As Cubs open in Miami, healing Parkland community is one man stronger this week

POMPANO BEACH, Fla. — The young man in the gray T-shirt and shorts was easy to miss as he moved within the small crowd at this high school baseball tournament, stopping at times to chat with someone, waiting in line at the snack stand, clapping when his team scored another run.

He seemed to stand out only when the laughter got a little loud as he chased his toddler nephew down the pathway behind the aluminum bleachers.

It doesn’t take long to realize that around here the presence of Cubs star Anthony Rizzo must be about as normal as the humidity and the palm trees.

And with normal in such short supply for this South Florida community these days, that presence might be more appreciated than ever.

“He always comes back,” said James Brady, whose son Carter is a sophomore outfielder for Stoneman Douglas, the Parkland, Florida, high school reeling from the mass shooting last month that took 17 lives of students and teachers.

Rizzo, who still lives in Parkland, has maintained strong ties with the school since he graduated in 2007. Just a few months ago, he made a large donation to have lights installed this summer at the school’s baseball field.

In the hours after the shooting, he quickly arranged to leave spring training in Arizona to return home to be with family and friends. He delivered an emotional speech during a candlelight vigil that was broadcast nationally. After he finished, out of sight of cameras, he was even more visibly emotional, according to those who were there. He more quietly visited family friends directly affected by losses and with survivors in the hospital before he went back to Arizona.

“It’s meant a lot to them, especially to the ballplayers,” Marc Goldberg, whose grandson Andrew Jenner plays first base for Stoneman Douglas, said of Rizzo’s presence. “Fortunately, all of them were safe. None of them got shot. But it affected all of them in the same way, there’s no doubt about it.

“He’s been around. Whenever you have those situations and there’s somebody who goes out of his way and who’s well-known to the community and is well-known elsewhere, it means a lot to a lot of people that he came there. Because he didn’t have to.”

He certainly didn’t have to arrange to have off Tuesday, when the Cubs played their final exhibition game in Fort Myers, Florida, to spend an extra day at a high school baseball game with his fiancée, Emily, his brother, John, and his nephew.

Of all the years the Cubs could open the season in Miami, it’s hard to imagine one that would have more significance for any player on the team or any player’s loved ones than this year, providing Rizzo -almost a week at home during a time of healing for a place he holds so close.

“I learned to be who I am because of Parkland,” Rizzo said this spring.

If the Cubs opened in Miami a year ago, Rizzo still might have found his way to a Douglas game to catch up with coach Todd Fitzgerald, with players, with neighbors.

But even with the banter light and the smiles easy, the difference on this March evening was as unmistakable and sobering as the “MSD Strong” caps and shirts in the crowd, the personal mark in the dirt the shortstop made with his bat handle before -stepping to the plate and the 17 names memorialized on a banner that hung next to the -Eagles’ dugout.

“It hasn’t been easy for the community,” Goldberg said.

But Rizzo made sure the community was at least one man stronger on the night Stoneman Douglas beat a team from Boulder, Colorado, in the Eagles’ spring-break tournament.

“It’s huge,” Chicago native Phil -Krugman, who works with many of the players at a nearby baseball academy, said of Rizzo’s impact. “So many people look up to him for more than just baseball. And here in South Florida, he’s like an icon for us.”