This is a Mother’s Day story. You’ll have to forgive the belated nature of the story, it’s just that—as has been the case with most things in Brandon Mann’s life—it came to fruition on its own schedule. Brandon Mann made it to the big leagues just a few days short of his 34th birthday, which is easily a decade later than many of his counterparts. This story, like Mann’s, is worth the wait.
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Brandon met his wife Sarah in December of 2014 after a season split between the Pirates AA team (the Altoona Curve) and the Lancaster Barnstormers, an Independent team in the Atlantic League, three hours southeast—and what must sometimes seem a million miles away—from affiliated ball, even AA ball.
Of course, independent baseball was nothing new for Mann. In Japan, he found himself on an independent team called the Shinano Grandserrows with former Texas Ranger Akinori Otsuka and journeyman Tomo Ohka. There, the three big leaguers—two former, one future—included raking the field among their responsibilities.
Brandon and Sarah had been dating for a couple of months when spring training began, and the 30-year-old saw pitchers and catchers report for all thirty teams, saw injuries, trades, roster cuts, and finally Opening Day come and go, all without a job offer. It was during that time of uncertainty, while working construction for his dad’s company, that Sarah finally, reluctantly, introduced Brandon to Judy.
“She was really guarded with her grandmother (at first),” Mann says. “She wanted to make sure I was the right guy before she introduced me to a lot of her family (…) Her grandmother is like her best friend, so she was guarding that.”
When they finally did meet, Mann says, he was sweating bullets. This was the grandmother that Sarah had told him so much about, had held off introducing him to. This was more than just a casual introduction. This was big.
To make things more complicated, Judy—originally from Seoul, South Korea—didn’t speak any English.
It soon came to light that Judy also spoke a little Japanese. Mann says he’s not fluent, but three years in Japan gave him a rudimentary lexicon, so they were able to trade a few elementary phrases to each other.
Not long after the lone meeting with Judy, Mann signed with the Fargo-Moorhead Redhawks in Fargo, North Dakota. More independent ball. He pitched in twenty-two games, all but one of them starts. 157 innings, and a few thousand more miles of bus rides and no pay. Then came the last game of the season.
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“Sarah calls me, just bawling, saying that her grandmother was in the hospital, that she had a heart attack. I was ready to leave right then,” Mann says. But Sarah told him to stay. It was already going to be a 1,426-mile drive, what’s another three hours? So he pitched. But before he did, he wrote “4 Judy” on his glove, took a photo and sent it to Sarah to show her grandmother.
Judy got a pacemaker. Brandon got a contract from the A’s.
“I was trying to get to my car; I had to drive from Fargo, North Dakota to Seattle with my sister (who had flown out to see the game). I was like ‘I need to get out of here and go. I just need to get there’, but I ended up talking to the Oakland scout for a good 30-45 minutes… that’s how I ended up with Oakland.”
After the conversation, Brandon and his sister Candace drove straight through. No stops. 1,426 miles.
That off-season, Judy recovered. Sarah is a nurse and was Judy’s primary caretaker, so Brandon says that offseason, they developed a strong relationship. “There were so many times I would go over there, and (Judy) would have my favorite Korean dish, Seolleongtang. She would make it for me, I’d sit down to start eating, and she would just stand over me smiling, watching me eat.”
Mann laughs as he relates some of Judy’s limited English vocabulary. “She would always say like ‘that’s a good boy!’ She didn’t speak much English, but she wanted to make sure I was eating well, healthy. She knew what I did for a living, and she was just so caring.”
Mann says that off-season, the three of them—Brandon, Sarah, and Judy—would attend a bilingual church where the pastor gives the sermon in English for one service and Korean for two additional services. Sometimes, Mann says, the pastor does both in the same service, serving as his own interpreter.
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Later that offseason, Brandon’s own grandmother, Elsie, also had a heart attack. Brandon was with Sarah at Pike Place market when that call came in, and that’s how Sarah met some of Brandon’s family. With both grandmothers on the mend, it was time for Brandon to report to the A’s.
As Brandon picked up on a little of the Korean language, he says, he would call Judy on the phone. “I would say ‘halmeoni, gwaenchanh-a?‘ which means ‘Grandmother, are you okay?’ and she would say “Yes, yes, I’m good, I’m good, I love you.'” “I love you too,” Mann would reply, and and then they would both say goodbye, the meaning of the call far exceeding the limitations of the languages.
These phone calls went on throughout 2016-17 as Mann worked his way through the Oakland system, still awaiting the call that would bring him to the big leagues. Through both seasons, Mann says, he continued using the “4 Judy” glove.
“When I would pitch, I would always look down at it. If I was ever nervous or getting overwhelmed on the mound, letting something get to me, I would just look at that, and it was a reminder, a calming thing.”
In the offseasons, he would go back to Seattle. Back to construction work. Back to Sarah, and Judy, and Seolleongtang.
In November of 2017, Brandon and Sarah were married in Cancún, Mexico. One thing they wanted to be certain of was that Judy and Elsie could attend.
Not only did they make it, they were the flower girls.
“Obviously, they couldn’t really communicate with each other,” Brandon says. “But they danced together… oh, man. They were so cute together.”
Another off-season, another team. Mann signed a minor-league deal with the Rangers. Sarah came to see Brandon when the Round Rock Express were in Colorado Springs in mid-April. While she was there, she got a phone call. Another heart attack. Judy was awake, able to talk to Sarah, but she was going to need open-heart surgery.
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Sarah flew back immediately.
“Sarah got to spend some time with her; we thought she was going to be okay.”
But open-heart surgery is risky. Judy’s mind was sharp until the end (“She loved doing her makeup, she loved doing her nails.” Mann says), but her heart—big as it was—proved too weak. She did not survive the operation.
Brandon flew back for the funeral. As they laid Judy to rest, Brandon placed the “4 Judy” glove in the casket with her.
In his next appearance for Round Rock, on May 10th, he gave up two runs, his first of the season. Three days later, Mann was in Houston. He was making his big-league debut, sixteen years after being drafted.
It was Mother’s Day.
“It just felt like, in some way, she was up there saying ‘Hey, God, let’s make this weekend the weekend,” says Mann.
The debut was a successful one; he says getting last year’s AL MVP José Altuve to swing and miss at his changeup was a moment he’ll never forget. A few days later, he was back in Seattle, where he grew up, where he met Sarah and Judy, pitching in Safeco Field. It was another scoreless outing.
“Even now when I pitch, I think of her,” he says. “I just tell myself, ‘She’s looking down on me.'”
After 16 years, Brandon Mann finally makes his @MLB debut with the @Rangers.pic.twitter.com/wL036v7neT
— FOX Sports Southwest (@FOXSportsSW) May 13, 2018
