League founder scores hit for disabled

In 2003, Channing Proctor started a baseball league that would allow Charleston's disabled children to partake in America's favorite pastime. At the time, he had no disabled children of his own.

Four years later, Proctor and his wife had a son who can participate in the Charleston Miracle League.

Fate has an interesting way of following Proctor, whose life has turned out much differently than he envisioned. Looking back, it seems he was unknowingly preparing for what was to come.

Thrown a curve

Proctor's relationship with baseball has been rocky.

It began when he was about 4 years old and living in an apartment complex in Atlanta. His father had moved the family there after leaving the Navy, because he wanted to live in a place that had a National League baseball team.

Proctor would pick up beer bottle caps from the ground, wind up and throw them. In a nearby field, his mother played catch with him and his father hit him fly balls.

He started playing T-ball around age 6, and by 7 or 8, he realized he was better at baseball than a lot of the other kids.

Throughout grade school and high school, Proctor continued to play. But by his junior year, baseball was becoming less fun.

In addition to being pigeonholed in the positions of shortstop and pitcher because he was 6-foot-8-inches tall, Proctor broke his finger playing basketball that year and could no longer throw strikes. He planned to quit baseball, but his dad, coach and a new assistant coach who befriended Proctor persuaded him to stay.

Just after his senior year, Proctor was offered a scholarship to play baseball at The Citadel.

But the injuries continued. During his freshman year, he ripped his finger open on a car latch and couldn't pitch for much of the season. In his sophomore year, he sprained his ankle and by the time he was able to play again, he says, he couldn't throw the ball close to the plate. At the beginning of his junior year, the coach decided to convert him to a sidearm pitcher, and Proctor says he became the clown of the team. He wasn't being put in games, and realized he probably wouldn't be for the rest of the season.

He quit the team and lost his scholarship, but was able to scrounge up tuition and secure loans for his final year, graduating in 1991 with a bachelor's degree in business.

The dream of being a Major League player had died. Proctor figures it was fate.

"I don't know what type of person I would have become if I'd gone out there and made those millions of dollars. I'd like to think I'd been a nice guy and done charitable things, but I might have been a guy who becomes arrogant. ... You just don't know. God had a different path for me, or destiny or however you want to look at it, and I was done with baseball."

Fever pitch

After school, Proctor still wanted to make money. Lots of it, and fast.

He took a job in capital medical sales and made $42,000 the first year. The next year, he made $60,000. By his late 20s, he was making $175,000 annually.

It was also in his late 20s that he married Shannon O'Neill. They met in a hotel elevator in Nashville, Tenn., in 1995. When the couple had their first child, she left her job as regional director for the Golden Key National Honor Society to stay home with daughter Sydney.

Daughter Cailin was born about two years later.

With each year that passed, Proctor's job demanded that he spend more time traveling. His territory included nine states.

During one sales meeting, he ran into a man who had gone to the same high school. The alum mentioned that a teacher of theirs, Michele Miller, had breast cancer.

Proctor called Miller and then visited her shortly before she passed away.

"It made me say, 'What is life all about?' It's not really about making money. ... It's about quality of life."

Then in his early 30s, he set three goals for himself: to spend more time as a husband and a father, to live in Charleston, his favorite city, and to write the book he'd been thinking about since high school.

A dream helped convince him to move forward with the book. In the dream, he was in Miller's career planning class. She asked him if he was sure he wanted to quit work and write the book. He said he was, and Miller said, "All right, I know you'll do a great job."

In his wallet, Proctor carries a picture of Miller, cut from the yearbook and taped to a Hollywood Video rental card.

His book, "Seasoned Rookie," would be about a talented baseball player forced from the game. He describes it as very autobiographical, and wonders how much of it was self-fulfilling prophecy.

No crying in baseball

Proctor was working on the book and still living in Atlanta when he passed a TV playing footage of disabled kids playing baseball on a rubberized surface.

He was intrigued, and attended a game of the Miracle League, newly formed in Conyers, Ga. He fought back tears as he watched the kids, each of whom got to hit the ball and score a run in every inning.

"I always took for granted my ability to go out and play. ... I got burned out toward the end. Here was baseball just for baseball's sake. It was the pure fun of it -- it was scoring a run, it was hitting the ball, it was having the crowd cheer you on."

That game led Proctor to what he calls an "emotional epiphany."

He decided he would donate the proceeds from his book to this organization. He also wanted to bring the Miracle League to Charleston.

Shortly after finding a pharmaceutical sales job based in the Lowcountry in 2002, Proctor and his family moved to James Island, and Proctor got to work setting up the nonprofit organization.

Raising the $150,000 necessary to build the special field was the most challenging part. He raffled off his midnight blue '65 Thunderbird in hopes of raising money and media awareness. He spent weekends parked in front of various Walmarts, and learned the people who appeared to have little money were the most likely to give.

The Thunderbird raised $25,000, and the remaining funds were donated in the months that followed.

In November 2004, the Charleston Miracle League held its first game. About 60 kids turned out. Last fall, an adult league was added, and a total of 150 disabled children and adults are playing this season.

A Summerville Miracle League also has taken flight, and Proctor serves on its board of directors.

Greg Goodwin, Proctor's assistant coach in high school and now the school principal, says, "I couldn't be prouder of what he's done."

He recently flew to Charleston to take in a game, and witnessed the smiles of those benefiting from the Miracle League. "It's priceless. They forget their disabilities, they feel like they're Major League Baseball players for that day. It's just amazing, seeing how much joy these people have by playing a simple game like baseball."

Hitting home

Through the league, Proctor has been exposed to children with myriad physical and mental disabilities, including autism.

He recognized the signs in his son before Nashton was diagnosed in November at the age of 2 1/2.

Since then, Nashton has been undergoing Relationship Development Intervention Therapy. His parents use sign language and slow, articulated speech in an effort to communicate. They've seen progress; Proctor thrills in the fact that his son will now wrestle with him.

Proctor says the boy will "definitely" play in the Charleston Miracle League when he gets older.

Proctor continues to work on making the opportunity available to more people.

His next goal is to establish a "Fields for Dreams Foundation" to help build more fields for special-needs individuals across the U.S. and in foreign countries. He envisions funding coming from government and federal agencies, Major League Baseball and hopefully the profits from making "Seasoned Rookie" into a movie.

"If you can't think big, why think at all?" Proctor says.

To see why this man -- a husband and father of three with a full-time job -- is driven to spread the Miracle League concept, all you need to do is head over to the field in West Ashley between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. today.

There, disabled children and adults of the Lowcountry are playing team baseball, something that they couldn't do until a few years ago. From the box, an announcer excitedly calls their names as they step up -- or roll their wheelchairs -- to the plate. The crowd goes absolutely wild when a player hits the ball, no matter how long it takes. And when the player gets back to home plate, to more cheers and high-fives, their happiness is evident enough to be seen all the way from the back row of the bleachers.

It's all because of a professional baseball career that didn't pan out, and a teacher who died of cancer. It's all because of Proctor's vision.

Reach Kristen Hankla at 937-5548 or khankla@postandcourier.com.