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[ random actualities ]
HOST INTRO: This is… THE SWEET SPOT, a show about the week’s biggest sports stories in Arizona. I’m Sam Eddy….
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Twins times two: Talking to ASU women’s lacrosse twins, part 1/Sam Eddy & Bennett Silvyn
BENNETT SILVYN: The Arizona State Sun Devils women’s lacrosse team is in the midst of its first season with head coach Taryn VanThof at the helm. The roster under VanThof is unique, in which the team has two sets of twins: Bella and Gigi Gaspar and Maddie and McKenna Riley.
SAM EDDY: In a two-part series, Bennett and I talked to the Gaspars first about what it’s like to be a twin. The junior defenders from Canada are practically connected by the hip and are each other’s Day 1s… literally. Now here is our interview with the Gaspar twins after one of their recent practices.
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SILVYN: Bella and Gigi shared a lot about what life is like as a set of twins. While the two sisters are each other’s best friends, there is another pair of twins on the team who can relate to them better than anybody else.
EDDY: Stay tuned for next week’s episode of The Sweet Spot, where Bennett and I interview the Riley sisters about their experiences of being twins. From Cronkite Sports, I’m Sam Eddy…
SILVYN: And I’m Bennett Silvyn…
From minor leaguers to major movies, Phoenix Municipal Stadium has seen a lot in 60 years/Jeff Hinkle
[ nat – baseball bat ]
HOST INTRO: Phoenix Municipal Stadium has a rich history dating back to 1964, Jeff Hinkle breaks down everything that’s happened between now and then…
HINKLE: Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Willie Bloomquist. What do they all have in common? Well, yes, all of their first names are Willie, but if you guessed that they’ve all stepped on the field at Phoenix Municipal Stadium, you’d be correct…
HINKLE: Arizona State University has one of the most unique home ballparks in all of college baseball. Not many programs get to say that their stadium was once a Spring Training home, and even fewer get to say that they play under the lights of the hallowed Polo Grounds. Oh yeah, the same light poles that lined the field when Russ Hodges called one of the most dramatic walk-off home runs in history…
<Sound Pop – “Shot Heard Round the World” call>
HINKLE: Now sit at Phoenix Municipal Stadium. But how did they get there?
<<James Vujs: They were tearing down the polo grounds the same year that Phoenix Muni was opening up so the ownership brought those light poles over here, and they still stand here today. >>
HINKLE: That’s James Vujs (voice), who has been at Phoenix Municipal Stadium, or Phoenix Muni, for 23 years, and is currently the director at the stadium. Phoenix Municipal Stadium opened in 1964. It was originally the spring training stadium of the San Francisco Giants, who were staying in Mesa at the Buckhorn Baths Motel, and needed a place to play their games.
<<Vujs: They were here until ‘81, and then Oakland was here ‘82-14, and now we’re 24/7 365 Sun Devil Baseball>>
HINKLE: But with the Cubs’ eventual move to Sloan Park, and Hohokam Stadium being left vacant, the A’s eventually moved out of Phoenix Muni and into the newly renovated stadium in Mesa. But how does having ASU baseball differ from having the A’s and Giants play spring training ball at the stadium?
<<Vujs: Spring training, the games don’t count, and people are here for sun, cold beverage, see players get autographs… Sun Devil baseball, these games matter. It matters a lot to our alumni, to our players, to the university. And so there’s a passion for the games that’s as real as you can get. >>
HINKLE: Huh. That’s funny. That almost sounds like a quote from the 2010 movie “Moneyball.” Oh and speaking of “Moneyball,” the stadium has a little bit of a tie to the movie. It wasn’t quite filmed at Phoenix Muni, but according to Vujs…
<<Vujs: They were here for a week, and it was quite a mini circus going on because we really were all under strict guidelines to keep it under tight wraps that Brad Pitt was gonna star in the movie… The people that put the sets together, they were in the locker room. They had trunks rolled in it looked just like Oakland’s, they were folding towels… I remember we had a person who worked here named Fred Wallace, he said ‘Hey that’s not how the A’s fold their towels.’ And they said ‘Really, show us.’ They were folding the towels to be exact. I mean everything was… we were ready to go Saturday and at 5:01 p.m. on Friday they pulled the plug on it>>
HINKLE: So from the history of the “say hey” kid Willie Mays, to almost starring in a movie, Phoenix Municipal Stadium has seen a little bit of everything. And in the eyes of James Vujs…
<<Vujs: There’s no other school in the Pac-12 that compares to this ballpark>>
HINKLE: From Cronkite Sports, I’m Jeff Hinkle.
