The antique blue JUGS pitching machine hums to life. A low buzz spills out like a refrigerator working on overtime. The wheels spin rapidly, primed to fire pitches at 40 miles per hour. Three wooden boards brace its back legs. To the right, a bucket sits half full with scuffed polyurethane baseballs, the yellow color faded from overuse.
Grayson Chapeau steps towards the turf mat, 60 feet away.
His stride is quick and uneven as he picks up a white and gold Louisville Slugger, its grip frayed and curling near the knob. He tightens his hold and looks up. His mouth opens, revealing rubber bands and retainers between a crooked smile. A scar peeks out from underneath a red Rawlings helmet.
“Gray, are you zoned in?” calls his mother, Chelsey, lifting a ball from the bucket.
Grayson doesn’t answer. He just nods.
She raises the ball above her head, then lets it drop into the blue chute. The machine spits it forward with a hiss.
Grayson swings, and connects.
Still Grayson
The MRI tube was no wider than a cafeteria tray, its ceiling is less than six inches from his nose. Somewhere from the next room, a technician watched Grayson’s brain light up on a black-and-white monitor as a disembodied voice crackled through the speaker above his head.
“Hold still.”
There’s no need to repeat it. He’s been here more than sixty times. His family turned it into a game when he was just four years old.
“Freeze!”
And he did. Without any sedation, Grayson would lay perfectly still for 45, sometimes 90 minutes at a time through MRIs, CT scans, and 40 rounds of radiation for brain cancer. Diffuse Astrocytoma. But unlike Grayson in the tube, the tumor wouldn’t stay in place.
Woven deep into parts of the brain that handle vision, movement, and memory, the tumor is slow growing, but inoperable. The word “diffuse” means it spreads out instead of forming one clean clump. Removing it was never an option. Not then, and not now. Grayson turned 15 this year, nearly 11 years into a fight that has never paused.
“He has never been in remission,” Chelsey said. “He is fighting for his life alongside his dreams.”
He has every right to be bitter. But that was never in his character.
Keeping Tabs
The sun dips behind the Black Hills of Spearfish, South Dakota, painting the outfield in a golden glow. Down below, a ballpark buzzes with summer life as college kids chase innings and memories. Roughly 600 loyal fans are rolling through the gates every game, persevering through the mountain storms and dry July heat. They are wearing the colors: blue, white, black, and gray.
The colors, and heart, of the Spearfish Sasquatch.
In the bleachers, fingers pop aluminum tabs from drink cans. They drop the tabs into clear containers throughout the stadium, each with a black and gold sticker picturing Grayson’s face and message. One is taped to a recycling bin, the other rests on the counter of the concession stand.
It’s not a game. It’s something quieter. Each tab is for a boy who can’t take the field but never left the team. Grayson walks around, hyping up the crowd.
“When I say Spearfish you say Sasquatch!”
Sometimes fans and friends yell back. Other times his voice rings loud amongst the silence. He always ends with one big scream.
Often, he carries a glove. Other times a miniature wooden bat. When batters step to the plate, Grayson swings too. He dons a white Sasquatch jersey, signed by generations of players who have come through this town. The number on the back isn’t printed, instead it’s scribbled on with black Sharpie.
24.
That was Ryan Bachman’s number, the one he wore through four Sasquatch seasons. It’s retired now. Preserved in a circular placard mounted to the front of the press box, a badge of loyalty drilled into the stadium’s bones.
“There’s nobody I’d rather see still wearing that number,” Bachman said.
After Ryan’s fourth and final season concluded last summer, Grayson was a wreck. Thankfully, Ryan is back as a coach. And Grayson? He is back in his usual spot, roaming the stands, uniting the crowd. Some days, Grayson joins the guys down in the outfield for their daily prayer.
“Grayson is part of the team,” Bachman said. “He may be a bit younger and smaller, but we all look up to him.”
This summer, a new addition has been wrapped around the wrists of Bachman and many others. A navy band with gold lettering. On one side, a supportive message, bracketed by a childhood cancer ribbon:
No One Fights Alone! Go GOLD 4 kids!
On the other, a tribute. A symbol of what everybody at this park is part of.
Grayson’s Support Squad.
Almost every player received one, and none have taken it off. There’s reasons for all of this, the bracelets, saving pop tabs, and uplifting the fans. Bringing the town, the team and the crowd together.
The first time Grayson donated pop tabs, he hauled 88 pounds, his entire wagon was stuffed to the brim. It all went to the Ronald McDonald House in Minneapolis to help house kids like him. He was just four years old then. Ever since, his family has collected yearly donations. Today, his goal is a bit bigger.
Four thousand pounds. Six million individual tabs.
“We just keep breaking our own records,” Gray said, laughing. “How great is that?”
The Longest Season
Four years ago, white walls and fluorescent lights surrounded his bed for 26 days.
A breathing tube was pressed into his mouth. His body swelled from steroids. He couldn’t walk. Outside the room, time stretched and cracked. Inside, Grayson Chapeau fought to stay.
He had first been placed on the ventilator in the emergency room at Spearfish Hospital. When storms grounded the life flight bound for their usual children’s hospital in Denver, Colorado, the plane was redirected to an unfamiliar facility in Omaha. It was 2021, the pandemic still ravaging medical centers nationwide. None of the doctors were well-known at first. The wing of the hospital that housed Grayson was unfamiliar and surreal. Ceiling tiles leaked from rainwater and hung low in the hallways.
“It was brutal,” his father Jeremiah said. “It looked abandoned. We felt lost.”
While Grayson’s regular team in Denver fought to transfer him back, he remained on the ventilator for several days. Jeremiah, a respiratory therapist, knew his son didn’t need sedation to complete his impending MRIs. He fought to get the tube out.
