In the June 2002 MLB first-year draft, like every year, there is much hype surrounding top prospects and picks. But there is more to every such story than the player himself.

  Their tireless support is behind the major league dreams of Jeff Francis and Adam Loewen

Gary Mason, Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, June 05, 2002

When the moment arrived, when their son walked into the news conference and the cameras whirred and applause broke out, and he was hugged by teammates and coaches and friends who had shown up to congratulate him, Mike and Joanne Francis stood off to the side wiping away tears.

Their little boy had come a long way.

"Could you ever imagine this day happening?" someone asked Joanne, mother of Jeff, the ninth over-all pick by the Colorado Rockies in Tuesday's Major League Baseball draft.

"Well," she beamed, looking over at her son. "To be honest with you, yes. When he was five and six and started playing baseball he was great right away, even in T-ball. He lived and breathed baseball."

"When he was two," Mike broke in, eager to add his two cents. "Jeff used to carry around a baseball glove all the time and would say he was going to practise. There was something about the game from an early age."

"When he was little," Joanne recalled, smiling at the thought. "Jeff wrote a composition at school, we just found it the other day, and he wrote that when he grew up he was going to be a major league baseball player and make $20 million a year just like Will Clark."

She laughed.

"Can you imagine? Twenty million?"

Well, actually yes.

Funny thing about Tuesday. As thrilled as I was for Jeff Francis and Adam Loewen, who together made Canadian baseball history by being taken in the Top 10 of the Major League Baseball Draft, I was happier for their parents.

Let's face it. Both these kids will have lots more days in the spotlight.

There are hundreds of afternoons in their future that include cameras and tape recorders and reporters hanging on their every word.

But not for the parents.

The parents sit through T-ball and pitching machine and those interminably long summers when kids are learning to pitch and the games go on forever, not because their boy is going to be professional baseball player one day but because he dreams of being one. And if that boy didn't have parents who raced home from work to get him to the park, parents who dug in their pockets for tournaments and new equipment and fund raisers when they needed new tires and furniture and clothes, there'd be no dream to chase.

You look at the beaming faces of Joanne and Mike Francis and Anne and Al Loewen today and you probably think: how lucky can you get? But what you don't see are all the lonely days and lonely nights that were put in before Tuesday. When their child walked out to the mound and their stomachs burned and they said another silent prayer that things would go okay. Or the quiet conversations that followed those games when things didn't.

So when it all comes together, and their child's name is called out and it appears that the one thing he's been dreaming about his entire life might finally come true, the parents should share in some of the applause, don't you think?

"We just started crying when we heard Jeff's name," said Joanne Francis, when asked how the couple reacted to hearing that their son had been taken by Colorado. "We hugged a lot and cried a lot. The whole thing has been so exciting and nerve-racking at the same time. See this cold-sore right there? That's from stress."

"Have you thought about the millions your son stands to make now?" a reporter asked Joanne and Mike.

They laughed.

"I don't think it will change Boomer," said Joanne, referring to the nickname her son has had most of his life.

"We never really thought about the money," said Mike. "We're just happy Jeff is going to be a professional baseball player. He'd play for nothing."

Then he paused.

"But don't tell the Colorado Rockies that."

A little later, reporters wandered from the Georgian Court Hotel, where Jeff Francis and his family held their news conference, over to the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame, where Adam Loewen and his family were holding theirs. Like the Francis's, the Loewens had greeted the news earlier in the day with lots of tears and plenty of hugs.

"It's felt like I've had a big secret that I haven't been able to tell anybody about," Anne Loewen said about the history-making day for her son. "You hear from baseball people and others about how well he's doing and where he might go but you can't really share that with anybody because it sounds like you're bragging."

She talked about the new life her son is about to embark on. The one away from home.

"When you're talking about an 18-year-old that's a scary thing for any parent," she acknowledged.

But Adam handled the enormous pressure of the past year so well that his mother is now convinced he can handle whatever is in front of him.

"It makes it a whole lot easier to release him," she said.

Al Loewen, a soft-spoken, athletic-looking physical education teacher, stood beside his wife holding her hand.

"It's not easy becoming a major league baseball player," he said. "We're going to have to show patience and perseverance and follow him around and just be there for him because it won't be easy. The hard part really begins now."

They talked about how crazy the past few months have been. The phone calls from scouts and agents and reporters and how, being a quiet, Christian family, it was a little hard to take at times. But they wouldn't have traded the experience for anything, they both said.

Al and Anne looked over at their son, surrounded by reporters and television lights. Then they looked at one another and squeezed each other's hand.

"This is a day we'll remember the rest of our lives," said Anne. "And I'm sure the Francis's will too. We feel very, very lucky."

Their kids should too.


Copyright 2002 Vancouver Sun, reprinted with permission of the author.