Former ASU pitcher Jake Borup talks about his heart attack, recovery, family/ Kaitlyn Parohinog
HOST INTRO: Jake Borup (BORE-up), a former ASU pitcher and Phillies minor leaguer, was thrown a curveball late last October when he suffered a heart attack that hospitalized him until three days before Christmas. Kaitlyn Parohinog (pair-oh-HEE-nog) spoke with Jake and his wife about the day and life since…
JAKE BORUP: I mean, life is wild, right? Like, one minute you’re fully healthy and the next minute you’re waking up in a hospital room with doctors and nurses and everything like that.
SHEA BORUP: I get emotional. I’m going to try not to.
JAKE: Last October, at the beginning of the month, I started noticing that part of my workout, I’ll do a stair-stepper and I couldn’t quite catch my breath. So I hopped off the stairs and just took a break and then it went away. That happened for a few more days. And then Friday, October 28th…
SHEA: We were at the gym maybe 30 minutes before we left.
JAKE: The minute that I started working out, I felt it and I had to go in the locker room and kind of sit down and just calm down. I’m like, All right, I definitely need to go to the emergency room.
SHEA: He was texting me saying, ‘Oh my goodness, this is getting worse. I really think I need to get this looked at.’
JAKE: About 9:30, we hopped in the truck and drove to the hospital. And I remember on the way telling her like, hey, I’m going to pass out. And I did.
SHEA: Next thing I know, I looked over and his eyes were just like, fixed open. And then the next time I looked at him, his eyes rolled in the back of his head and he started to have a seizure. His body was convulsing, making weird noises with his mouth like dry-heaving. And then I look over and he just goes like stiff. His head turned bright, bright like tomato-red. And he just went stiff and started to like, foaming at his mouth. And about 2 minutes later, Jake took a deep breath and kind of came to and was like, ‘I feel better. I feel better. We don’t need to go to the hospital.’ And I was like, Um, no, we’re going. Like, you didn’t witness that.
JAKE: And so I walked into the hospital and I told the emergency people, Hey, my heart is jacked up my chest or It’s really bad. I’m going to pass out. I need you guys to take care of me.
SHEA: And I was not even 5 minutes behind Jake, and I walked in and he was in a room hooked up to EKGs and they were telling him he was having a heart attack.
JAKE: All sorts of wires coming out of me. And I’m like, looking at this doctor like, what’s going on? And he’s like, ‘Dude, you’re having a massive heart attack.’ And that’s when I passed out and I don’t remember anything for about 40, 45 days.
SHEA: Then they proceeded to say, it looks like one of his main vessels is dying and we need to transport you to Banner Heart Hospital. And I was in the waiting room maybe five, eight minutes before they called Code Blue. And I knew it was Jake because I know in the car I know he had died, he didn’t just pass out. They said he’s paralyzed, which in terms I found later it’s like he’s in a medically induced coma. His kidneys were shutting down, his liver, took a shot, his lungs were struggling. An hour later, we were able to go back and see Jake. And he was just he looked like a dead person hooked up to machines. I think at that moment like seeing Jake and hearing like how bad it was… I think hearing how bad it was was pretty hard for me. But then to see him, it’s like, well, my husband might not survive this. Like I can see for myself, like the state he’s in, you know? They ended up putting him on ECMO, which the next day I put together by myself that it was life support. They just kept trying things and nothing was working.
SHEA: There were so many doctors that couldn’t get on the same page, and so he would just sit and they were hoping his heart would heal a little bit on its own with this pump that was already in there. There was one doctor in particular, this heart surgeon, that was really pushing for Jake to have an LVAD, and no other doctor was on board. One day this doctor comes in from out of town. Doctor Amabill. He’s like, ‘This is it. He’s not changed. He’s not getting better. We’re doing an LVAD within 48 hours.’ He asked how I felt about it. He said, ‘There’s super-high risks of dying.’ He said, ‘But right now there’s 100% chance of dying if we do nothing.’ He’s like, ‘He’s going to get pneumonia, sepsis, something. He’s going to die of something if we do nothing. We’re on the 50-yard line with 3 seconds left in the game. It’s a Hail Mary at this point.’ And he looked at me and he raised his shoulders and said, ‘The Hail Mary is a cop.’ Wednesday morning, he was taken down to surgery and Dr. Amabill came in, hugged me before surgery and said, ‘I want to reiterate how big of a Hail Mary this is.’ And he said, ‘All the other Hail Marys I’ve done in the past have not been successful.’ And he said, ‘But they’ve all been older. The only thing Jake’s got going for him is his age and his liver.’ He said, ‘Somehow his liver is hanging on.’ And I walked down with Jake in the elevator and held his hand. And when I grabbed his hand, he squeezed it three times and told me he loved me.
