SAN MARCOS, TEXAS – In the dark days when floodwaters flooded much of Central Texas, children were among the hardest hit. Schools were destroyed, sports fields were lost under mud, and baseball practice, a place where hope was planted, was quietly lost.
But on a Tuesday morning, in the middle of an elementary school being cleaned up, an unmarked truck pulled up. Inside were more than 1,000 brand-new children’s baseball uniforms, carefully packaged by size, and a small card:
“When I was a boy in Tokyo, baseball gave me something called hope. I believe you need it, too, right now. – Seiya.”
All the uniforms had names printed on the back – “Believer,” “Dreamer,” “Hope” – instead of numbers.
Included were small kid gloves made from recycled leather – a material that Seiya once said “reminded him of when he was poor and trained with his father.”
“We don’t need to be complete to be good players. We just need to be trusted,” the small print on the box read in both English and Japanese.
Seiya held no press conferences, and made no announcements. The local club manager in Texas confirmed that Seiya had secretly placed the order, paid all international and domestic shipping costs, and asked that “no names be mentioned unless necessary.”
When the media found out, the Japanese community in Texas shared:
“Suzuki didn’t come to make a fuss. He came with his heart.”
The community was moved – children wearing new shirts but with red eyes:
At the support center, an 8-year-old wearing a “Hope” shirt hugged a ball and whispered:
“My mother said the water took away my house, but this player gave me a new dream.”
Seiya Suzuki has never lived in Texas. But with kindness, he entered the hearts of children who lost everything to the flood – with the same thing that raised him: his belief in baseball.
“I can’t rebuild their homes,” Seiya wrote in a rare post, “but if they put on a dream… one day, they will build their own home.”