At his age, Grayson should’ve been producing 75 milliliters of cerebrospinal fluid, enough to cushion the brain and spinal cord. Grayson wasn’t producing just 75 milliliteres. He was pumping 300. When the body produces more fluid than it can absorb, pressure builds until the balance breaks: hydrocephalus.
Back in South Dakota, Chelsey tried to hold their home together. She was taking care of four other kids, and sending kisses over FaceTime. Grayson would catch them and pretend to eat them, even with the ventilator strapped to his face.
She couldn’t take it. When doctors got the green light to move Grayson to Denver, Chelsey drove to Colorado. There, her son was waiting. He was heavier, and hollowed out. A shell of the boy he’d been.
His siblings were also struggling. Caleb, Hannah, Josh and Saray needed rides to school and places to sleep. Uncertainty engulfed the family.
“Some nights I would stay up and just cry with them,” Hannah, now 12, recalled.
Surgeries became routine. At one point, every Tuesday for three weeks Grayson needed surgery to install shunts, braided tubing to redirect excess fluid from his brain to his stomach. Soon, Grayson’s words shrank to a simple thumbs up. The family felt him slipping away.
“I don’t remember much,” Grayson said, his eyes wandering. Jeremiah chimed in, “Maybe that’s for the best.”
“I remember walking the halls praying to God,” Chelsey said, tearing up. “I didn’t know how to help my son.”
One morning changed everything.
As Grayson lay there, eyes barely open, the whir of a hand sanitizer machine startled him awake. A burst of foam sprayed down, landing right on his dad’s head. It was accidental. Jeremiah flinched. Chelsey turned. Grayson giggled. It was a slow chuckle, but it was the first time in weeks they heard his laughter.
His shell had cracked open. The boy was still in there.
In the months that followed, Grayson relearned how to walk. He picked up Nerf guns again. During one Nerf target battle with his doctors, a hospital cabinet was lined with a row of pop cans. Fitting. He grinned and insisted he hit, “14 out of 20,” shots. It was really 7 out of 10. But with his double vision, who could argue?
There would be more challenges to follow, including three years of physical therapy and hyperbaric oxygen therapy to stimulate healing. He still drives to Colorado every three months for more MRI treatments and doctor’s appointments.
“We had no idea how he would react to it all,” Jeremiah said. “Of course it was no problem. He’s our superhero.”
Normal, Mostly
Taped to the wooden slats of his bunk bed at home are pictures. Some of them are new, others are dangling by worn Scotch tape. The photos feature the doctors and teachers of his past, he doesn’t forget what they did for him.
Grayson lies down and pulls a tattered stuffed animal close, “this is Softy.” It’s a threadbare dog with an orange bandana, gifted to him during his first treatments. It’s been through hell; they both have.
He shares this room with his nine-year-old brother Caleb, who sleeps above him. Together they pull out a collection of Hot Wheels and a book of baseball cards. Mixed in among the MLB All-Stars are faces from the Spearfish Sasquatch. He keeps them in the same protective sheets. To Grayson, they all count.
Down the hallway, Hannah and Josh help prepare dinner. Saray is leaving for work at the ballpark. The dining room smells of French dip sandwiches and dish soap from a long day of cooking and making bubbles. Raspberry rhubarb crumble cools on the counter, with berries picked fresh from the family’s backyard garden. This is the world Grayson returns to after his long weeks at the hospital.
“It takes time,” Grayson said, pausing. “But I’m sitting here, right now.”
After dinner, he walks outside to examine his ever-growing collection of pop tabs, and pauses on the steps. His right hand tightens around the wooden railing of the stairs.
Onward.
Out in the garage, he beams as he shows off his latest invention: a homemade sifter designed to catch anything that isn’t a true aluminum pop tab. A screw clinks against the magnets. He plucks it out, “these don’t help,” he says, tossing it aside.
He grins the entire time, energized by the mission. What he’s been through is unforgettable. But that’s not what drives him. It’s where he chooses to place his focus. “We think of it like a magnifying glass,” Chelsey says. “Whatever you look at, it grows. You can choose the good or the bad. Grayson chooses joy.”
Ninety Feet of Freedom
It wasn’t a sold-out crowd. There were no news cameras, no formal rosters. Just a midsummer exhibition between the Spearfish Sasquatch and Post 164, the local high school team. But in the bottom of the fifth inning, all eyes turned toward one kid in an oversized jersey. A kid every single fan knows. Grayson Chapeau was getting his chance.
As he stepped into the batter’s box, his shorts brushed his knees. His helmet wobbled as he adjusted it. His shoes weren’t cleats, just his gym pair from school. The gloves were borrowed.
On the mound stood the coach Ryan Bachman, the former player Grayson idolized. He waved his fielders back. Everyone knew what was coming.
Grayson swung at the first pitch. He connected, cracking it down the third-base line. Four years ago, he could barely muster five feet without a walker. Here, in front of his hometown crowd as pop tabs rattled beneath the bleachers, Grayson ran.
All ninety feet.
He reached first base standing up with outstretched arms and a glowing smile. The dugout erupted, players sprinting over to wrap their teammate Grayson in bearhugs.
Ninety feet, a symbol: where he’s been, and where he has been leading others his whole life.
Grayson didn’t just take the field, he carried this town with him. The people of Spearfish might never know what it is like to be him. But in his presence, they’ve learned what it means to stand with courage. To witness joy, chosen again and again. And to feel, somehow, familiar.
“You’re not supposed to just have a great day,” Grayson said. “You’re supposed to make it great.”
