COFFEETOWN HS SPORTS

De La Salle high school baseball player Hank Tripaldi already hit one home run in the NorCal Division I Championship game.

Trailing 8-7 with two outs in the top of the seventh inning and the bases loaded up with Spartans, Tripaldi didn’t technically have to hit his second.

Just a knock anywhere in play could tie the game up or give his team the lead.

But Hank Tripaldi had a whole lot more in his bat and in his heart than that.

Other than a region championship (California doesn’t award traditional state titles since its classifications are fragmented up into different divisions all over the massive state), Tripaldi didn’t have much to lose in that moment.

Just over a month before that fortuitous pitch, swing and drive, Tripaldi lost his mother, Robin, to breast cancer.

So he swung for the fences, and he cleared them.

Every single De La Salle high school baseball player met Hank Tripaldi at home plate

Three of them were on first, second or third base when he swung his bat.

The rest of them were in the Spartans’ dugout, which erupted like a stepped-on fire ant bed.

Hank Tripaldi’s teammates had a grand slam party to attend at home plate, and no one wanted to be late.

More than that, Hank Tripaldi’s brothers had yet another reason to wrap their arms around him.

They were there for him all season as he knew his days with his mother were numbered.

They lifted him up after she passed.

And after a terrific comeback, they were there to celebrate a much-needed victory.

“These guys are going to be my friends forever,” Tripaldi told the San Jose Mercury News.

Robin Tripaldi was known as ‘Birdie’ to her friends and family

Naturally, Hank pointed up to the sky as he rounded the bases for the first and second times that May afternoon.

Because that’s where he and this sports writer would like to believe Birdie’s spirit happened to be flying.

Above the diamond, above her resilient boy, and even higher than his well-struck baseball as he skipped home to meet a merry band of jubilant champions.

“She’s always on my mind. I love her,” Tripaldi told Jake Vanderbrook of Cal-Hi Sports.

“She was the most amazing thing that was ever in my life. I do everything for her now. Everything I do is for my mom or my friends, the most important people in my life.”

And with one swing of his bat, Hank won all of it for all of them.