
“Preston actually was the one that said maybe this is God’s way of telling us we need to slow down and appreciate life a little bit more, and I thought that was an amazing way to look at it,” added Kim.
She found out pretty quick, she wasn’t fighting alone.
“We just really wanted to do something just to make her smile for one more day,” said Figueroa.
5 Star National Tallahassee dropped the Mafia Boys moniker, opting for Kim Boys instead.
Kim Ritchie is battling breast cancer.(Alison Posey/WCTV)
“They marked up these hats with the breast cancer awareness sign too,” said Figueroa. “I saw the jerseys, and I had to show Jason.”
“He was like are you okay with this?” recalled Jason. “Immediately, you can see me, I’m a basket case, I lose it.”
“Any way to show support to Mrs. Kim,” said Bass. “She’s almost like a second mom to me. I’ve known her since I was seven years old. Yeah, it was really a no-brainer.”
So the Kim Boys played their first tournament in their pink jerseys.
“She texted me before the game, hopefully the jerseys are lucky,” said Preston.
There was power in pink. Preston was 3-3 on the day before that final hit, the grand slam that walked off the win for the Kim Boys.
“It was a crazy, magical moment you don’t see that just don’t see a lot, especially with magnitude of what was going on, and what we were wearing, and what we were trying to represent,” said Figueroa.
“Once everything calmed down, it was like wait a minute. 4-4, grand slam, pink jersey, everything starts hitting you,” said Jason.
“It touched me very much, when I got on the phone with her about it, it was even more emotional,” added Preston.
Kim Ritchie was diagnosed with breast cancer this fall.(Alison Posey/WCTV)
Because baseball is a little like life, even in a slump, there’s always brighter days ahead.
“It definitely does make you slow down and appreciate things a little more,” said Kim.
“It’s the little things,” agreed Jason. “It’s things you took for granted before that you don’t know will be there forever, for sure.”
“Like special baseball moments.”
Like a grand slam, in a pink jersey, designed with love for mom.
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