The young man many feel is the most important member of Tennessee Wesleyan University’s NAIA national championship-contending baseball team weighs less than 100 pounds, hasn’t collected a hit or thrown a pitch all season and is attempting to beat back demon cancer for a third time as an 8-year-old second-grader at City Park Elementary in Athens, Tennessee.
“I’m not sure we’re where we are without Neyland Pickel,” junior catcher Shamoy Christopher said Wednesday, just before the No. 1-seeded Bulldogs flew to Lewiston, Idaho, for the NAIA World Series. “He’s helped us stay strong together.”
Added junior infielder Bryce Giles: “When Neyland was added to the team, he was that extra spark we needed.”
Noted TWU coach Billy Berry: “He’s a big, big part of this program. Neyland’s done so much more for us than we’ve done for him.”
It all started last September, a few weeks before young Pickel headed off to Vanderbilt for his second bone-marrow transplant in three years in an attempt to finally silence the leukemia that now twice has threatened his life.