TORONTO -- Ross Stripling wonders what he would do if he got that call today rather than as a 19-year-old college freshman.
The now-Blue Jays pitcher was working hard just to keep his head above water back in 2009. A walk-on on the Texas A&M baseball team and a business student attending demanding classes that fall, he got a call from his mother, Tammy Stripling. She had breast cancer and would have to undergo chemotherapy -- six rounds of it, to be precise.
“It was a weird time in my life,” Stripling said at Rogers Centre the weekend before Mother’s Day. “I look back at it, and a lot of times I wish that I would have gone home more. I think I was only there for one or two of her treatments. Sometimes I think, ‘What the hell was I doing that I wasn’t there for all six of them?’”
As compelled as Stripling may have been to drop everything and go to Fort Worth to be with his mom, the rigors of college and his goal to stay on the baseball team made it difficult. His father, Hayes Stripling, was also categorical when telling Ross and his brother to stay the course in school.
He worried from afar most of the time. But, after months of tribulation, six rounds of chemo and a double mastectomy, Tammy was cancer-free. She’s been in remission ever since.
“I feel like [now] I would go home and be with her every minute,” Stripling said. “But at that time, that’s just not the way that it went.”
Stripling's retrospect is justified. His mother was with him and his brother every minute growing up. Hayes worked as an engineer and traveled the world selling plastic extruders -- large industrial machines that he helped build.
He was away from Monday through Thursday, 40 weeks out of the year, making stops anywhere from Germany to Brazil. Tammy, meanwhile, stayed at home taking care of their two young sons.
“That’s the job that [my dad] had,” Stripling said of the family dynamic. “Sometimes, I had soccer and baseball on the same day. My mom would take me and maybe another kid who was a teammate on both teams. We would go to baseball, play the game and then we’d get in the car and change into our soccer uniforms and she’d take me to soccer.
“She was at every game, all the time. And I played every sport under the sun when I was young. She was always there in one of those foldout chairs on the sideline, sitting there and cheering her son.”
No level of sickness would ever change that.
In February 2010, months after Tammy’s diagnosis and with her treatment still ongoing, Stripling had his mother in the stands for Opening Weekend at Texas A&M. The temperature was 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and she wore a wig.
“She was going through chemo, and it messes with your body and your brain so bad that she doesn’t even remember being there,” he said. “To really not be feeling good at all and still come to those games. I mean, they’re just baseball games, you know? And my mom wanted to be there so bad.”
Tammy and Hayes are both in their 60s and happily retired now, but they still show up to Stripling’s starts whenever the Blue Jays are in Texas or nearby. His mother is usually dressed head to toe in Blue Jays gear, just like she was in Dodgers or Texas A&M threads before that.
But those college games were particularly special, even if the memories are rather blurry these days.
“It’s one of those things that I’m old enough to remember, but I feel like I don’t remember that much of it,” Stripling said. “Just because it was so tough, or it was just that long ago, or I wasn’t as emotionally mature as I thought I was. … Or all of the above.”
Stripling is now 32 and a seven-year MLB veteran. He has a wife, Shelby, and a 14-month-old son, Jackson. He’s also been through multiple relocations in his career, all while learning first-hand what it’s like to travel all the time for work.
With every new experience comes a little more maturity, and greater appreciation for everything his mother has overcome.
“My wife, a lot of times, is a single mom for a week to 10 days at a time when I’m gone,” he said. “I haven’t been able to put Jackson to bed in a long time, because I’m not home for bedtime. So, just the toll, the workload that’s put on Shelby … my mom had that, a lot.”
These days, Tammy is more than happy to impart some motherly knowledge onto her daughter-in-law or her son, all while constantly looking for new stories about her grandson. Stripling makes a point to call his mother at least twice a week and keep her updated on every development in Jackson’s life.
Living in a different country certainly poses some challenges, but the family makes do. Besides, Toronto has been a meaningful spot since way before Stripling was traded to the Blue Jays in 2020.
The Dodgers came to Rogers Centre back in 2016, when Stripling was a rookie just recently called up for the first time. He got the start on Mother’s Day.
Donning pink cleats, Stripling went six innings with six strikeouts, giving up just one run in the Dodgers’ 4-2 win. Tammy wasn’t there for that -- in her defense, Canada is pretty far from Texas -- but she still got a memento from it.
“I gave her the cleats one day for Christmas,” he said with a laugh. “Boxed them up, bright pink cleats. I think about that every now and again, the full circle of now being a Blue Jay and [having pitched] here on Mother’s Day.”