By Don Leypoldt

Everything was right in Montpelier, VT on June 29, 2013.

Cody Brown, a bulldog-tough lefty from Central Connecticut State (CCSU) via South Jersey toed the rubber for the home Vermont Mountaineers in the top of the tenth inning; he was starting his second inning of relief.

Brown was usually a starter. He arrived at Vermont off of an excellent sophomore year at CCSU where he led the Blue Devils in wins, innings and strikeouts.

Vermont was facing their inter-state rival, the Keene (NH) Swamp Bats. Two Bats got on base, but Brown got out of the jam and posted a scoreless tenth.

“I remember that game because I only came into relief a couple of times,” said Brown. “That was a big game for me because my CCSU teammate, (2013 NECBL MVP and current A’s farmhand) J.P. Sportman, was on the other side and I got to pitch against him.”

Pinch hitter Pat Wiese led off the 10th for Vermont. An on base and stolen base machine from LeMoyne, Syracuse-native Wiese likewise arrived in Montpelier on the heels of an outstanding spring. Wiese’s .333 average, 27 steals and .415 on base percentage all paced LeMoyne; the junior also led the Dolphins in hits and runs, earning first team all-Northeast 10 Conference honors in the process.

“The third baseman was playing a little deep,” Wiese recalled. “I decided I would try to bunt for a base hit. We needed the leadoff man on. Fortunately, I got a pitch to lay down the third baseline and it was a pretty good bunt.”

“Both Cody and Pat were great with the kids at baseball camps,” remembered Vermont GM Brian Gallagher. “In the community, they were both all-stars for sure.

“Both of them played really well. Both of them worked. They were good ballplayers and good teammates. Cody would always give us a good start and Pat,” Gallagher concluded, “was good on the bases and a good outfielder.”



Wiese singled, advanced to third when the next two batters got on base, and scored the winning run on a passed ball third strike. “I remember the walk-off; it was awesome,” Brown added.

The nearly 2,000 fans went home happy. Wiese and Brown were two great athletes playing winning summer baseball, in front of a large jubilant crowd on a historic field straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. It was as close to heaven as it gets.

Four months later, both Wiese and Brown would be as close to hell as it gets. Both would be diagnosed with cancer just weeks after leaving Vermont.

“We couldn’t believe it, first of all with Pat and then the double whammy with Cody,” Gallagher mused. “We thought ‘What the heck is going on?’ It was a really weird, bad coincidence and an unreal thing to have happen.”

The players weren’t worried about their baseball lives. They were worried about their lives, period.

+ + +

Despite being one of the premier stolen base threats in his conference, Wiese started suffering terrible knee pain during his junior spring at LeMoyne.

“When I was at Vermont, it was the same ordeal. About once or twice a week, the pain would come. I’d lay awake, unable to sleep, and I’d have no idea why,” Wiese explained. The pain would usually subside at game time.

“But some long bus rides were painful,” Wiese interjected, “I remember going to New Bedford specifically where I could not stretch my leg out and it had to be bent. It was excruciating pain. But once again, I got off the bus and started warming up and the pain went away at game time.”

Wiese returned to LeMoyne for his senior season. Two weeks into Fall Ball, the pain was back with a vengeance. “I’d wake up at night, I’d be throwing pillows and I couldn’t sleep. It was miserable,” Wiese admitted. Neither the team trainer nor Wiese’s father- who is an orthopedic surgeon-could identify anything wrong.

On September 10th, after one more horrific sleepless night, Wiese got an X-Ray in his father’s office. Wiese’s cell phone went off an hour later while he was in class.

Wiese knew the news was not good.

“I gave my Dad a call and he said, ‘You need to come back here as soon as you can.’ Unless it is really serious, he will wait until the end of the day so in my mind, something is very wrong. Is it an ACL? It is a hairline fracture that needs time to heel?” Wiese questioned.

When Wiese arrived, his father’s usually smiling disposition was gloomy. Wiese picks up the story: “(My Dad) said, ‘You have a tumor.’ I didn’t think I heard him right so I said, ‘What do you mean I have a tumor?’ He said, ‘You have a tumor. You have cancer.’ I said, ‘Okay I have practice in three hours. Can I go to practice?’”

Pat Wiese can chuckle about it now, but the magnitude of the diagnosis didn’t hit him until he went to the MRI room later that day. In complete solitude with his thoughts, broken only by the monstrous MRI’s whirring and buzzing, Wiese then realized how awful his situation was. “(The MRI) was the longest hour and a half of my life. A bunch of questions were going through my mind: How bad is it? Am I going to live?” Wiese pondered. “After the MRI, Dad told me that I had osteosarcoma, which is a rare form of bone cancer that affects young adults and children.”

