How Cincinnati Reds' Jake Fraley found strength in faith and team during daughter's healing
Jake Fraley was the last outfielder off the practice field on the first official day of spring training for the Cincinnati Reds this week.
But as solitary a figure as he might have seemed, he wasn’t alone. He never was.
If he didn’t already know it, Fraley found out that much last fall in the days and weeks after the most jarring, heart-quaking moment of his life.
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That’s when the results of a blood test he finally insisted doctors perform on 5-year-old daughter Avery came back in just 15 minutes, and the doctor asked Jake and his wife, Angelica, to step out of the room with him.
All that debilitating back pain their little girl endured for weeks while it was treated as a chiropractic issue was acute lymphocytic leukemia.
A family’s world turned upside-down in the span of a 15-minute test and a sentence.
But Fraley said he found footing almost as quickly. For one thing, “We were able to find out what it was.”
From there, Fraley leaned hard into the trust of the doctors, into relationships — including teammates — and leaned hardest into his faith.
“That’s where the conviction from the Holy Spirit comes from,” Fraley said, sharing his story in a quiet spot near a spring practice field the other day. “You’re going to have those natural feelings. You get worried. You get anxiety. You get, ‘Oh, my gosh, is this going to be something that kills my daughter?’ “
Whether it was the weeks of treatments or all the prayers, Avery’s latest test about a month ago was clear of cancer cells, which is considered full remission, though her treatment protocols are to continue for several more weeks.
“It doesn’t change anything,” said Fraley, who was specifically referring to the ongoing treatment but might as well have been talking about the way his family handled the initial blow, the ordeal that followed and where he goes next — including what many expect could be his biggest year professionally.
He and his wife share a strong faith that extends to the way Avery and older brother Jayce are being raised.
“And that’s not for the moments that are amazingly great,” he said. “That is for the moments when the ground is shaking beneath you. So when you feel that ground shaking with something as big as your 5-year-old daughter being diagnosed with cancer, it doesn’t change.
"I know that He provides a solution amongst a world that is as broken as we live in,” he added. “That’s how we do it.”
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Fraley, who is known for his hard-nose play, also had lots of support of the non-spiritual kind over the trying winter, from medical professionals he calls “phenomenal” to teammates and a Reds management team he calls “absolutely amazing.”
“They provided comfort. They constantly checked in with me throughout the offseason,” he said. “Everybody. I’m not talking just one person. I’m talking every single person.”
“People look at this as a business, and it’s like, ‘Oh, hey, this happens and it’s transactional,’ It’s not transactional,” team president Nick Krall said. “You have some transactions in it, but this is a group of people who have dedicated their life to being here in this sport and what they’re trying to do.”
From the perspective of Krall’s front office, “It’s not just, ‘Hey, we need to see results on the field,’ “ Krall said. “We want to make sure we’re there for them. We try to ask everybody, ‘How can I help you?’
“It really is something that’s important to us. That’s a culture thing.”
In this case that meant being prepared to start spring training — and maybe even the season — without one of their most important left-handed hitters and competitive tone setters.
It also meant a commitment to stay perhaps even more connected through their behind-the-scenes support if he wasn’t there.
“He’s part of our family,” general manager Brad Meador said. “He’s a huge part of what we’ve done and what we’re going to do.”
That it never got to that point comes back in large part to Avery’s latest good-news update and maybe in even larger part to their faith — which also is literally Avery’s middle name.
Fraley talked regularly with manager David Bell throughout the treatments and his own process.
“And I was just very straight up with him: ‘Look, if it’s something that is absolutely necessary and something very serious, I will be the first to tell you, and I will not be here. But I don’t foresee that happening. God willing.’
“I have an amazing blessing of a wife,” he said. “And she handles more than what I wish she had to. But she does. That’s what allows me to be able to be here and do my job and do it the right way.”
So the guy who played down the stretch last season with a broken toe, trying to help will an upstart contender into the playoffs, emphasized to Bell:
“I’m going to be here every day. I have a job to do. I have a role on this team, and I’m going to do it the way I know it needs to be done.”
Which might make the most striking part of the story that day by the practice field the mere fact he is here, several days earlier than position players were required to report — the way the father whose world turned upside down just a few months ago got through to be in this quiet place sharing that story at all.
“I’m not getting through it,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m thriving through it.”
Maybe that helps explain why Jake Fraley was the last outfielder to leave the practice field the first official day of spring training this week.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: How Cincinnati Reds' Jake Fraley 'thrived' through toughest winter
