At long last, after all the months of stoicism, Mike Baumann walked into the living room on what would be his final night living at home in Minnesota. The fortitude he tried to maintain for his mom, more than anyone, since his dad Thomas died of a heart attack at 60 broke in one searching question.

“Am I doing the right thing?” Mike asked.

The internal dialogue had been there for months. In his head, Mike wondered if attending Jacksonville University to play baseball was the right decision — not just for himself, but for his brother, Nick, and particularly for his mom, Leslie.

He had stuck to the plan, the same one he had before his father’s unexpected death in October 2013. A month later, Mike, then a senior in high school, signed his letter of intent to play at Jacksonville. He sat at a table while Nick and Leslie looked on. And he had his dad, Thomas, on his mind.

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But now on the precipice of heading to Florida, Mike needed to know. He looked to his mom and asked, was this right? Would she be OK?

The answer was painful. For as much as Leslie loved having her two boys around her — and the feeling went both ways, with each serving as a buoy during the hardest time of their lives — she knew Mike Baumann needed to go, to follow his dream.

“This is ultimately what your dad would want,” Mike remembers his mom telling him. “Don’t hold anything back because you want to stay closer to me.”

“I was so worried he would think I needed him to stay around,” Leslie said, “so I kind of did my crying alone, and I just really acted strong, and it made me strong.”

As the Baumann family approaches the 10-year anniversary of Thomas’ death, the selfless decision by Leslie is magnified to Mike. He recalls the difficulties, his first-semester homesickness and all the moments he wishes his dad could’ve seen in person — from his high school graduation to the right-hander’s major league debut with the Baltimore Orioles.

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But in that time without Thomas, Mike also looks at how his connection to his brother and mom only strengthened. He calls Leslie his rock. He calls Nick a father figure and his best friend. Together, they’ve mourned. They haven’t moved on from Thomas’ death but they’ve learned to keep moving.

In that way, Mike Baumann chased his dream, knowing his dad is watching even if he’s not in the stands next to Nick and Leslie.

“We felt like we had to make up for the one we lost,” said Nick, who’s six years older than Mike. “We all had to help each other out in a certain way.”

The Baumanns were always a tight family. Neighbors often recall the near-constant smack of a baseball on leather as Thomas and his two sons played catch in the backyard. Thomas coached their baseball teams growing up, Leslie drove carpools and then — everything changed.

Nick, who had recently graduated from Concordia College, was living at home at the time. Mike asked him to stay until he graduated high school, and when Leslie and Nick dropped Mike off in Jacksonville, she asked whether Nick would consider staying longer, to at least get her through the winter.

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“I was able to get my feet on the ground and figure out how I was going to get yard work and all the outdoor stuff done,” Leslie said. But having Nick around also meant the two of them took frequent trips to Florida, checking in on Mike as he began to flourish away from home.

This photo was taken on the day Mike Baumann, a right-handed pitcher, was drafted by the Orioles. He’s wearing an Orioles T-shirt his dad, Thomas, bought over a decade earlier. He’s standing with his mom, Leslie, on his right. His brother Nick and Nick’s wife Kristy are on Mike’s left. (Photo courtesy of the Baumann family.)

So many times, amid house cleaning after Mike left for school, Leslie picked up an old, black T-shirt with “Orioles” written across it in script and placed it on a pile meant for Goodwill.

It was an extra large. When her husband, Thomas, brought it and an Orioles hat home from a business trip to Maryland more than a decade earlier, the shirt looked more like a dress on her elementary school aged son, Mike. Living in Minnesota, they didn’t owe the Orioles any allegiance — at least not yet — and neither Mike nor Nick ever wore the shirt much.

“But I always brought it back out for some reason,” Leslie said, “and would hang it back up in the closet.”

There was a connection there, a link to her husband, Thomas. Maybe that’s why it remained when other clothes were donated. Or maybe, as fate would have it, there was some little part of her that knew they might need it, just as, she came to believe, Thomas had when he bought a shirt that would fit the 21-year-old version of his son.

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When Mike Baumann learned the Orioles selected him in the third round of the 2017 draft, Nick ran upstairs to look for that T-shirt. He found it, grabbed both it and his dad’s Orioles hat, and ran downstairs for a family photo. There was Leslie, Mike, Nick and Nick’s wife Kristy — the Baumann family.

And Thomas was there, too, in the form of the T-shirt and hat he bought so many years earlier without any idea of how fortuitous the purchase would become.

“It was kind of a magical moment, piecing that all together,” Nick said.

“It was like, ‘Wow, he’s present. He bought these for them,’” Leslie said. “And it was just odd, we’re in Minnesota, I’m originally from Wisconsin, why would we have any Baltimore stuff?”

It’s not the only time Thomas has appeared close.

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During Mike’s first spring training with the Orioles, he was assigned No. 57 — by happenstance the year his mom was born. When he made his major league debut in 2021, however, he was given No. 53. She first wondered what happened to No. 57 before she realized the new number, randomly assigned by the Orioles, wasn’t any old number.

“It took me two innings to realize, that was the year his dad was born,” Leslie said, referring to 1953. “We’re constantly talking about things like that, like, ‘My gosh, Dad really is there. He’s watching, because he ended up with 53.’”

One Christmas, Leslie heard from Nick what Mike really wanted: a tattoo of his dad’s signature across his heart. She found an old mortgage paper, cut out her husband’s signature and gave it to Mike.

“Whenever they play the national anthem,” Leslie said, “he thinks about his dad, when he has his hat over his heart.”

But Mike also thinks about his mom and his brother, the ones who — all together — helped the family stand upright after their world was rocked. Mike thinks of his mother’s selflessness, encouraging him to attend Jacksonville. He thinks of Nick’s advice and his dual role of mentor and friend.

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Still, it’s hard not to think of who’s missing in the picture, even after all these years.

“They say time heals, but sometimes it’s harder now than it was before, just knowing he’s not in the stands,” Mike Baumann said. “But we just keep reminding ourselves that he’s still got the best seat in the house and that he’d be proud.”

Nick and Mike Baumann with their mom, Leslie, at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago this year. (Photo courtesy of Baumann family.)

andy.kostka@thebaltimorebanner.com