His father also told him that he would never play baseball again. “That,” Wiese paused, “was pretty rough.”

Chemotherapy is brutal. Physical therapy after a knee replacement is brutal. Just weeks after playing baseball at an elite level, Pat Wiese would have to go through both gauntlets. Wiese was treated at Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston. He had surgery for a complete knee replacement on October 3rd where doctors removed part of his tibia, part of his femur, some ligaments and his entire knee.

“I was in the hospital for a week and then a couple of days later, I started chemotherapy. From my hospital room to the PT room is a 20 second walk,” described the fleet outfielder.

“It took me 10 minutes to get there.”



Wiese went through seven cycles of chemo in addition to physical therapy that he described as “absolutely brutal. There was a lot of pain in my knee and yet as much pain as there is, you have to get the motion back in a set period of time or else it will be stuck like that. I did whatever I could in physical therapy.”

Chemotherapy and physical therapy not only tax your body physically, they wage war on your morale and spirit as well. There were times when Wiese was in a dark trough of negative emotion that few of us will ever suffer through. Yet when asked what kept him going in those bleakest times, Wiese gave his shortest answer during this hour-long conversation.

“Simple,” he grinned. “I absolutely hate to lose.”



+ + +

Brown did make it through the summer healthy. His health woes affected him shortly after he returned to school.

Brown had various injuries, most notably a rash in his arm that was originally thought to be MRSA. “By the time the rash cleared I started feeling pain in my stomach and my groin. I dealt with that for about a week because baseball had just started and I thought I just pulled something. I figured I’d take it easy but then things got worse and worse,” Brown relayed.

“A lot of different things built up. I went in and out of the hospital trying to take care of it by myself so my parents didn’t have to keep coming up to help me out. On October 16th,” Brown paused, “I found out it was cancer.”

Brown would be diagnosed with Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma. While it is a rare cancer, it is a treatable cancer. Brown, in a sadly ironic twist, had the same class of cancer that struck another lefty pitcher: A’s southpaw Jon Lester.

Brown immediately went home and checked into the University of Pennsylvania hospital the next Monday. “I was at UPenn for eight or nine days. It was kind of a blur for me. I did the first chemo there in the hospital room and from that time on, I was allowed to leave. The chemo was outpatient so that was a lot better than having to sit in bed. I had three or four IV bags, a couple of needles, a couple of this and that,” he chuckled. “A little bit of everything I guess you could say.

“I always explained it like a roller coaster,” Brown continued. “The first week of chemo, you’re down in the dumps and you feel pretty crappy. And then, it gets a little better, gets a little better and then you’re going to go down again.”

Cody Brown starts what he finishes. In his two seasons at CCSU and in his summer at Vermont, Brown led or just missed leading his team in innings.

“I always loved playing in the field when Cody was on the mound because he worked quickly, he threw strikes and he wanted to win,” said Wiese. “He was a gamer and his presence on the mound allowed players to step it up a notch. When I found out he had cancer, I thought, ‘No problem. He’s got this.’”

“That’s what I want people to remember me by: as a hard nosed kid and it is my game to win or lose. I don’t want anyone else coming in there,” Brown laughed. “You leave it all out on the field and you hope for the best. Win or lose, as long as you played the hardest you can, you have nothing to look down on. That started with the coaching staff that I had growing up, including my Dad.”

Brown spent the 2013 Fall attacking his chemo with the same ferocity he attacked hitters. As luck would have it, those very coaches that Brown alluded to would also be giving him some special encouragement. Brown’s former Brooklawn team won the American Legion World Series and was able to attend a 2013 World Series game at Fenway Park. Brooklawn got Jon Lester himself to autograph a “Get Well Cody” banner that they made for the occasion.

Meanwhile, Brown got an email from another Red Sox lefty, NECBL alum Craig Breslow, encouraging him during his chemo. As the brother of a cancer survivor, Breslow’s Strike 3 Foundation has raised seven figures to fight the disease.

Brown progressed nicely- he was even given the okay to do some light workouts during winter break. “But they found a blood clot near my heart from the port that they had put in my chest for the chemo. Things stopped after that and I was on the no activity list for a while,” Brown described.

The first question Brown always asked his doctors was when he could start working out again. “It was really tough to sit there and do nothing, especially with how active I’ve always been throughout my life,” he admitted. “As soon as I got the okay, I was extremely excited and ready to go.”

It was exceptionally joyful to hear that the southpaw’s cancer was in remission. Now, Brown still had to return to the form of a Division I pitcher after his body had been savagely assaulted. Part of that involved taming his inner bulldog during his workouts.

