CINCINNATI — There’s proof of a future major-leaguer all through Will Benson’s childhood room, a sports-adoring, adrenaline-thirsting teenager’s sanctuary that has remained untouched throughout his baseball journey.
There’s the bat bearing the signature of Hank Aaron, certainly one of baseball’s luminary sluggers, particularly to an Atlanta child with desires of powering baseballs into the outfield seats. The bat displaying his personal title, offered to him the night time he turned a 2016 first-round draft choose. His geometric portray of the MLB brand. The 2 staff footage from the Duke baseball program, which Will practically joined, with the maxims: “Belief your course of” and “Preparation has no offseason.”
Probably the most telling trace, although, that Will was destined for a big-league batter’s field is the busted violin that, for 20 years, has collected mud on the highest shelf.
Will’s father, Ted, wished Will to comply with within the footsteps of his older brother, Theodore Charles.
TC’s major passions have been violin and T-ball. However Will’s mom, Ramona, barged into Will’s room — TC’s outdated room — and caught her son swatting baseballs with the stringed instrument. The broken tailpiece signaled the tip of Will’s orchestral profession.
Now, at 25, he pummels fastballs with a burgundy Chandler maple bat.
Will’s big-league ambition, his insistence on aiding Atlanta youngsters and his drive to reward his dad and mom – and reimburse them for violin repairs – all hint again to a day 28 months earlier than he was born.
TC’s spirit has propelled Will all through his baseball journey, one which has taken him from the brink of early retirement to the entrance line of a pennant race with the Reds. TC reminds Will why the Bensons maintain onto household bonds with an unrelenting grip, particularly as Will blissfully stares on the cutout of his child boy’s face that dangles from the mirror in his Jeep.
Theodore Charles’ presence permeates each a part of Will’s life – regardless that they by no means met.
One spring morning in 2018, Will stood close to a again area on the Indians’ complicated in Arizona and cried, reflecting on a word he acquired from his mother just a few weeks earlier.
There aren’t 29 days in February however between as we speak and three/1 is the twenty second anniversary of your brother’s demise. Immediately you made the darkest date of the yr brighter. Love you to the moon and past. — Mother
That spring, a 19-year-old Will, sporting No. 66, pinch-hit in Cleveland’s remaining Cactus League tuneup. He smacked a two-run homer that clanged off the steel overhang over the right-field concourse.
His mother’s message, he stated, reminded him why he so desperately wished to thrive on the diamond.
That house run reminded him that he may.
Will satisfied himself he would attain the majors a yr after he was drafted, an adolescent with a gap-tooth smile who carried round a fortunate foxtail keychain, wreaking havoc on a league stuffed with grizzled pitchers with a decade’s value of big-league scars.
“Baseball,” says Will’s lifelong good friend and former Cleveland teammate, Xzavion Curry, “is not only a easy experience.”
That applies to a prospect with athleticism oozing from his 6-foot-5 body, with sufficient muscle to plan to stroll on to Coach Ok’s Duke basketball staff, with sufficient pace to swipe bases and canopy miles of outfield terrain and with sufficient energy to provide a four-homer recreation in A-ball. And, as Ramona is fast to remind him, with sufficient flexibility to finish an arabesque — he begrudgingly realized that from his mother and sister, each dancers — which helped when stretching to snag a fly ball or when contorting to corral a missed jumper.
On the finish of every minor-league season, his mother would meet him in no matter small city he spent the summer season. They packed up his belongings, shut off his utilities and trekked again to Atlanta.
However in 2019, Will most well-liked a solo journey house from Lynchburg, Va. His dad and mom waited for him on the entrance door, able to reward him for trudging via one other marathon.
As a substitute, Will instructed them he was finished with baseball. The child who each waking second of his childhood wanted a ball to rebound or swing at or kick, the child who took batting observe with a violin — he was prepared for one thing else.
“This defeated particular person was standing in entrance of us,” Ramona says.
He nonetheless liked the game. However after repeating A-ball and struggling via a rotten second half, he simply didn’t suppose he was succesful.
They countered with encouraging statistics and home-run highlights. They requested him to keep it up for another yr. The next summer season, when the pandemic worn out the minor-league season, Will limped via two months within the Constellation Power League, a four-team outfit tossed collectively in Sugar Land, Texas.
He took longer than he most well-liked to regulate to every new stage. He was handed over within the Rule 5 Draft. He grappled with the aim of all of it.
