Two weeks after his mom died, Blue Jays' prospect Rowdy Tellez is in the big leagues. In pain, he sa

On Labour Day, moments after he learned he was going to the big leagues, Rowdy Tellez grabbed his phone to call his dad.
When he opened his contacts, there was his mom.
“The first number that pops up always in my contacts is Mom’s,” he said. “I saw that, and told my dad, and we just started crying. It was pretty emotional. This was definitely something I wanted to share with Mom. And I believe she was there for it.”
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In spirit, she was.
Lori Tellez battled brain cancer for almost two years. Remission had brought a period of hope. She was cancer-free, they said. But this year, her decline was steady. She died on Aug. 19, aged 53.
Two weeks later, after the triple-A Buffalo Bisons played their final game, manager Bobby Meacham summoned Tellez and told him the Blue Jays were bringing him to The Show.
They gave him a jersey with No. 68 on the back and a locker in a far corner of the clubhouse, just across the way from fellow first baseman Justin Smoak, who had helped to counsel Tellez through his ordeal back in spring training.
Smoak could empathize. In April of 2011, his first full season in the majors, Smoak’s father died of lung cancer at 57.
“I feel like to be in a situation like that, to have somebody around you that’s been through it, maybe it might help a little bit,” Smoak said. “For me, it was hard to even talk about. I just tried to push through it. I probably should have tried to talk about it more than I did. I just tried not to think about it. I think it might be better to talk about it to try to get through it rather than do it the way that I did it.”
By the time Smoak found out that Lori Tellez was dying, her son was finally ready to talk. Throughout 2017, bitterness and self-pity filled his days. Like Smoak, he did not want to talk about it.
“Smoakey was one of those guys that went through a similar thing that I did and he was always checking up on me to make sure I was OK,” Tellez said. “He said he knows how it feels.”
In spring training 2015, the Jays brought Rowdy Tellez over from minor-league camp for an exhibition game. At 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds, he looked like a home-run hitter, and that day, he was. He lofted a fly ball down the right-field line that bounced off the clubhouse roof. In this towering 20-year-old, Blue Jays fans thought they had seen the future.
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Over the next two seasons, he remained firmly on the prospect radar. He hit for power (34 homers) and average (.293). That brought him to Triple A for the 2017 season.
His slash line in his first season at Buffalo: .222/.295/.333 with six home runs.
The previous December had brought the dreadful diagnosis: Lori had Stage 4 melanoma.
“2017 was bad, really bad,” he said. “I didn’t talk to anybody. I kept it to myself. I thought I could do it my own way and it ended up backfiring. I had a lot of hate and anger and frustration. Selfishness built up.”
If there was a turning point, it came late in spring training when he was called home after his mom took a frightening turn.
When he returned to join the Bisons, he had made a decision.
“I said, ‘I can’t do this on my own anymore,’” he said. “‘I’m going to talk. I’m going to be an open person. I’m going to be vulnerable. I need to get this off my chest.’ And it helped me a lot.”
He quickly discovered a community of support he didn’t know existed. After a year of sending out a message that he wanted to be left alone, his openness invoked a change in those around him – teammates, coaches, friends back home.
Like Smoak, Meacham understood what Tellez was going through. Meacham was playing in Buffalo in 1989 when his mother died. He was 28.
While Meacham and hitting coach Corey Hart were daily counsellors, Tellez’s teammates became a compassionate family.
“Meach helped me a lot,” he said. “Corey helped me. My whole team was very supportive of what I was going through. They kept my spirits high. I couldn’t be more grateful for the team I had this year in Buffalo and what they all did for me and helped me out going through the process that I was going through. And of course, my family and friends. I was extremely grateful and fortunate that I had people around me that cared that much. I didn’t know that I had that many people in my corner.”
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As his corner got bigger and happily crowded, so did his realization that despite his mother’s plight, his life did not lack for blessings.
“I’m fortunate enough to get to play a game that I love,” he said. “And I really learned how to handle what was going on with me – not to be selfish and not to take my losses and make them bigger than they really were. Just be able to close out every day and get back to helping my team win.”
After a slow start, Tellez finished the season with a slash line of .270/.340/.425 with 13 homers.
He had learned to play with a feeling of freedom and peace of mind, he said. Like he used to.
Growing up, the Tellez household was a home away from home for his friends and those of his sister. His mom made them a part of her family. Derek Hill, a high-school teammate who plays in the Tigers’ system, spent most of his junior year living with the Tellez family because his parents were divorced and his dad, a baseball scout, was on the road much of the time.
“Derek was one of her favourite kids,” Tellez said. “She always said she had multiple kids.”
Occasionally, her own friends stayed over too, even though they lived nearby.
“I’d never seen a 50-old-lady have sleepovers with her friends,” he said with a smile. “That’s just who she was. She always wanted to be there for everybody.”
That was abundantly evident when he went home for her funeral. Among those paying their condolences were people his dad never met. Lori had worked in a local courthouse for a time before taking a job in the school system.
At the funeral were college classmates, elderly judges from her courthouse days and friends of Rowdy and his sister who loved her like a mother too.
“Some of my friends were like, ‘I don’t know where I’d be in life if it wasn’t for your mom. She bailed me out a lot. She helped me a ton. She put a roof over my head when I needed it.’ That’s just who she was,” he said.
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When Rowdy and his sister had some private time with their dad, they “confessed” – Rowdy’s word – that their mom sometimes hid some of their childhood antics from him, times when they got into trouble at school or sneaked out of the house, only to find Mom lying in wait. They also ‘fessed up about a few deeds they got away with. They all smiled and figured that somewhere – “a better place,” Rowdy said – their mom would be eavesdropping and smiling too.
In stark contrast to 2017, Tellez talks easily now about his loss and what he has gained from it. There is still pain, of course, but the words come easily, sprinkled with small smiles.
“She raised me to be who I am, to be driven, to go out and achieve my dreams,” he said. “She did everything she could to make sure her kids did that. She loved us to death, her whole family, everybody.”
On Monday, one of his dreams came true. And the first person on his call list was his mom.
Top photo by John Lott/The Athletic
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