SHEA: I got the update that his right ventricle looked good enough and they did the LVAD and I just cried pure joy. And the nurse practitioner was like lifting up his catheter and was like, ‘Look at all this liquid gold.’ Like his kidneys were already just working. So after a few days, it was like he was only progressing more and more and was like waking up a little bit more and not coughing up blood. And his X-rays were getting better. The fluid was leaving his lungs like it was. Each day was a better day, and it was just that much more hopeful that he wasn’t going to die. When they took the ventilator out. He did tell me that I’ve missed you so much. So he remembered who I was. He remembered why he was in the hospital. He knew our kids’ names, but he was also confused about a lot of things. And while he was, you know, out of it for that whole month, he was living like a hallucination dream. So he has a reality for him. That was not the hospital reality.
JAKE: I got to the hospital the 22nd of December. Thankfully, I made it home for Christmas with my family, so I couldn’t walk for probably two months. So my wife would have to wheelchair me around everywhere and, you know, try to help me get into the wheelchair and and then roaming around.
SHEA: Physical therapy started to come three days a week. That was very, very draining for him. She’d be here, I think, and like 30 minutes, and he’d be wiped out the rest of the day.
JAKE: I was able to kind of go from a wheelchair to a walker, and I could walk, you know, probably the length of my house without getting tired. One day I finally just had enough energy where I was like, you know, forget it. I’m ditching this walker. And then I just would be really careful walking and I could go, you know, 50 feet one week and then 100 feet the next week and then 200 feet the next week. And so I’ve been walking on my own unassisted for probably four or five weeks. And now I’m to the point where I feel comfortable enough to walk and live a normal life as far as my physical activity. But outside of that, I, you know, I throw my things in a fanny pack and move on. And that’s kind of always been my mantra with children and things in life. Just, you know, keep doing you.
SHEA: They actually just decided to start the evaluation process for Jake to be listed for a heart transplant. And the goal is to be listed in a few months. They said the goal is to be transplanted within a year of being listed.
JAKE: After you have a heart transplant, you have to be in the hospital every week and multiple times a month for almost the first year after your, your heart transplant, because they have to make sure that this new heart that they’re putting in your body isn’t getting rejected by the rest of your body. A doctor had once mentioned to me, it’s like at the year mark your body and your heart shake hands and then they’re cool with each other.
HOST OUTRO: We here at the Sweet Spot would like to thank Kaitlyn Parohinog for the All-Star Caliber work she has contributed all semester long.
UCLA commit, possible MLB draft pick Roch Cherlowsky is focused first on a high school championship/Jake Brown
HOST INTRO: Hamilton high school shortstop Roch (rock) Cherlowsky (cher-LOV-skee) is committed to UCLA, but could also be drafted in the upcoming MLB draft. Cronkite Sports’s Jake Brown has more on the Arizona prospect.
BROWN: Roch Cherlowsky is the number one high school recruit in Arizona. He attends Hamilton high school, former MVP Cody Bellinger’s alma mater. With high expectations heading into the offseason. Cherlowsky is focused on one thing: winning a championship.
<<Cherlowsky: I’ve gone up in some people’s ranks, I’ve gone down in some, you know what I mean? But that kinda stuff doesn’t bother me. I’m still out here trying to win a state championship. Rankings won’t make or break me for a state championship.>>
BROWN: Hamilton High School won the state championship last year, beating their rival Chandler high school, with Cherlowsky being a catalyst for the team at shortstop. Aside from baseball. Cherlowsky was quarterback for Hamilton’s football team. According to his mom, Roch’s dad preached playing two sports to become more versatile.
<<Cherlowsky: It’s just something different. You play once a week. You prep the entire week for that one game. It’s not like baseball where you screw on Friday night, you have to wait another week to play.>>
BROWN: Cherlowsky committed to UCLA three years ago. He said it wasn’t just because of the great baseball program, but also the family connection. His mom went to UCLA, and he has extended family in southern California. As a player, Cherlowsky takes pride in his defense, as noted on his Perfect Game page with a 10 out of 10. In the end, despite all of his talent and potential, all that matters to Cherlowsky is the present and to repeat as 6A champions.
BROWN: For Cronkite Sports, I’m Jake Brown…
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HOST: That’s all for this week. The Sweet Spot is produced by the Cronkite News Phoenix Sports Bureau. Reporting in this episode is done with the help of digital reporter Bennett Silvyn and our audio reporters Jeff Hinkle, Kaitlyn Parohinog, Jake and myself.
HOST: I’m your host, Sam Eddy. Make sure to find and subscribe to The Sweet Spot anywhere you listen to podcasts. We appreciate all the sweethearts out there! See you next time!
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