For our next feature in the Women in Baseball series, we talked to Cheryl Zimmerman, mother of Nationals third baseman Ryan Zimmerman.

 

It was a Thursday night and the Nationals were in the midst a make-up double header in Denver.  The Nats would go on to win both games.  Zimmerman went 3 for 9 with an error.

Back in her Virginia Beach home, his mother Cheryl watched both games, just as she has since he was a child.  “Everyday he had a game. It was nonstop. It was our life. It still is.  It’s a lot of hard work. It’s not all glamour. Getting up to this point, it took a lot of time and effort.”  Today, instead of rushing back and forth from practice and summer leagues, Cheryl cheers her son on from the comfort of her home, where she doesn’t miss a beat.  “I try to teach him to keep his mouth shut. I watch every word he says. And tell him to stop spitting…I tell him that all the time. Oh yeah, he loves that. ‘Oh, my mom’s watching.’”

And she is watching, but with great pride.  It wasn’t until his sophomore year of college that she knew he was destined for a professional career.  Cheryl can’t find fitting words to describe how emotional it was when he was drafted by the Washington Nationals in 2005.   She felt it again when Ryan launched a walk off home run against the Yankees on Father’s Day in 2006.  It’s her favorite memory of Ryan’s young career — “that Yankees game. I’m not a Yankees fan AT ALL. A lot of people here, friends of ours, they are Yankees fans. Oh, I just loved it.”

So did Nationals fans.  It was one of Ryan’s many special holiday performances.  Big games, clutch situations – that’s when Zimmerman excels and it’s part of the reason he’s already established himself as the face of the franchise at 24 years old.  Fans often hear that he’s a quiet leader, respected for his maturity and stoic presence on the field, much of which Cheryl helped to instill in him.  But, behind the scenes,

…you just never know what is going to happen next, what he’s going to do or say. He’s just so unpredictable and always exciting. He’s a ball of fire.  He might be calm, cool and collected on the field, but you never know what you’re going to get when you’re off the field. He’s pretty funny.

His mother is pretty funny too.  Raised in Pennsylvania, Cheryl attended Lock Haven University.  She played sports all of her life and kept score for the team her father coached.  “Back when I was in high school and college, I was a big Willie Stargell fan.  When I played softball, I was always #8. That was Willie’s number.”

Cheryl married her high school sweetheart, Keith, and taught elementary school special education while raising Ryan and his brother Shawn.  In 1995, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a chronic, unpredictable disease that affects the central nervous system.   Her condition is often cited as a source of Ryan’s maturity.  Cheryl agrees:  “He’s learned and saw and dealt with it upfront. So he knows what people deal with and how they deal with it everyday.”

It prompted him to talk to his parents about starting a foundation to help fund MS research and programs for patients.  Cheryl recalls, “after he was drafted in ’05, we were sitting around here in the off season and we talked about it, and he said, let’s start a foundation. So, up it went. That’s kind of how it started…Oh, he’s up to bat…He wanted to help people with MS.”

“Damn, he didn’t get a hit. I’m sorry,” she interjects before completing her thought.

Cheryl oversees the ziMS Foundation with Ryan and her husband and helps to run the day to day operation and to plan for future events.

I have a couple of really good friends that come out here and help and do stuff on the computer and we do work for the foundation. I basically tell them what to do and between us we work on setting stuff up and doing stuff. I’m close to what the role of a treasurer would be. But I basically make phone calls and talk to people and tell people what to do and they listen to me….at least I like to think so. Just raising money and awareness.

Up next for Cheryl and the ziMS Foundation…an annual charity gala and golf tournament this weekend.  Last year the gala and tournament raised over $80,000.  Multiple sclerosis affects an estimated 300,000 people in the United States and probably more than 1 million people around the world — including twice as many women as men. Most people experience their first signs or symptoms between ages 20 and 40. For more information on the event, visit the ziMS Foundation website or sign-up to attend by clicking here.

We are so grateful to Cheryl for taking the time to talk to us about her experience as the mother of one of our favorite Nationals.  The work of the ziMS Foundation means a lot to the Zimmerman family, so please check out their website to learn more how you can make a donation to their cause.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Women in Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.