Look closely today, of all days. Look past the steroids problems and the oversized egos and the rising ticket prices.
Look, right there, a little to the south. Do you see it? No, it’s not a mirage. It is true.
Baseball really does have a heart.
At least the San Diego Padres do. On this great American holiday, the franchise that plays in Petco Park should be celebrated not for any great pitching performance or hitting surge.
But also for simply showing compassion. For demonstrating a rare sensitivity and loyalty to one of its own. For proving that a fellow human being’s condition might be more important that the cold, hard business of this, or any, sport.
The Padres care.
Shout it from the rooftops of the Gas Lamp District and let it echo into Mission Valley and all the way out to the Barona Indian Reservation, east of downtown, where a once vibrant young man sits, confined to a wheelchair, with little use of his arms and legs, and is still able to smile.
Matt LaChappa knows he will be taken care of, because the Padres refuse to forget about him.
No one should.
“It’s really amazing,” says Linda LaChappa, Matt’s mother. “I can’t believe this has really happened.”
It is a bittersweet story that glows like the warmth from your family Thanksgiving table. Pull up a chair next to the thickest drumstick you can find and let the details fill you with a new kind of holiday cheer.
It begins on a cool April night in 1996. Matt LaChappa was a strapping, 20-year-old, left-handed pitcher, a second-round 1993 draft choice out of nearby El Capitan High who was considered the best pitching prospect in the Padres’ organization.
He threw 90 mph-plus, had a sharp-breaking curveball that scouts called his best pitch and a pickoff move that could paralyze opposing base runners.
With his parents watching from the stands that night, LaChappa was warming up in the bullpen at Rancho Cucamonga, preparing to enter the game in relief, when something went terribly wrong. He clutched his chest and fell to the ground.
Trainer Jim Daniels rushed to his side and immediately began administering CPR. He continued for 20 minutes until local dispatchers finally decided which emergency unit to send.
LaChappa had a heart attack. Later, in the hospital, he suffered a second one.
“What happened,” says Priscilla Oppenheimer, the Padres’ director of minor-league operations, “is that he had a virus around his heart. He’d just undergone a physical, too, but something like that can only be picked up on an ecocardiogram.”
LaChappa’s career was over, his life changed forever in a few gut-wrenching moments.
His future could have been as bleak as his prognosis, except Oppenheimer and the Padres’ organization wouldn’t allow it.
Even though LaChappa would never throw another pitch, even though he could never fulfill the contract he had signed or repay the bonus he’d received, it didn’t matter.
The Padres continued to pay him.
Each year, they have re-signed him to a basic minor-league contract, just like the one they renewed again recently, not only providing him with some much-needed cash but, more important, allowing him to maintain his insurance so he can continue to receive quality care.
The team doesn’t have to do this. It wantsto do this.
“It’s our way of saying to Matt that you’re a Padre for life,” Oppenheimer says. “When Larry Lucchino (the team’s former president who now holds the same position with the Red Sox) was here, he said that’s the way it should be. And as long as I’m here, that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
Linda LaChappa’s voice chokes up with emotion when she talks about it.
“I think it’s the Lord’s doing, but the Padres are part of the blessing,” she says. “Me and my boys (there are three other sons in the family) are very grateful.
“I don’t understand it. They probably haven’t done this for anyone else. But Larry Lucchino said Matt would always be a part of the Padres family.”
Oppenheimer, 64, has been with the organization 24 years and hardly looks upon it as an obligation.
“It’s my privilege to be able to do this,” she says. “And I hope if I leave here, someone else will think it worthy to keep going.”
Oppenheimer visits LaChappa at his home on the reservation regularly.
“What happened just devastated so many people,” she says. “Matt was looked up to by everyone in the community. When he signed, about half the tribe came in for the ceremony.
“He’s a great kid. He is confined to a wheelchair, has trouble communicating and is barely able to hold a spoon. But his mind is still as sharp as ever. He has an incredible sense of humor and is just a joy to be around.”
Though Oppenheimer says she often has to call LaChappa and remind him to cash his minor-league checks, the insurance his contract allows him to maintain is key.
“It is Highmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and they’ve really been supportive through all this,” Oppenheimer says. “I’m sure they could get out of it if they chose.”
But that’s the thing about the people who know LaChappa. They choose to hang in there with him.
“I told his mom I’d always look out for him,” Oppenheimer says. “I guess I still do in a way.”
She still does in many ways. The Padres have renamed a Little League Park they helped renovate in Lakeside. It’s now called Matt LaChappa Field.
They’ve invited him to be honored at Petco Park, where they wheeled him out to the mound and he could watch his brother throw out the first pitch.
At Rancho Cucamonga, they retired Matt’s uniform and invited his dad to throw out the first pitch on opening night a few years back.
“Matt enjoys his baseball,” says his mom. “He likes to watch the Padres. He played with Jason Phillips (of the Dodgers) in high school, and Matt Clement (now with the Red Sox) played on the same minor-league team.
“Priscilla comes out and visits him all the time. It’s so wonderful that people haven’t forgotten him.”
Oppenheimer will never forget him. She says Matt is an inspiration to her.
“He’s always so upbeat,” she says. “If I’m having a bad day or feeling sorry for myself, I think about him and it brings me back to the real world.
“Matt is my hero.”
In a year when we seem to need it more than ever, one major-league organization and, especially, one compassionate, caring employee, have combined to provide us with hope and encouragement, taking the act of giving to a whole new level.
The Padres and Priscilla Oppenheimer are the real heroes here.
Linda LaChappa, fighting back tears on the other end of the phone line, puts it best on this reflective family holiday.
“We’re all just so very thankful,” she says.
Contact the writer: (714) 796-5050 ext. 1207 or sbisheff@ocregister.com