However final summer season, as he fetched Taco Bell for his then-girlfriend, he acquired a name informing him the Guardians have been selling him to the majors.
“It’s a beacon of hope for folks with related tales,” Will says, “folks with related backgrounds.”
In his first full major-league season, Benson hit .268/ .359/ .498 for a 127 OPS+ and stole 15 bases. (Dylan Buell / Getty Photographs)
On Feb. 29, 1996, Ramona acquired a name at work to hurry to the kids’s hospital.
Amid the chaos of afternoon dismissal, with kids spilling out of Fickett Elementary College, her 5-year-old had been run over by his faculty bus. By the point Ramona arrived, TC had died.
5 days later, they held his funeral service at Wheat Avenue Baptist Church. A gathering necessitated by an inconceivably devastating, paralyzing tragedy carried an uplifting tenor.
“Life is a present that isn’t promised,” Ramona says. “We by no means know the way lengthy we’re going to have, so you need to recognize each second because it happens. When one thing occurs that I can’t change, I’ve to right away discover a approach to get via it and settle for it. I used to be so immensely grateful for the truth that if TC needed to die that day, he died figuring out that he was liked each single day. Who has that? I had not had an opportunity to disappoint him, as a result of he was solely 5 1/2. I had not had an opportunity to destroy his picture of how great the world is, as a result of dad and mom try this. We talked concerning the issues that we have been grateful for and we celebrated the great issues in his life.
“All people grieves in a different way and that’s how we obtained via it’s that we accepted that from everyone. Do what you need to do to get via this.”
Ramona described the lack of their son as a twister merging with a hurricane, their world overrun by howling winds and static rainfall. They deserted their bid to buy a brand new house. They delayed their plans to have a 3rd youngster, “a tiebreaker” who would tilt the benefit within the Benson family, since Ramona and Heather discovered themselves on the alternative facet of Ted and TC in each debate.
“It actually derailed a lot,” Ramona says.
Ramona preserved a reminiscence field for every of her three kids. Every field accommodates the onesie they wore house from the hospital, their favourite childhood e-book and different keepsakes. When Will’s sister, Heather, had a child lady, Ramona bequeathed Heather’s field to her daughter. Will’s field included “Charlotte’s Net,” which he used to name “The Spider and the Bugs,” and a duplicate of “Pocahontas.” When Will welcomed his son, Ramona handed alongside Will’s reminiscence field.
“The factor that’s so hurtful for me is that there’ll by no means be anyone to present TC’s field to,” Ramona says.
She has lastly reached a degree through which the exact variety of years, months, days, hours and minutes since her son handed now not flash always in her head. She isn’t certain if her thoughts is slipping with age, or if it’s as a result of she has two kids and two grandchildren to maintain her occupied.
On March 1, 2023, a non-Leap 12 months, with no actual anniversary of TC’s passing, Will and his fiancée, Lindsey, welcomed their first youngster.
“Household was there when there was nothing however you in a diaper,” Will says. “That’s what I’m seeing being a father. Any person had to do this for me. They made the sacrifice for me to be the place I’m as we speak.”
Because the day he was drafted in 2016, Will has mentioned partnering along with his good friend Curry and different Atlanta-rooted big-leaguers to create a baseball Mecca in Fulton County, with an array of diamonds surrounding one, essential area, a haven welcoming anybody with a ardour for the game.“Why else are we doing this?” Will says. “Clearly, sure, to supply for our households. But in addition, to present one other child a possibility similar to I had, to make it extra accessible, utilizing the leverage and platform that I’ve.
“You’re going to see me and know that what I’ve is actual and it’s attainable. I can set that instance.”
Will and Curry had been inseparable since they performed as Little Leaguers for the Sandtown Pink Sox. They even started their climb via skilled baseball collectively. Final February, as they completed the identical weightlifting routine on the Guardians’ complicated in Goodyear, Will observed he had a missed name from staff president Chris Antonetti. He knew what that meant.
Right here he was, three weeks from turning into a father, his private life headed for a metamorphosis. And now his work life was about to be flipped the wrong way up, too.
4 months earlier, he was finishing a gender reveal at Progressive Area, exploding a baseball to unfold blue mud throughout the infield grime. He was a wide-eyed rookie contributing a small function in pushing the Guardians to an AL Central title.
As the brand new season approached, Will was fixated on proving himself, carving out a daily function and rewarding the Guardians for his or her seven-figure funding and their endurance.