“My old work ethic is still going to come as soon as I am capable of doing everything that I used to do,” Brown predicted. “But I had to take it down a notch and do half of this, and a little less than that. To take a day off maybe and make sure that my body can handle it.”

Nearly one year to the day of his cancer diagnosis last October, Brown formally threw in CCSU’s Fall Ball. “I told my coach that I wanted to get a couple of innings in before the Fall. It would take a burden off of my back to make sure that what I’ve been doing is working. I pitched two innings and it felt great,” Brown said. “My teammates were all behind me and they loved it. Some of the guys out there want it more than I do!

“That is also what helps me out,” he added. “I want to be there for them as much as they were there for me and get a couple of wins for them.”

Unlike Brown, Wiese’s playing career is over. But his cancer is also in remission. And don’t think for a second that Wiese is sitting on the bench. The LeMoyne star is an assistant coach at Onondaga Community College.

“Once everything happened, my dream stayed the same. It just had to be modified a little bit,” said Wiese. “Baseball has always been my first love, going back to when I could first have a catch with my Old Man in the back yard. It will always be a part of me.” When OCC hired John Sheedy as their new head coach in late August, Wiese was the first person Sheedy called.

And he founded the eponymous Patrick Wiese Foundation. LeMoyne surprised Wiese with a pre-game ceremony- and a $5,000 check- during the Dolphins’ sold out basketball home opener in November 2013. “When I went to half court,” said Wiese, “I looked in the stands and saw the whole deck was filled with people all with ‘Pray for Pat’ t-shirts. That is one of the top moments of my life: to see everybody with their support and their prayers.

“As I started to go through the chemo and the physical therapy, I thought ‘Man, this is absolutely miserable that people go through this. I have to do something. How about helping out patients going through this in any way possible?’ I used the $5,000 not to keep it, but to use it as a building block to raise more money.”

The Foundation’s mission is to raise research funds and increase support for osteosarcoma patients. In keeping with Wiese’s personal values, the Foundation fights cancer on three fronts:

• “Mind- Cancer knocks us down mentally and physically. Our goal is to rejuvenate people’s will power to fight.

• Body- Raise money for research searching for a cure for osteosarcoma and all cancers.

• Soul- Help patients grow closer to God and know that God is helping them in their fight.”

The Foundation sponsored a 5K Fun Run that raised $15,000. The Mountaineers and the Syracuse SkyChiefs, the Washington Nationals’ Triple-A affiliate, both made the Foundation recipients of their 50/50 night. The Foundation earned some national publicity when Wiese won the TD Ameritrade Fan’s Choice Award this past June for “excelling beyond the diamond and leadership that inspires others.”

This past November 1st, Wiese completed a 74-mile bike ride to raise monies for the Foundation. He rode one mile for each day he spent in the hospital getting treated.

“A year ago, I couldn’t even get one rotation on the pedal,” Wiese pointed out. “That was pretty cool to step back and appreciate both how far I’ve come and everyone who has helped me to get here and succeed.”

As for the Brown twins- Cody’s brother Casey also pitches for CCSU- both will be coming to Vermont in 2015. “I had the time of my life there,” Cody remembered. “That place is just awesome. They treated me so well especially my host Dad, Brian Murphy. I’ve talked to him once a week just to touch base and that organization and their fans, with what they did while I was sick, was tremendous.”

“The whole community are die hard baseball fans and they made you feel 100% family there,” Wiese echoed. “An hour before game, the stands would be almost full. From the second I stepped there, from my amazing host family, it just felt like home. Brian Gallagher goes above and beyond what he has to do every single day. He is a great guy and it probably wasn’t five days after I was diagnosed where he called me and sent me my jersey.”

The Mountaineers stepped up to the plate significantly, mailing jerseys to both Wiese and Brown and posting news about their recoveries through out their fan base. Wiese got a “night” in Montpelier; only an unexpected early playoff exit kept Brown from having his night in Vermont.



“We are a true non-profit. The members of the boards of directors run the team and there is no ownership. All of the money we make goes into the organization and back into Recreation Field. I really feel that that makes the community feel a lot better,” said Gallagher. “The whole community, from the sponsors to the host families to the volunteers, really wrap their arms around us and make this a success because of all of their efforts.”

Lost in the shuffle of Brown’s triumph over cancer is that CCSU and Vermont will also be getting a good pitcher in 2015. “I might not be in the shape that I was previously,” Cody Brown reminded, “but I’m getting there.” Smart money says he will get there, and the spring openers for both CCSU and OCC will be highly emotional.

Whatever happens Wiese and Brown are healthy, and they know that the town and team of Montpelier will be embracing them unconditionally.

For more on the Patrick Wiese Foundation, please visit:

www.patrickwiesefoundation.org