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Dean Hopkins is helping Chris Cole become a top hitter and top prospect; Cole and his family are giving Hopkins all their love and support as he battles cancer and keeps on pitching.
By BRANT JAMES
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 23, 2000
BROOKSVILLE -- Batting practice is going pretty much as it should, the shrill ping of aluminum preceding the dull thud of rawhide slamming against the wood fence or brick field house.
Another handful of balls is drawn from an old red milk crate, and the rhythm begins again. Until a pause.
"I have to take five minutes, Christopher," says the pitcher. "This chemo takes my strength."
Dean Hopkins walks slowly to the first base dugout at Hernando High's Emerson Field, wiping his bear chest with one of his T-shirts. Taking a seat on the dusty concrete, he stares out at the two boys fetching balls in rightfield of the otherwise empty park.
It's a January day like many he has seen in his 69 years. But he appreciates this one a little more. There are things to do. Christopher's waiting.
"Want something to drink?"
Chris Cole rotates his bat above his head as he approaches to offer a drink. He's out early, as usual, taking swing after swing against his mentor. But mentor probably doesn't quite do it anymore. He's more like family.
They've been together a long time, Cole and "Coach.' Neither knows how much longer they have. But what they have means a little more now. There are still things to do.
A quick drink past his lips, Hopkins is up and striding behind the old mesh screen propped halfway between the mound and home plate.
Another handful of balls is ready before Cole settles into where the left-hander's batter's box should be.
And so it begins again.
The phone call was devastating.
Five weeks before that afternoon at the ballpark, the Coles were in the car, as they so often are on weekends. They were driving around Florida so Chris, an actively recruited senior catcher at Hernando High, could participate in baseball camps.
Chet Cole, Chris's father, knew something was wrong as the family headed for Jacksonville. Hopkins had complained of irregular vision days earlier and had scheduled an appointment at the VA hospital in Gainesville.
"We figured he'd go up for the day, they'd check him out, say he'd had a light stroke, and send him home," Cole said.
Doctors ordered a CT scan, however, and kept Hopkins overnight. The Coles continued on to Jacksonville and phoned Hopkins early Friday morning.
The spider webs Hopkins had been seeing were being caused by a brain tumor.
"When they said "central nervous system' it sent red flags flying," Hopkins said. "One of the doctors called it advanced cancer. One of them said maybe with treatment they could dry it up to where it could extend my life."
The Coles were unprepared.
"He said, "They basically just told me what I got,' " Chet Cole said. "And I mean we were all just sitting in the car crying. Christopher was in tears."
Chet Cole is a spiritual man who believes things happen for a reason.
He wants his son to be a baseball player as much as any father who has ever helped steady a bat in his child's hands for the first time. But he also thinks baseball, for his family and Hopkins, is more the means than the end.
"If (Chris) stopped today and didn't play any more baseball, I told Coach the things I would cherish would be the times we've had together, practicing and working," Chet said. "Because sometimes when you get to where you're going, it's not as fun as getting there."
He first met Hopkins in 1992 while coaching a Citrus County Dixie League all-star team. He enlisted the local hitting guru -- a former minor-leaguer with the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds -- to help with a team that included 10-year-old Chris, a kid who never saw a pitch he couldn't pull foul.
Hopkins, whose father used to play baseball for an Oklahoma oil company, had been tutoring local boys for years, since before he moved to Crystal River in 1971. Something about Chris sparked his interest.
"I used to get a kick out of Christopher," said Hopkins, who now lives in Lecanto. "If we'd lose the game he'd be quizzing his dad why he made this pitching change or why he did that.
"And he just had the natural talent. You could see it right away."
Chris was an eager pupil, and walked right up to Hopkins after the season was over with a simple request.
"Can you teach me to hit?" he asked.
Hopkins, who does this for free, took him on with several other boys and has been working with him for five years -- often year-round, one bucket of balls at a time.
Chet Cole knew his family was growing close to Hopkins, but did not really know how close until his father died late in 1998.
"He's like a member of our family, we share meals, we share our lives," Chet Cole said of Hopkins. "He's sort of been a surrogate grandfather to Christopher. He won't say it, but he loves him.
"I haven't really dealt well with my family's death yet, but coach has been there for me, not so much to talk about it, but just to be there in friendship. I don't have a lot of close friends, but he is as close a friend as I've had in my life."
Hopkins is quick to change the subject when topics come too close, but he readily acknowledges those who have helped him cope with cancer.
"My daughter, Justina, and Chet Cole, they got me through," he said. "I had some depression after I found out. They got me through.
"The Coles ... I think a lot of that bunch."
That Hopkins is a 69-year-old capable of tossing batting practice to a 17-year-old attests that he's made of equal parts grit and gristle.
"After he came to terms with this, he said, "This is what I have and this is what I have to do,' " Chet Cole said. "Now they're very positive. Christopher says if anybody can whip this, Coach can."
After his first round of therapy concluded and he was discharged from the hospital, Hopkins' first move was to get doctors' clearance to pitch batting practice again.
"The first day he pitched, it was like Field of Dreams," Chet Cole said. "Remember when Kevin Costner's dad came up in the catcher's outfit and said, "Is this heaven?' That's what I asked Coach after he pitched BP that day. I said, "Is this heaven?'
"The sun was out, you could smell the grass, and all three of us were together again."
Chris Cole has a lot of ability. Absorbing and succumbing to Hopkins' "triangle" technique over five years has synchronized his swing into a line-drive machine.
That he's hammering baseballs off the back wall of the Hernando field house is maybe not so impressive this day, considering a 69-year-old man is pitching from halfway to the plate. But Hopkins -- after every reflexive flinch -- follows the path of the balls as they soar away, as if each were Game 7 clinchers.
They chat not so much as teacher and pupil, but as buddies unfortunate enough to have been born a half century apart.
Chet Cole, often the pitcher or fielder, watches from the bleachers.
"They are like music out there," he said. "It's their communion. I've had people say, "Aren't you jealous of that?' Absolutely not. I'm so grateful that he's in my son's life and that he can appreciate something like that."
Chet Cole has tried to steel his son that the next chemotherapy session will be tougher. Coach will be weaker.
"I can still throw a little, but it's getting tougher," Hopkins said. "I know that, but I'm going to hang in there."
He may be weaker, but only physically. The culmination of five years' work glows as his inspiration.
"Having a goal, something you'd like to get done before you finish your time here ... ," Hopkins said. "I was looking forward to this season. Hopefully I can whip this thing and see them play."
The red crate empty, Hopkins removes his catcher's mitt and begins tugging on his sweatshirt as long shadows slip over the field.
Practice has ended, but only, he assures us, for today.