Brave ballplayer gets chance to live big league dream

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The room was meant for silent contemplation, a place in the hospital to sit and pray and beg a higher being for help. Maria Fragoso didn’t feel much like being quiet, and the door that took forever to close wasn’t helping.

So she kicked it over and over, kicked it like she wanted to the large tumor growing inside her son’s chest, like she wanted to those doctors who moments earlier told her to say goodbye to her baby, that there was a good chance she wouldn’t see him breathe again. She kicked the living hell out of it.

“The longest hours of our lives,” Maria said. “I wanted to scream and cry and ask God not to take my angel. I just kept wishing that door would close faster so I could scream.”

Someone heard. The angel lives.

How else to describe Alonso Fragoso? He turned 8 last month, and before his third birthday he already had undergone three surgeries for Hypospadias, a birth defect of the male urethra.

A year ago in April, his stomach hurt something awful one day and he was finding it difficult to breathe. By the next morning, numerous specialists stood over him wondering how best to attack the lymphoma that developed into a growth so vast, it had paralyzed one lung, left the other with 5 percent capacity and shoved his heart under an arm.

The tears flowed then as they did Tuesday, only this time for a different reason.

I know little of a group of volunteers from Arizona in 1980, the ones who helped a 7-year-old boy with leukemia fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer for a day. But from their one act of kindness grew the most remarkable of organizations.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation has granted more than 164,000 wishes in the United States since its inception to enrich the lives of children with life-threatening medical conditions. I’m guessing it also has created a few million smiles.

Alonso wore a large one for most of Tuesday, when he and family and friends gathered at ESPN Zone inside New York-New York to view a “SportsCenter” segment on his wish being granted in May.

He spent a day with his favorite major league team, the Cleveland Indians. He received his own locker and uniform, warmed up with players, took batting practice, threw out the first pitch, brought the lineup card to umpires, announced the batting order from the press box, signed autographs, lived his dream.

How does a boy born and raised in Las Vegas fall in love with the team that gave us Larry Doby and Bob Feller?

He shows up to T-ball practice at age 6, is handed an Indians jersey and hat and immediately proclaims his eternal devotion. Can’t think of a better reason.

“This never (gets old),” said Emily Williams, development associate for the Southern Nevada chapter of Make-A-Wish, which fulfilled Alonso’s wish. “Every time I am able to meet one of our wish children, I am amazed at their strength.”

You find it through surviving chemotherapy sessions that will last another two years, through a lump in the neck that doctors feared was the cancer returning at a stronger and more aggressive rate, through yet another surgery and the joyous news that it was instead merely a formation of nonthreatening cells, through the news that the little boy is cancer-free today.

You find it through all the tears.

They don’t always signify frailty. Alonso wore that uniform again Tuesday and sat on his father’s lap watching the ESPN show. It ended, and Jaime Fragoso first wiped away his own tears before dabbing those soaking his son’s face. Maria sat a chair over, her eyes also sparkling with emotion.

There was a time when Maria and Jaime and 13-year-old daughter Yacqueline wouldn’t cry in front of Alonso, hoping that by hiding their sadness, his chances would improve. That time passed.

“The first time we heard he had cancer, all of us were sitting in the emergency room crying,” Maria said. “When he began to cry, I asked if he was in pain. He wasn’t. He said, ‘You’re all crying because I’m going to die.’ At that point, I decided I would never cry in front of him again. But we realized we had to cry, to cry as a family, to allow him to cry, to be human.

“He had a stomachache one day, went to the hospital and a few hours later was having surgery for cancer. Never in a million years could I have imagined this. We are a cancer family for life now … But to have that one day for him and his wish come true with the Indians, to see him smile so much, there haven’t been many days like that.”

Tuesday was one. The little boy in the Cleveland uniform has another wish, something about what he wants to be when he grows up.

“A baseball player,” Alonso said.

You can guess for which team.

Ed Graney’s column is published Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. He can be reached at 702-383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.