Every baseball player relishes that celebratory jaunt around the bases, making his or her way into the arms of over-the-top excited teammates. In early May, 18-year-old Dylan Cunningham experienced that for the first time. The West Virginia teen who has Down syndrome belted an inside-the-park home run.
Cunningham doesn’t normally suit up for the baseball team at Robert C. Byrd High School, but when head coach Mark Jones invited him to be the honorary bat boy, he couldn’t dress fast enough.
Little did Cunningham or his mother, Christy McClain, know that he would actually be stepping into the batter’s box for a chance to help his team.
“I cannot say enough good things about RCB. Mark Jones i hope you know you just made this boys day month and year.” McClain wrote in a Facebook post. “You and your whole baseball team are such amazing people. Thank you so much for letting Dylan bat today.”
Without further ado, here’s Cunningham’s hit against Lewis County, a standup team that let the ball go by and cheered for his memorable moment.
“If anyone from Lewis County is seeing this, thank you for playing along and letting Dylan play with you guys!! It was such a nice thing you did for my son!” McClain wrote.
Photo Courtesy: Christy McClain
Jones inserted Cunningham into the lineup at the end of the game, a move that had been in the works since last season, according to WDTV.
“It didn’t matter if you were a Byrd fan, a Lewis County fan, it didn’t matter,” Jones said. “We were all Dylan fans at that moment.
“Being able to do what we did the other day with Dylan was more important than any win, any loss, because everybody wins in that situation,” Jones added.
Who can argue with that home run of a move by the coach?
