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Teixeira Honors a Cancer Patient
During his seven-plus years in the major leagues, Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira has visited numerous children’s cancer wards and spoken to hundreds of patients. But Teixeira said none of those experiences touched him as much as the encounter he had in February with 19-year-old Brian Ernst.
Teixeira met Ernst only once, at Children’s Hospital in Atlanta, and talked to him one other time on the phone. Ernst, a promising high school pitcher from Oakwood, Ga., who died March 16 of a rare form of cancer, so impressed Teixeira with his sense of humor in the face of a terminal illness that Teixeira wrote Ernst’s first name and jersey number, 5, on the inside of his cap, where it remains.
Teixeira also planned to fly Ernst’s parents; his older brother, Brett; and Brett’s girlfriend to New York for the Yankees’ home opener on Tuesday.
After an exhibition game in Sarasota, Fla., this spring, Teixeira turned his cap over to show what he had written on the inside: Faith, Brian, #5. Ernst idolized Teixeira from his days at Georgia Tech and had requested to meet him through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Ernst’s body was riddled with tumors, including one on the top of his head, by the time Teixeira met him. During their visit, Ernst, an inveterate practical joker, stunned Teixeira by asking him to autograph the tumor.
After checking with Ernst’s mother, Donna, to make sure it could not hurt him, Teixeira obliged.
“It probably traumatized Mark, but Brian was thrilled,” Donna Ernst said in a telephone interview. Steve Ernst, Brian’s father, said his son told Teixeira he would never wash his head.
“That was definitely a first, and probably a last,” Teixeira said. “The whole family was laughing. That was one of the reasons Brian made such an impact on me.”
Until his diagnosis of Ewing’s sarcoma in May 2008, Ernst was a strapping right-handed pitcher at West Hall High School. Manny Pontonio, West Hall’s coach last season, said he thought Ernst had the ability to play Division I baseball.
Ernst missed his senior season while undergoing aggressive treatment for his cancer, but last October, after his condition significantly improved, he was granted an extra year of high school eligibility.
But the cancer returned before Ernst played another game.
Teixeira lives in Connecticut in the off-season. Two weeks before he was to visit Ernst, a Make-A-Wish representative told Teixeira that Ernst’s condition had worsened.
“They asked if I could give him a call and I said, of course, just in case anything happened before the visit,” Teixeira said. They spoke for about 20 minutes, about baseball and Georgia Tech.
“That was me 11 years ago, hoping to go to college and play baseball,” Teixeira, 30, said. “Brian got a tough break. After we talked, I said, ‘Hang in there, and I’ll see you in two weeks.’ ”
When Teixeira did arrive at Ernst’s house, a shaken Make-A-Wish representative met him and said Ernst might be too ill to see him.
“I was terrified, really,” Teixeira said, fearing that Ernst was about to die.
Instead, Ernst sat up in bed, put on a Teixeira jersey and spent two hours with his idol. “That was one of the happiest days of that boy’s life,” Steve Ernst said.
When the family first contacted Make-A-Wish last summer, Brian Ernst hoped to play catch with Teixeira at Yankee Stadium. That never happened, which is why Teixeira decided to bring the family to the home opener.
After the game, he plans to give them his hat, with the inscription.
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