The teenage boy stood beside the deathbed, saying goodbye to the stranger who was once his mother.

“After my first eight years, I didn’t want to have anything to do with her; I didn’t want to even accept her,” said 16-year-old Jaydin Goldenstein, whose mother left his life when he was in third grade.”So, I was saying goodbye to someone I didn’t know. But, if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be alive.”

After years of drug use — and time in jail and a halfway house — Leah Bennett suffered a stroke April 26 and fell into a coma. At the hospital, her son, a baseball star at Holyoke High, felt an array of emotions — anger, guilt, confusion. Bennett died the next day. She was 35.

What happened next was impossibly improbable.

Two days later, in the first game of a doubleheader at Wray that Holyoke had to win, Jaydin pitched a no-hitter.

In the second game, he switched to shortstop and hit four home runs. Four.

“It was like there wasn’t pressure on him,” Holyoke coach Kyle Bules said. “You go through dealing with that type of scenario — what’s a baseball game?”

Growing up in Holyoke

Holyoke High, with about 200 students, sits in the middle of this proud community (population 2,225) a few miles from the Nebraska border. “Far from everything,” said teammate Austin Killin, Jaydin’s best friend. “We have to drive an hour just to get to Walmart.”

The downtown is frozen in time. Pickup trucks — some reflective, some rusty — are scattered in the parking lots. At lunch at Kardale’s, overalls are common.

Jaydin is the big man on this little campus, though you’ll never hear him say something like that. He’s 6 feet of humble. He plays football, basketball, baseball and a mean guitar. And there he was onstage this winter, stealing scenes as Hugo Peabody, Kim’s steady, in “Bye Bye Birdie.” (The real Jaydin is Emily Bradley’s steady; they’ve been dating for a couple of years now.)

His father, Clint Goldenstein, is a rock. He raised a good son. But there was always a void. Jaydin was 2 when his parents divorced. He spent the next few years at their separate homes until Leah began slipping.

“When she was first getting involved with drugs, it was scary because she was acting different,” Jaydin said. “Then the cops got involved and I was like, ‘whoa.’ You shouldn’t have cops at your house when you’re 8 years old.

“I forgave her several times. But she kept messing up. She used to try to call me, and I wouldn’t talk to her.”

But, suddenly, the call came that his mom was dying. While he was at the hospital, the baseball team beat Burlington in a game his teammates dedicated to “Goldy.”

That night, Jaydin and Austin drove round and round town in Austin’s pickup, two kids talking about grown-up stuff.

“We have a lot of heart-to-hearts, I’m not afraid to say it,” Austin said. “That’s one of the toughest situations I can think to be dropped into. You don’t know how to feel. You’re mainly in shock.”

Jaydin grappled with his guilt. He was crestfallen that his mom was dying, angry that she’d been out of his life but wondering why he wasn’t more emotional. As he said, “I’m sad that I’m not more sad.”

And so, he sought therapy the only way he knew how — by playing ball.

Adrenaline and emotion

Holyoke needed to win both games to secure the Lower Platte league regular-season championship, but coach Bules wasn’t sure whether he should start his sophomore ace pitcher just two days after his mother died.

But Bules decided, “He needs this.”

The pitcher’s mound can be a lonely place, but it was Jaydin’s haven that day in Wray. When No. 21 in green was warming up before the first inning, his arm felt unusually loose. He thought to himself, “It’s going to be a good day.”

“The first inning was like — boom, boom, boom,” shortstop Reid Baumgartner said. “By the third inning, I was like, no one’s going to hit him.”

Things got tense in the dugout after that inning, though, when catcher Jesus Hermosillo blurted out, “Man, he might pitch a no-hitter!” But nothing could jinx it.

Jaydin had all his pitches working, the two-seam fastball, the 12-to-6 curveball, the slider that looks as if it’s going to hit the batter’s hip, then swerves toward the catcher’s mitt.

When it was over, he had walked two and struck out 10 in his first no-hitter.

“I knew he was playing with a lot of adrenaline and emotion,” his father said. “That day just let all the emotions out. He was playing the game that he loves.”

After the game, teammates didn’t rush the mound to celebrate. They knew there was a second game to play. Reid Baumgartner retrieved the game ball for a keepsake and later put on Jaydin’s glove and proclaimed, “This is what it feels like when you pitch a no-no!”

In game one, Jaydin hadn’t gotten a hit. In his first at-bat of game two, he had two strikes on him.

Then, PING!

The ball sailed toward the center-field fence.

“I knew it was out,” said Jaydin, a right-handed hitter.

In his next two at-bats, he homered to right, then to left.

“Normally I don’t think about hitting a home run,” said Jaydin, who once before had hit two home runs in a game. “But after the third, I was like — I’m going to try to hit a home run.”

The moment Reid heard contact, he didn’t even watch the ball. He just started jogging to home plate from the dugout to wait for his teammate circling the bases.

The fourth home run was the stuff of legend around here. Coach Bules estimated it traveled well over 400 feet. It might still be in the air. It cleared the center-field fence, a street, a ditch and a creek.

As Jaydin rounded third and saw his teammates, he tried not to smile, which only made him smile wider as he reached home.

Jaydin drove in seven runs, the difference in a 15-8 victory.

“I was so happy for him,” Bules said. “I talked to one of their coaches after the game, and he said, ‘He had most guys’ careers in one day!’ “

That night, Jaydin was messing around on Facebook when he saw a notification about his mother. “She had tried friending me before,” he said, using Facebook lingo. “But I never accepted it.”

Surrounded by acoustic guitars in his bedroom, Jaydin lost himself in memories — the fun moments, when Mom was Mom. The memories were faded. So much had changed. Everything had changed.

“I was planning on living my life not talking to her, and just hope that she’d get clean,” he said. “It just kind of hit me, now she is dead.”

Benjamin Hochman: 303-954-1294 or bhochman@denverpost.com