Father Of Late Eastham Ballplayer Completes Year Of Catch To Heal

Scott Yelle and his wife Andrea played a game of catch last year on what would have been their son Jackson’s 23rd birthday.

Yelle used to love playing catch with Jackson, though he eventually couldn’t keep up as his son grew older. Jackson played baseball at Nauset Regional High School, where he graduated in 2020. He played club baseball at Elon University. He loved baseball.

Jackson was a junior at Elon when he was struck and killed by an impaired hit-and-run driver in Myrtle Beach, S.C. in April 2023. He was 21. 

Twenty months following Jackson’s death, Yelle decided to play catch every single day for a year in his honor. He missed being able to play catch as a father with his son. He called the project “Catch2Heal.”

Yelle completed the year of catch two weeks ago on Jan. 27, Jackson’s 24th birthday. At the end, he had thrown a baseball with somebody else for 366 days. He had played catch on both coasts and in between and in four other countries. He had connected with more than 550 catch partners. He healed.

“It definitely worked, and I'm definitely in a better place mentally and physically than I was a year ago when I started,” Yelle said. “And I owe that to catch and baseball and the love of the game.”

Scott and Andrea, Eastham residents, were in Costa Rica for the year of catch’s first day in January 2024. They were rusty as they tossed the ball back and forth on their son’s birthday. The two laughed as they recalled a memory of Jackson playing T-ball. 

Back stateside, Yelle played catch with his mother Carol and daughter Lexi. He played catch with kids at Eldredge Park in Orleans and neighbors at the Eastham Windmill. Yelle shared a photo or video from each catch on Instagram, describing who he had connected with that day and, if there was conversation, what they had discussed as they threw. 

“Even the people I played with repeatedly, there was always something to talk about and connect or catch up on,” Yelle said.

Part of the idea for Catch2Heal was to connect through the venture with other parents who had lost children, as well as kids involved in MLB’s Nike Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities program. The Yelle family had previously established the Jackson Yelle Foundation, which donated funds to Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities. 

As part of that effort, Yelle visited all 30 stadiums across Major League Baseball, something he and Jackson had always wanted to do. They made it to 12 parks before Jackson died. Yelle completed the circuit by bringing checks from the foundation to the parks for the different local Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities programs. 

Along the way, he met Ethan Bryan, a Springfield, Mo. man who wrote a book about playing catch every day for a year. He served as Yelle’s inspiration. The two men played catch on day 117. 

Catch2Heal evolved for Yelle from a way to process the grief of losing his son to a way to connect to all corners of life. He played catch in Truro with a friend he hadn’t seen in 30 years. He had catches in California with former colleagues. He threw a rubber ball in the thigh-deep turquoise waters of the British Virgin Islands. He played catch inside a church. He tossed with others inside MLB ballparks and threw with a former pitcher, Dellin Betances, atop the league’s corporate office in downtown Manhattan. Yelle carried his gloves — his son’s first base and outfield mitts — around the world in search of partners.

The only rule through the entire year was 10 minutes of catch every day. That meant sometimes braving the cold and precipitation or using the headlights of Yelle’s truck to sneak a catch in amid the dark of night. Andrea finished with the most appearances of any catch partner.

“She got all the rainy days when it was pretty crappy out and nobody else would play catch,” Yelle said.

It also meant playing catch even on the worst days of grief. On day 59, Yelle was at Elon, where Jackson had been attending when he was killed. Yelle had already been back to Jackson’s college multiple times following his son’s death, but he was in a bad spot mentally that morning. He cried as he walked around campus. Later on, he played catch with members of the club baseball team near a tree planted in Jackson’s honor. They tossed and talked about summer internships and sports. The grief dissipated.

“I've had multiple moments like that over the course of the 365 days, where just having a bad day, whether it's about Jackson or just life in general, you wake up in a mood or whatever, and a game of catch and connecting with somebody and moving your body will change that and turn that mood around,” Yelle said. “And, yeah, it's pretty powerful.”

Day 175 was another difficult day for Yelle. Externally, he looked fine, but on the inside, he hurt. He took a stroll to the beach to try to get out of the rut. There, he found a stone and skipped it in the water. On the social media page where he documented each and every catch, Yelle concluded that Jackson was his partner that day. Below a smiling selfie, he wrote a caption that said the burst of grief was the “life sentence of losing a child.”

“It was a tough day, and that happens on the journey,” Yelle said. “So for me, it was about trying to be real with people.”

Through conversations as he tossed a baseball with those that knew Jackson, Yelle learned more about his son — about the community he had built, the friendships and relationships and stories at college.

The day before he was killed, Jackson was at the ocean in Myrtle Beach, his arms around some of his friends. “This is the life,” he kept saying. Yelle wears a bracelet bearing the phrase. As he traveled around with Jackson’s two gloves playing catch every day, he had the message his son had delivered before he died — to enjoy today because it’s precious, that no one is guaranteed tomorrow — always on his wrist.

“I think that's kind of helped us move forward and plow through some of this grief,” Yelle said. “It's just, ‘Hey, this is the life and let's enjoy it. Enjoy our time while we're here.’”

Catch, as Yelle discovered, is therapy. Throwing a baseball with another human begets relationship and conversation. It’s outdoor exercise. It necessitates trust. It becomes rhythmic through movement and sound. Yelle played catch with his therapist for multiple days of Catch2Heal. 

Yelle completed the year last January in Auckland, New Zealand with a hotel bellman named KG, who had never played catch before. On day 366, Jackson’s 24th birthday, he threw with Andrea. Photos came in from others who had also played catch that day. Yelle hasn’t caught since. Jackson’s first base mitt, the glove Yelle tended to use, has since been sent out for some repair and care. It had become pretty worn.

True to the original plan, Yelle did connect for catch with kids involved in the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities programs and with fellow parents who had lost children.

“Hopefully it was therapeutic for them as it was for me,” Yelle said. “And a chance to share their stories and talk a little bit about their child and keep their names in the present.”

Ethan Bryan, Catch2Heal’s inspiration, also wasn’t the only fellow daily catcher Yelle encountered during the year. While setting a world record at Yogi Berra Stadium in New Jersey for the most pairs playing catch with a baseball, Yelle met John Scukanec, a man from Washington who’s played catch for more than 1,000 consecutive days.

And on day 118, Yelle met Kevin Negaard, another man who had played catch every day for a year. The two convened in Negaard’s home state of Iowa at the baseball diamond where “Field of Dreams” was filmed. There at the site of the movie — about a son who goes to great lengths to have a catch with his father one last time — were people playing ball. Yelle, just about a third of the way through his year of catch, saw a dad standing at second base, his child shagging fly balls in the outfield. The dad called out to his son. The kid’s name was Jackson.