MINNEAPOLIS — When his personal life put his dream job on hold in March 2023, Derek Shomon improvised the only way he knew how.
By day, Shomon listened as doctors presented him and his wife, Keriann, with a possible diagnosis for why their newborn son’s organs were failing. By night, Shomon, the Minnesota Twins’ new assistant hitting coach, tried to diagnose the swings of Twins hitters.
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Instead of spending the spring at his first major-league camp in sunny Southwest Florida, Shomon tended to his infant son Micah 1,300 miles away in the neonatal intensive care unit at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago.
In between attempts to bond with his son, Shomon watched livestreams of Twins spring training games. He’d begin to work through a player’s swing mechanics while standing next to his son’s bassinet. To the Twins’ dismay, Shomon even texted players and coaches to see how they felt or what they were working on.
His family was his priority but his team was never far from his mind, so he tried to be in two places at the same time. He needed to be there for his family, a safe haven in his personal life after a troubled adolescence, but Shomon also wanted to be there for an organization that had offered him an opportunity he never expected to receive.
The distraction didn’t hurt, either.
“What timing,” Keriann Shomon said with a laugh. “I don’t think Derek knows how to not worry about baseball, in a good way. It’s his escape and I think it keeps him level-headed and keeps him as calm as you can be in that situation. Your son is born and he’s sick and you’re also supposed to be in your first year of Major League Baseball. He’s got to have felt so torn. How do I tell the Twins who just promoted me, ‘Hey, I can’t be there’? And how do I tell Keriann, ‘I’ve got to go in 25 days and can’t be here.’”
With the baby on the way, Derek Shomon returned home to Illinois on March 3, 2023, during the heart of the exhibition season. He expected to be in the Land of Lincoln only a few days before heading back to camp. He had no idea what awaited him.
Rather than returning to build rapport with new teammates after the birth of the couple’s first child, Shomon spent the next three and a half weeks working with Keriann to comfort Micah, who was born close to full term yet suffered right-side brain damage that still affects his left-side motor skills.
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“The best way to explain it was (Micah) needed to get out, but wasn’t ready to support himself,” Shomon said.
Every day, Shomon and his wife made the 180-minute, round-trip trek from their home in Elgin, Ill., in the far west suburbs of Chicago, to the hospital, where they’d sit with their son as doctors tried to determine why several of his organs were failing. Each day brought new concerns.
Back in camp, Twins players and coaches cautiously awaited the frequent updates Shomon provided. People throughout the organization showered him with support.
“That’s a situation that is so far beyond baseball,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “When our people that mean a lot to us are dealing with things that are the most important things in the world, those become our priorities. You just want to give someone support. And you want to love ’em and you want to give ’em everything you’ve got. … Whatever we can do, we’re going to do it.”
Baseball has always been Derek Shomon’s path.
A large, hulking presence, he never struggled to hit the ball hard. Even as Shomon bounced around in high school, college and from job to job, a career in baseball was the goal.
“This was a time in my life where I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Shomon said. “I was seeking, searching, trying to piece everything together. … I just knew I wanted to stay in baseball.”
At an early age, he knew the statistics for sons who grow up without fathers. Though his father died when he was 8 years old, Shomon didn’t want to become another stat.
He nearly did anyway.
Shomon’s father, Richard, died of oral cancer in 1998. Without a strong male presence in his life, Shomon decided he needed to be the man of the house. He didn’t know any better and only understood aggression. Several times, it escalated to violence.
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As he got older, Shomon said he began to make poor decisions. In eighth grade, he was expelled from middle school after a physical altercation. He finished out the academic year in a correctional “school for kids with behavioral disorders.”
He made another poor decision as a sophomore. Several bystanders were needed to end a physical altercation between Shomon and one of his high school baseball coaches that was serious enough to result in the cancellation of the game, a second expulsion and another placement in a correctional school.
Midway through his junior year, Shomon asked his mother if he could move from Illinois to live with his older brother and attend private school in Iowa. Shomon played baseball and helped his high school team reach the state championship game. After moving back home, his senior year at Glenbrook South High in Glenview, Ill., was incident free. Not only did Shomon graduate, but he also attended classes with Keriann, though the two wouldn’t be introduced by a mutual friend until two years later.
“I didn’t have the easiest time growing up,” Shomon said. “I was raised by a single mother who worked her ass off to provide for me. I made some really poor decisions. Everything that happened to me was by my own choice. I put myself in compromised situations. Thankfully, I had enough supportive people around that I got out of it.”
Shomon credits that support as well as therapy with helping him persevere, but his path remained bumpy. He played baseball at four different colleges between 2009 and 2016: Oakton Community College, Judson University, the University of Illinois at Springfield and Indiana Wesleyan.
