Nicole Taylor’s son, Brennan, is 11 years old and has been diagnosed with autism, cerebral palsy and a form of epilepsy, a disorder in which nerve cell activity in the brain is disturbed, causing seizures. When he was younger, Brennan had up to 200 seizures per day, Nicole said. Now, on a good day, he has fewer than 10.

Brennan is a member of the Syracuse Challenger Baseball league.

“He doesn’t get many opportunities outside of school to meet friends,” she said. “A lot of kids his age go to a friend’s house. He doesn’t. This gives him a chance to hang out with his peers and have some fun with them. I think that’s his favorite part, just being able to be a kid.”

Syracuse Challenger Baseball league, started in 1982, has swelled into the largest baseball league for children with disabilities in the United States, with 280 members. Families involved said the league is defined by principles of freedom and openness to young children, teenagers and adults with disabilities.

Saturday afternoon’s game at NBT Bank Stadium marked the end of the 2018 season. Games were twice per week this summer, with players aged from age 4 to 65.

Participants’ diagnoses include autism, Asperger’s syndrome, cerebral palsy, down syndrome and diabetes to Prader-Willi syndrome and Apert syndrome. Most players in Syracuse Challenger Baseball hail from Onondaga County, though there are players from Oswego and Madison County.

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“With special needs, there are times you feel very conscious that you are a different person in the world of typical people,” said Dee Perkins, a Syracuse Challenger Baseball director who said she joined the organization in 2000 because her son, Taylor, was diagnosed with autism.

“Nobody is looking at the child in a weird way,” Perkins said.

People with disabilities are often alienated in the classroom as children, some of the participating families said. At Challenger events such as Saturday’s, parents said, children and adults with disabilities get equal playing time. Games are one inning and everybody gets to hit, with no strikeouts.

At about 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, the public address announcer facilitated the small crowd’s energy with a play-by-play account of the action on the field.

“Base hit! Look at that hit, huh?” he said as the ball rolled toward second base and players began to round the bases.

“Everybody’s going home!”

As the play unfolded, Syracuse Chiefs’ General Manager Jason Smorol said, “Isn’t this just great?”

“The patience, care, love, it just touches you,” Smorol said later.

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One Syracuse player hits a “beep ball” because he has a visual impairment. The ball beeps, an auditory queue signaling the ball’s location as it floats toward the strike zone.

Perkins said her proudest moment as a mother of a Challenger Baseball player came a few years ago, when her son caught a pop fly ball. She happened to be nearby taking photographs.

“Oh my God, you caught it!” she said. Taylor picked her up and they both smiled.

Adrian Bayardi, a Syracuse resident, signed up his son, Daniel, for Challenger about seven years ago. He practices a couple of times per week and enjoys cheering on the Chiefs.

“He understands what’s going on,” Bayardi said. “It’s about introducing him to things he can do for the rest of his life.”

The league presents its members an anything-goes opportunity: The freedom to go out and play simply because they enjoy it. The beauty of Syracuse Challenger Baseball, families said, is about this kind of freedom.

Published on September 16, 2018 at 11:27 pm

Contact Matthew: mguti100@syr.edu | @MatthewGut21