John Maffei
June 28, 2018
Pitching in front of at least 75 friends and family members, Joe Musgrove tossed seven shutout innings against his hometown team and Jody Mercer homered to lead the Pittsburgh Pirates to a 6-3 victory over the sloppy San Diego Padres on Friday night.(Dennis Poroy/Getty Images)
Since Petco Park opened in 2004, the family’s seats have been in section 101, “right behind the high-priced seats, but behind the plate in a direct line with the pitcher,” Williams said.
Williams will be in his seat this weekend, but his perspective will be totally different.
On Saturday, right-hander Trevor Williams — Rich’s son — will be the starting pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the middle game of a three-game series with the Padres.
It will be Trevor’s first appearance in Petco Park.
“My dad said he didn’t want to sit in his seat because he’d be in my direct line of sight,” said Trevor.
“I went to three-four Padres games a week when I was in middle school. I went mainly on the weekends in high school. I fell in love with Petco Park.
“I told my dad that if I can see him in the seats, I’m doing something wrong. My focus will be on my catcher and the hitter.”
Williams, who played at Rancho Bernardo High andArizona State, is one of three San Diego pitchers on the Pirates.
Right-hander Joe Musgrove will start today. Left-hander Steven Brault works out of the bullpen. Brault and Musgrove were teammates at Grossmont High in 2010.
Brault, an accomplished musician, went on to play at Regis University in Colorado. He was drafted in the 11th round by the Baltimore Orioles and traded to the Pirates in 2015.
Musgrove was a first-round pick of the Toronto Blue Jays in 2011, traded to the Houston Astros in 2012 and acquired by the Pirates via a trade at the end of last season.
Musgrove is the only one of the local trio who has pitched in Petco Park, throwing a scoreless inning for the U.S. team as the starting pitcher against the World in the All-Star Futures Game before the 2016 All-Star Game in San Diego. He retired Manuel Margot, Raimel Tapia and Yoan Moncada.
“San Diego is such a hotbed of baseball talent,” Trevor Williams said. “There are San Diego guys all over the big leagues.
“But having three San Diego kids on the same team — with two of those from the same high school — is pretty special. It’s cool, and we do talk about it.”
Trevor Williams
The Padres are the last National League team Williams will have faced, and Petco Park is the only NL stadium in which he hasn’t pitched.
He had no idea how many tickets he’ll need to accommodate family and friends but estimated he, Musgrove and Brault will have a sizable cheering section all weekend.
“It’s probably going to be easier for me and Joe,” Williams said. “We can leave tickets for the day we start. Steven is working out of the bullpen, so he has to leave tickets for all three days.”
With family members and friends in attendance, the games figure to be emotional.
But even more so for Williams and Musgrove.
Rich Williams, a former Marine who is now a legal officer for Marine bases at Miramar, MCRD and Yuma and the longtime public-address voice of Rancho Bernardo baseball, was diagnosed with stage 4 double B-cell lymphoma in 2015 and given 60-90 days to live.
“Thanks to some great doctors, chemo and radiation, I’m still here,” Rich Williams said. “I’m doing really well now ... two years cancer free in September.
“I don’t dwell on the cancer, but vowed I’d spend every nickel traveling to see Trevor pitch.”
Rich was in Pittsburgh when Trevor made his major league debut on Sept. 7, 2016. Trevor worked three scoreless innings in relief against the Cardinals, earning the victory.
Immediately after the game, Trevor went to the stands, hugged wife Jackie and infant son Isaac before sharing an emotional moment with Rich.
The video of the pair embracing, crying, immediately went viral.
“I remember looking at him and being so proud,” Rich said. “And I was so happy to be alive.”
Rich Williams is also proud of Trevor for his commitment to Project 34. Named after Cory Hahn, Trevor’s roommate at Arizona State, Project 34 helps raise money for wheelchairs for spinal-cord victims.
Cory Hahn, a 26th-round pick of the Padres out of Santa Ana Mater Dei in 2010, was paralyzed from the chest down after snapping his neck on a head-first slide into second base in his third game with the Sun Devils.
Hahn, who is now a scout for the Arizona Diamondbacks, wore No. 34. Williams wears that number as a tribute to his friend, who was in Trevor’s wedding.
In 2008, Mark Musgrove, Joe’s father, was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune deficiency. A police officer at the time, Mark Musgrove was paralyzed from the neck down for nearly two years.
“I had to mature and grow up and fill a role I wasn’t ready to at that age,” Musgrove told the U-T’s Kevin Acee last fall. “I started to realize more and more that sometimes bad things have to happen to good people. Maybe he had to suffer for me to turn out the way I have. I didn’t want to believe that for a long time. Like, why would that happen? The life he led of being such a good person, being a cop, risking his life every day to protect people. He got sick. Maybe it was supposed to happen. That’s really been a motivating piece for me, pushing me.”
Said Terra Musgrove, Joe’s mom: “He had to grow up really quick, and he had to be the man of the house. We split duties around the house. He spent a lot of nights with him at the hospital.”
Joe Musgrove said baseball played a big part in helping him get through that period.
“I always loved baseball, but realized just how important it was for me as an outlet,” he told Richard Justice of MLB.com. “I was so negative, so depressed. I wasn’t doing my schoolwork and stuff. I was spending most of my time at the hospital with him, and the 21/2, three hours a day where I got to leave the hospital and go to the field was the only time where I didn’t really think about it.
“Baseball was the one thing that never changed. Everything else in my life seemed to be kind of falling down. My grades were struggling. My dad wasn’t doing well. Baseball allowed me that same feeling of joy and happiness when I couldn’t find it anywhere else.”
Both stories have happy endings.
Rich Williams will be at this weekend’s games with his other sons — Trent, an All-America swimmer at Cal, and Tanner, who swam at UC Santa Cruz.
Mark Musgrove, now 61, works as a private investigator.
“This weekend is going to be pretty emotional for Joe, Steven and myself,” Trevor Williams said. “But the game doesn’t know how emotional it will be. The game is the game, it will go on.
“I think once we get the first pitch out of the way, we’ll all be fine.”
Steven Brault (Charles LeClaire/USA Today Sports)
Brault, a left-hander, wasn’t drafted out of high school and chose to play at Regis University because it was one of the few schools that offered voice for a music major.
Last week, he sang the national anthem before a Pirates game at PNC Park.
“It’s something my grandma always wanted me to do, sing the anthem before a major league game,” Brault said.
Brault is the lead singer for his San Diego-based band “Street Gypsies.”
“There are no do-overs in life,” Rich Williams said. “Mark Musgrove and I have had plenty of time at games, talking about our sons, rooting for Trevor, Joe and Steven.
“I just hope we don’t get too emotional watching them pitch this weekend.”
LOCAL BUCS
Three Pittsburgh pitchers with San Diego ties:
Name | G | GS | P | H | R | ER | BB | K | W-L | ERA
Trevor Williams | 16 | 16 | 87.0 | 76 | 44 | 39 | 37 | 64 | 6-5 | 4.25
Joe Musgrove | 6 | 6 | 33.1 | 38 | 19 | 17 | 9 | 32 | 2-3 | 4.59
Steven Brault | 22 | 5 | 59.2 | 42 | 27 | 26 | 34 | 51 | 5-2 | 4.13
john.maffei@sduniontribune.com
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