During this period, Shomon began coaching at Oakton Community College. Then in 2012, he cold-called the Schaumburg Boomers of the Frontier League and asked if they needed a bullpen catcher. After talking to the manager and general manager the next day, the 22-year-old had a job.
He continued to bounce around for the next nine years, though this time internally as a member of Schaumburg’s coaching staff — management wanted him to experience various roles. In 2013, Shomon served as the bullpen coach. Then he took a turn as the strength and conditioning coach. Later he helped catchers in an unofficial role before becoming the team’s first-base coach, bench coach and later the hitting coach.
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During those nine seasons, he also twice played independent ball, for Lake Erie (Ohio) in 2017 at age 27 and Cleburne (Texas) in 2018.
“I was super fortunate,” Shomon said. “I legitimately got to do all of it.”
Working odd jobs — he glazed hams at Honey Baked Ham, managed a GNC and worked security at a hip hop night club — helped pay the bills. But Shomon sought a way to remain in baseball and earn enough money to support a family with Keriann, whom he married in 2017. In 2018, he and Cleburne teammate Jordan Dean opened a baseball training facility, Athletes Headquarters, which has since expanded to two locations in Illinois.
Then, late in 2020, the Twins called.
Upon taking a different job, another Low-A Fort Myers hitting coach candidate recommended Shomon to the Twins while concurrently encouraging him to speak with them.
Shomon first talked to then-farm director Alex Hassan, with whom he formed an instant connection.
“I was like, ‘Oh s—, this might be a thing,’” Shomon said. “’They’re pretty good dudes. This guy was solid.’ The next call was the same thing. ‘These are good people.’ (Keriann was) like, ‘That’s a big deal.’ Got offered the job. Talked to my wife and took it.”
One of Shomon’s first pupils at Fort Myers was Edouard Julien. The two immediately hit it off, Julien citing Shomon’s ability to relate and his willingness to talk about his life. Two years later, Julien travels every winter to Athletes HQ to work with Shomon.
“His biggest trait is he knows every different type of personality and he knows how to interact with anybody,” Julien said. “It feels like he’s been through your situation at one point in his life. He can relate to you a lot more than a normal coach.”
Keriann’s pregnancy was “completely normal, healthy” — until it wasn’t.
Much of March 3, 2023, remains a blur for Keriann, who wasn’t due for 11 days.
The baby wasn’t moving around much that morning, which resulted in a trip to Advocate Sherman Hospital in Elgin to take a non-stress test. Keriann told officials at the school where she taught that she’d return shortly. An hour later, Keriann learned she needed a C-section later that afternoon.
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Micah’s heart rate decelerated enough that doctors later moved her C-section up an additional five minutes. With Shomon en route from Florida, Micah was born at 3:47 p.m. CT, weighing 5 pounds, 12 ounces.
At first, there were no signs of trouble.
Micah passed two Apgar tests that monitored his heart rate, muscle tone and other signs to see if he required extra or emergency care. But as Keriann began to recover from the birth, Micah turned a purple, grayish color. Then his blood sugar test came up as undetectable.
When Shomon arrived around 5 p.m., he quickly realized his son was struggling. Micah had already been transferred to the hospital’s NICU and would spend the night there.
“I hadn’t seen Micah since I was holding him so I had no idea he was hooked up to all these machines and had oxygen,” Keriann said. “Derek’s first impression was tough.”
The next day, Micah needed to be transferred to the Level 3 NICU at Lutheran General in Park Ridge, Ill.
Hospital officials wanted to keep Keriann in recovery for three days. Determined to be with her child, Keriann walked under her own power and demonstrated she could use the bathroom to convince doctors she was ready to be discharged.
That night they arrived at Lutheran General, but it wasn’t equipped to provide the care Micah required, which led to the final move to Lurie Children’s Hospital.
With each transfer, the Shomons realized the potential for a poor outcome increased.
As they were inundated with updates from doctors, Shomon was designated as the couple’s primary listener. He was a good communicator and handled the intake of complex information well.
But he wasn’t the best listener. Shomon ignored the request of doctors to not Google the different maladies they were looking into.
First, a liver specialist suggested it could be gestational alloimmune liver disease (GALD), “which is like a 50 percent mortality rate,” Shomon said. Then Micah’s brain damage was believed to be far worse. Doctors later feared Micah’s heart was the issue. The entire time, the child was jaundiced.
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“(Micah) presented every worst-case scenario possible for every specialist that came in,” Shomon said. “I’m doing research on everything to the best of my ability and trying to shelter Keriann as much as possible. … You name it and they thought he had it. It was nuts.”
After a while, Micah’s eyes were swollen shut. Their child’s physical condition and constantly hearing harsh possibilities took its toll on the couple.
But early on, Keriann informed her husband they wouldn’t cry in their son’s hospital room. With all the machines, monitors, constant beeps and tubes, the Shomons wanted to be a calming presence.
