Stricken Son Tested All-Star Weiss’ Faith

It was such a small thing it probably went unnoticed by a crowd of 51,267 at Coors Field on Tuesday night.

It was such a small thing in this mile-high All-Star game of 31 hits, but it was not small at all, maybe bigger than the game itself--acknowledgment of what a man and his family had been through in the last week, a tribute to perseverance and faith.

It happened in the third inning of the American League’s 13-8 victory over the National after Walt Weiss, the NL and Atlanta Braves’ shortstop who formerly played here with the Colorado Rockies, had blooped a single to left field.

As Weiss stood on first base, Jim Thome of the Cleveland Indians, the AL first baseman, walked over and tapped Weiss on the chest with his glove hand.

The left side. Near the heart.

Weiss undoubtedly grasped the significance--even if the 3-year-old boy sitting on his mother’s lap in Section 126 was among the many who probably didn’t notice.

A week ago, Brody Weiss was in a coma in an Atlanta hospital fighting for his life, a victim of E. coli bacteria.

His eyes were swollen shut, his kidneys had failed, fluid filled his lungs. Doctors promised nothing.

The high-salaried world of fun and games had encountered reality for Walt and Terri Weiss.

A first all-star selection at 34, in his 12th season, suddenly had lost importance.

“If this poison wants another victim, our three-year-old son will be dead in four days,” Weiss, in Montreal with the Braves, heard his wife tell him by phone on June 21.

The numbed shortstop rushed home, hoping to find his son still alive.

It is two weeks later and Weiss has told this most compelling of all-star stories to wave after wave of reporters in the two days he has spent at his old locker in the Colorado clubhouse.

Told it again, in fact, before he received the loudest of ovations during the pregame introductions Tuesday night and then delivered two hits and drove in a run in the NL’s losing effort.

There are rewards, big and small, but two all-star hits seem decidedly insignificant when measured against that squirming boy sitting on Terri Weiss’ lap and searching for Dinger, the Rockies’ mascot he loved so much before his dad signed a three-year, $9-million contract with the Braves as a free agent because the Rockies had bruised his ego and credentials by asking him to move to second base and make room at shortstop for Neifi Perez.

A .258 career hitter tends to stop dreaming about the All-Star game, and Weiss said he had accepted the fact that if it hadn’t happened in his first 11 years, it wasn’t going to happen in his 12th.

“I don’t want to trivialize it because it’s still a special event, but I definitely see it through different eyes now,” Weiss said before blooping that single to left and lining another to right. “What happened to Brody has to trivialize it somewhat, has to change your priorities and perspective.”

Now, the longest All-Star game in history was mercifully over, and the haggard Weiss said he was able to spot Brody as he took his place on the first base foul line during the introductions and they exchanged waves.

“This is a special time for all of us,” Weiss said. “We didn’t know if Brody would pull through or be strong enough to make the trip.

“We didn’t know if the doctors would permit him to attend the game, so everything that happened in the game was gravy, a bonus. That’s the only way I can look at it now.”

The story began on a family outing to an Atlanta water park, where Brody swallowed contaminated water and soon came down with cramps and diarrhea.

The initial diagnosis was intestinal flu. Innocent enough.

Weiss left on the trip, and his son’s condition turned grave as the bacterial infection ravaged his body.

Weiss returned to find this rambunctious boy lying motionless.

“It’s a helpless feeling,” Weiss said. “My faith is my rock, but that doesn’t mean I’m immune to suffering. If God had taken my son I don’t know how I would have handled it. I mean, I look back now and wonder how we dealt with it, but that’s what you do, handle it, deal with it. You place your confidence in the doctors and hope the symptoms run their course, and that’s simply what happened. A miracle. He got better instead of worse.”

Brody Weiss is out of jeopardy but still regaining his strength, still subject to tests.

Rockies’ owner Jerry McMorris, who lost a son to cystic fibrosis, sent a private plane to bring his former shortstop and his family to Colorado so that Brody wouldn’t face the rigors and crowds flying commercial.

“I don’t have words to express my gratitude to Jerry and the people here for the support they’ve given us,” Weiss said.

“But then the people here have been behind me from the beginning, even when I played here.

“I never wanted to leave, but I’m a shortstop and I feel they forced my hand and injured my pride with the second base thing.”

The Braves felt they were getting a reliable fielder and journeyman hitter to replace Jeff Blauser, but Weiss won the all-star selection among NL shortstops with a .312 average and .425 on-base percentage, the best among NL leadoff hitters.

“If I was going to play in one All-Star game, this is where I would have wanted it to be,” he said, not meaning it in a vindictive sense but as a player who retains an appreciation for the fans here and a home in suburban Denver and who said of his surprising first-half offense, “sometimes you just find the holes.”

He did that Tuesday night and was asked if the hits were for Brody?

“Well, now that I’ve got a couple, I can tell him, yes, they were for him,” Weiss said, breaking into a smile. A week ago, he was not sure he ever would again.