In order he retrieved his telephone to attach along with his boss, he instructed Curry — the 2 have been known as as much as Cleveland inside two weeks of one another in 2022 — he was going to refuse to be traded.
“Look, I do know what this name is for,” Will stated to his good friend, “and also you higher be coming with me or I ain’t going.”
Will had no precise say on the matter, after all. Antonetti instructed him he was being dealt to Cincinnati. For spring coaching, Will was solely relocating a half-mile away on S. Wooden Boulevard. He may wave to his outdated teammates every morning as he drove to the Reds’ facility.
“I don’t care what anyone says, there’s nonetheless a boy in there who doesn’t like rejection,” says Ramona, who had crocheted onesies with the Cleveland brand in anticipation of her grandson’s arrival.
“That complete time interval was very testing,” Will admits.
Will Benson celebrated Father’s Day along with his dad, Ted (left), and his son, Theo. (Courtesy of the Benson household)
Earlier than Will’s first major-league house run whizzed previous the right-field fence at Nice American Ball Park, Ted was high-fiving his spouse.
Ramona was fixated on the TV, which lagged a minute behind Ted’s MLB Gameday app. He’s too impatient to attend for the outcomes to unfold on the printed, in order his spouse sat on the sofa, anxiousness swallowing her complete, he couldn’t comprise himself.
After Will related with Evan Phillips’ fastball, he turned to the Reds’ dugout, shouted and slammed his bat to the bottom. He initiated his trot across the bases, figuring out his teammates could be ready at house plate to toast to his walk-off blast.
The earlier half-inning, between pitches, Will began mapping out the sequence within the outfield. He knew he was due up second. He knew the Dodgers would flip to their high righty reliever. After which, increase, a signature second to punctuate one other victory for a staff asserting its arrival within the NL Central.
Each recreation, Ramona fields texts from highschool associates and from her Westminster Wildcat mother group. The group thread for Will’s Oldest Fan Membership, a set of his aunts and uncles, by no means relents. She hears from dad and mom of native Georgia gamers who seek the advice of the Bensons for recommendation on the scouting and drafting course of and on methods to navigate the skilled ranks. When the Reds confronted the Cardinals earlier this month, Ramona exchanged messages with Jordan Walker’s father, Derek.
Anytime Will hits one into the seats, Ramona’s brother sends the correct variety of flexed bicep emoji to replicate his house run whole.
Will’s emergence began final summer season, when a dialog with longtime big-leaguer John McDonald spurred him to check video of Barry Bonds and Mike Trout. Will marveled at how they resisted chasing pitches, and the way that made the pitcher sweat. He trimmed his strikeout price at Triple A and, this yr, he has compiled elite chase and stroll charges. When he does join, he inflicts harm. His .857 OPS ranks second on the Reds and fourth within the league amongst rookies with at the least 300 plate appearances.
“Doing what I at all times knew I may is clearly superior,” he says. “However the work will not be finished. I gained’t search for till I’m finished taking part in.”
That’s as a result of he is aware of how shortly a profession can evaporate. He was booted to the minors in April and each cell in his physique instructed him to sulk and stress concerning the unlit street again to the large leagues. He referred to it as essentially the most tough juncture in his profession, an actual “second of tribulation.”
After which he thought of his new child. What kind of message would that relay? May he share the saga of his profession with out feeling ashamed?
“I couldn’t inform my son that I gave up,” he says. “I can’t inform my son to maintain going when my life work doesn’t replicate that. I wished to present him an instance and that is essentially the most pure instance you can provide.”
Stated his supervisor, David Bell: “It was unbelievable. It was very actual. I felt like proper then, he was going to get again and he was going to be higher when he obtained again.”
Because the Reds try to seize a Wild Card berth, Will’s dad and mom can be watching – Ted in real-time and Ramona on a minute delay.
They traveled to Cincinnati for the weekend collection in opposition to the Pirates. They caught a Reds collection in particular person in Atlanta in April. The household additionally gathered for Father’s Day in Houston, the place three generations of Benson boys lastly united.
There was Ted, the reserved, 6-foot-9 former Purdue middle and the topic of Ramona’s e-book, How you can Babysit a Grandpa.
There was Will, the big-leaguer working to unravel, concurrently, life within the majors and life as a father.
And there was his child boy, Theo.
(Prime picture: John Bradford / The Athletic; Picture: Rob Tringali / Getty Photographs)