“It felt like if we can be as calm as possible and not bring all of our emotion into this, that’s what he needs,” Keriann said. “It really helped the day to day in his room.”
The instant he met Shomon, Twins hitting coach David Popkins knew they’d work well together.
Their hitting lingo was similar as was their age (34). Both remembered each other from the Frontier League when Shomon coached for the Schaumburg Boomers and Popkins played for the Washington Wild Things.
Work and building rapport at the beginning of spring training came easy. Then Shomon left for the birth of his son and everything changed.
“It was pretty crushing news,” Popkins said. “At that point, we really didn’t give a f— about him missing practices or spring training. It was more so about him being there for Keriann and his son and providing anything he needed.”
But spending eight hours a day in the hospital provided ample free time. So as a distraction, Shomon dove in on his new team from afar.
“In true Derek fashion, we’d be in Micah’s room, just sitting, holding him, and Derek would have his laptop open watching the Twins games,” Keriann said. “We’re sitting there holding Micah with all his wires attached … and Derek is taking practice swings in the hospital room trying to figure out whoever it is, what his swing looks like and the approach.”
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Shomon also began initiating conversations via text to ask players how they felt, what they worked on, etc. He just wanted to be useful.
“I texted (Michael A. Taylor) and was like, ‘How’s the swing feeling?’” Shomon said. “Mike was like, ‘Stop. Turn it off.’ I was like, ‘There’s nothing (else) I can do. Micah is getting the support he needs.'”
Word about Shomon’s son began to circulate amongst the players. The minor leaguers who knew Shomon best from his seasons at Low-A Fort Myers and Double-A Wichita were concerned.
“We were asking Popkins every day about it,” outfielder Matt Wallner said. “It was definitely a tough time.”
Yet as more time elapsed, the Shomons grew more encouraged. As doctors began to rule out different possibilities, they presented fewer and fewer potential life-threatening options.
When they first arrived at Lurie Hospital, Micah required three heavy-duty IV stands full of medicine and devices. Slowly but surely, those items began to disappear from his room. Shomon estimated there were initially 30 boxes of medicine and machines hanging from the stands. By the time he rejoined the Twins in Florida on March 27, there were only three boxes and a growing sense of optimism.
“We were on the up and up,” Shomon said. “We were getting close and there was rumblings about him going home. I looked at Keriann three weeks in (and said), ‘I think we’re not going to know what happened, but he’s going to go home with a clean bill of health.’”
Confident his son would soon be home, Shomon rejoined the Twins.
But he was so overwhelmed, Shomon couldn’t contain his anguish on the first day back. He broke down crying in Baldelli’s office after another issue appeared to surface for Micah.
“They thought there was a major issue with the liver,” Shomon said. “I didn’t know what to do. I told Rocco, ‘This job matters to me and means a lot to me. I want to make sure I’m here and can do my job and perform. I’m just drained.’”
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Micah had two more scares during the team’s opening series. But then the potential emergencies began to dissipate.
On April 14, Micah was discharged.
“We’re home,” Keriann remembers thinking. “We’re doing this. This is amazing.”
Keriann’s workload only grew at home in Elgin. In addition to typical child-rearing duties, Keriann administered five daily medicines and made twice-daily injections that had to be delivered precisely 12 hours apart.
“Keriann is amazing,” Shomon said. “She’s a gangster.”
As the injections and medicine lessened, Keriann and Micah started to travel.
They’d previously only seen each other when Shomon came home on the team’s days off in April and May. But Keriann and Micah made their first trip to Minneapolis in June for Father’s Day and returned in September and October to see the Twins clinch the American League Central and play in the postseason.
The offseason brought more normalcy as Shomon spent mornings at home bonding with his son before heading to his baseball facility for afternoon lessons.
These days, Micah participates in physical and occupational therapy. A speech therapist recently was added to the mix.
Though he’s yet to speak, 15-month-old Micah is extremely vocal. Doctors and therapists believe it’s only a matter of time before he begins to talk.
Optimism is high.
Recently, Micah started walking, something doctors originally weren’t sure he’d ever do. With the help of AFO ankle braces, Micah keeps his parents busy by scooting across the house.
As they spent their second Father’s Day together as a family, the Shomons now have the life they believed they were headed for 15 months ago.
“Everyone is floored by how amazing he’s doing and the progress he’s made,” Keriann said of Micah. “I never thought we’d be here where he’s walking and smiling and engaging with people and he’s using his left hand. To other people, it probably sounds silly because they don’t know. But he had a perfect squat, which is something he struggles with because of his left-side deficits. It was by the book. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re doing it. You’re gaining muscle. Your body is learning how to do these things the way it’s supposed to.’ That was the coolest thing even though it was just a squat.”
(Top image: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photos courtesy of Derek Shomon)