8-Year-Old Boy Connects on a Rocker of a Dream

WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — Ben Fuller found his early Christmas present on a baseball diamond.

The 8-year-old has a rare disorder that destroys the immune system, causing the most common of germs or illnesses to be potentially fatal.

But Ben can still swing a baseball bat.

And he wanted nothing more than to have John Rocker, the Atlanta Braves’ hard-throwing closer, toss him a few pitches. Rocker accommodated him, with help from Chicago White Sox catcher Mark Johnson.

On Saturday, Ben was deemed fit enough to play baseball for the first time in his life. He put on his Brave jersey--with Rocker’s name on the back--and rode to the high school baseball field with a police escort.

About 70 people came to watch.

After playing catch with Ben and some of the boy’s friends, Rocker took the mound and struck out Ben on three pitches. But he kept pitching, and Ben kept swinging. Strike four. Strike five. Ben was thwarted on the sixth pitch too.

He wasn’t used to swinging at baseballs. He and his friends always play with a tennis ball, and when his three brothers play real baseball, all Ben gets to do is watch.

“He sits on the bleachers and cries,” his mother, Jean Langston, said.

Ben lunged and missed at Rocker’s seventh pitch: strike seven.

Eight pitches, no hits, and Ben was still working on Rocker. Then on the ninth pitch, Ben connected, slapping a roller toward first base that nearly nailed a photographer.

Perhaps only in New York are hits off Rocker cheered more loudly.