This column is about baseball and the terrible end to a beautiful life. Also, it's about Legos, laughter, shoelaces, bone cancer and so much more. You'll read about all of this here. But before you do I want you to get a good, long look at Jack Schumacher's blue eyes.

Study them. Know them. Remember them. Because they matter.

Also, because two weeks ago Jack closed them for the final time.

His life ended in a hospital bed in Portland. He was 14. Osteosarcoma, doctors said. That's bone cancer. In his final hours of life, Jack's mother crawled into the hospital bed, and cradled her son's body. She was clutching him when he died, officially, at 6:36 a.m. on, Friday May 18. But it's the beginning of his life that his mother, Tammi Huber, spoke about over the weekend. Because Jack was born the largest of her four children: nine pounds, eight ounces.

"Came out looking like he was three months old," Tammi said.

Jack loved throwing the ball as a toddler. Those who spent time with him said, "He's going to be a great athlete someday." Sports came naturally. At age four, Jack played T-ball. Later, baseball. And it wasn't long until he was on the mound, pitching, for his youth baseball teams in Portland, and later, Salem. Jack even worked out once a week with a former minor-league pitcher named Jerry McMullen, who now coaches youth baseball in Salem.

"He was no joke," said McMullen, who pitched as high as Double-A with the Red Sox. "Jack could throw the baseball. He threw a lot of strikes... it's hard to tell at that age in his growing cycle, but he was going to be a great high school pitcher."

Then, bone cancer showed up.

In April 2017, Jack complained of hip pain. Doctors diagnosed it as a muscle tear. They prescribed four weeks of physical therapy, which didn't help. Mostly because what was lurking in his pelvis was a 10 centimeter cancerous mass that nobody would ever wish on a young boy with big dreams.

It took months for doctors to discover the mass. He didn't know he had cancer. But it was there all the while, left side, iliac crest of his pelvis. The pain grew to be so excruciating that Jack had to take hot baths to cope. Often, two or three a day. By June of last year, he had difficulty walking. Still, an X-ray at a hospital in Salem didn't detect the abnormalities. A few weeks later, Tammi was in the car with her son, on the way to OHSU to meet with doctors in Portland.

"He could barely tolerate the car ride there," she said, "and he couldn't make it through the whole MRI because of the pain. They cut it short."

Tammi, a nurse herself, refused to return to Salem without answers. She planted herself in the office at OHSU, alongside her son, and told doctors she'd wait. They believed her. They looked at the month-old X-ray, reviewed the MRI, and this is how Jack ended up surrounded by a new group of doctors.

It was a blur, but his mother peered at the identification badges on their white coats as they scrambled around him.

The badges read: "ONCOLOGY."

You were promised baseball, Legos, laughter, and shoelaces in this piece. They're all part of Jack's powerful story, be sure. They're the kinds of things conversation wanders to when talking about bone cancer becomes too much. We'll get there soon enough. But first, understand that Tammi has been through a divorce, raised four children, and is now preparing to bury one of them.

There were chemotherapy and radiation treatments. A surgery removed Jack's pelvis. Another surgery took muscle from his back. The hospital stays piled up. So did the bills. A GoFundMe was set up to help, but it wasn't enough. Worse of all, Jack's cancer spread to his spine. His nerves were surrounded by it. By Christmas, he needed a walker to get around. But that didn't stop him from calling his pitching coach and asking if he could throw in the bullpen, just to feel normal again.

"We stood him on his walker and put the bucket of balls on his wheelchair," McMullen said. "It was just us, getting away from things. Watching him go through this was like somebody shoving an ice pick in your heart."

Jack was an excellent student. Especially at math. His mother figures he would have been an engineer, maybe, had he been able to grow up. Would have had probably got married someday, had children, and maybe became a baseball coach himself. See, Jack liked to take care of other people. In fact, after his pelvis was removed, Jack noted to his mother as he recovered that the cancer-stricken kids at Doernbecher Children's Hospital didn't have enough Lego sets to play with.

"His goal was to collect 100 Legos sets to donate," Tammi said. "He got 300."

That's Jack.

His teammates called him, "Shoe." A few did so because his last name was "Schumacher." Others used the nickname because he chronically had his loose, untied shoelaces, flopping around on his cleats.

Tammi said: "He'd be out there on the mound and his coaches would be shouting, 'Your shoes! Tie your shoes, Jack!'"

That's Jack.

He has three siblings -- Zach, Rebekah and Isaiah. They love him so much. Tammi raised them herself. She took a leave from her job to care for her son, and when Make-a-Wish showed up and asked Jack what he wanted as his dying wish, he didn't pick a Giants game. He didn't want Disneyland. He just wanted his mother and siblings to spend a relaxing time together in Hawaii. They swam with dolphins, and went to a luau, and they laughed and cried together.

That's Jack, too. He did that for his family.

"I didn't shelter my kids," Tammi said. "Life is real. It can be scary at times. It can be joyful at times. When Jack was diagnosed he was included on every discussion. When I was hearing it for the first time, he was hearing it for the first time."

That included the moment in which doctors told them Jack would die from his cancer. He was terminally ill. That was January. "Hearing that he's not going to ever get better," Tammi said. "It's devastating hearing that for your child." Shortly after that McMullen remembered a discussion when he and Jack just sat on the mound, talking.

"He looked past me, like he was looking at someone over my shoulder and said, 'If I don't get back on the mound... I might as well die."

There's a memorial service scheduled this Wednesday, 7 p.m., at the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes Stadium. Jack will get back on the mound. This time, with the Class-A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, his favorite major league team. And if you attend, you may come to understand that there's so much Jack could teach us all. He didn't get a long life, but he lived every day of what he was given. He was kind. He had a big heart. He was gentle and sweet. He was a Christian, and loved his family so much.

"He was a teacher of strength," McMullen said. "I saw him two days before he died and the cancer started to take over his respiratory system. You could tell he was really tired. There wasn't a lot there, but the last time we spoke he said he was ready to get back on the mound and get to work."

I told you from the start of this piece to focus on Jack's eyes. Study them. Know them. See them, as they might have seen you one day had you bumped into him on the street or stepped into an elevator he was already riding. Jack waged the battle of a lifetime from behind those blue eyes. There was courage and strength in them. There was love, and hope, and determination, there too.

By the end, Jack's body was riddled with radiation. His pelvis was removed. He needed a walker to move around. His central nervous system was smothered by tumors. And yet nobody was surprised when Jack announced that he wanted to donate his organs. All of them. Everything he could. You know, as gifts to help others.

When doctors explained the radiation he'd endured made that act mostly impossible, he was disappointed.

"He always wanted to give back and pay it forward," Tammi said.

Jack died a couple of weeks ago. It turns out, he was able to help others, after all. The radiation didn't damage his eyes. His cancer couldn't touch them. And so Jack died knowing his eyes would go to someone else. Someone born less fortunate than he, who might one day use them to see.

Said his mother: "Jack wanted fairness and love to be spread."