Alternative baseball, Med City Moonshots changing lives one pitch at a time (2024)

DALLAS, Ga. — Taylor Duncan grew up loving all sports, but especially baseball.

Born and raised in Atlanta Braves country of Dallas, Georgia, he wanted to be the next Chipper Jones or Andruw Jones. However, for Duncan, who is on the autism spectrum, the opportunity to play the game he loved was limited. He — like many on the spectrum — was often denied the opportunity, especially as he grew older, due to the commonly low perception of what someone with autism can and cannot accomplish.

"I had a tough time finding those inclusive opportunities to play organized sports, either due to my developmental delays when I was much younger and just not being able to understand it at the same rate as, say, neurotypicals, or as I got older, facing a lot of those negative stigmas from some coaches who say, you're too much of an injury risk to participate," Duncan said. "The biggest thing about that is as you get older, it seems that there's more of a competitive mindset and less opportunities to really focus on developing into the skills, and just enjoy America's pastime just for the sake of enjoying it."

So in 2016 — two years after graduating high school — Duncan made it his mission to provide opportunities to other teens and adults just like him to play in a traditional baseball setting free of judgment.

Just like that the Alternative Baseball Organization (ABO) was born.

The ABO is a non-profit developmental program that provides teens and adults with autism and other special needs the opportunity to play real baseball under MLB rules and with real competition. It is played under the same parameters as traditional baseball with the only difference being the ball is a little bigger and softer.

After sending messages out through Facebook and Craigslist, seven other athletes showed up to the inaugural ABO practice in Cobb County, Ga., on that day eight years ago.

It can now be found in more than 14 states across the USA and is a member associate of the World Baseball and Softball Confederation (WBSC), which is the international governing body for baseball and softball.

"I definitely thank my mother (Cindy) for helping me get to where I am, and then my mentors, coaches through the years, and others who've helped contribute to not only my success, but ultimately helped contribute to the national success," Duncan said. "We're all working together and continuously building this movement, not just to promote baseball, but to promote community inclusion, community integration. Really tapping into the most potential that we possibly can tap into within all of our athletes. And ultimately, we want to change lives one pitch at a time. I think we're doing that, and together we'll keep doing that."

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Like most businesses and non-profits, ABO found itself in trying times during the COVID-19 pandemic. Once again, Duncan took action.

He estimates he contacted more than 3,000 news organizations across the country in an effort to keep the ABO relevant.

The hard work and persistence was rewarded. News stations and newspapers across the United States ran stories on the ABO. That's how Rochester's Jeremy and Carrie Delaney learned about it. They figured it was perfect for their then 9-year-old son Logan.

"This was right in the heart of COVID, like the summer of 2020," Carrie said. "We have a child with special needs — Logan was nine at the time. We figured this would be something really great to do, something that Logan could grow into later. So it's 15 and older with disabilities and we kind of joked we have six years to kind of screw things up and get it right. But long story short, when the spring hit in '21, we said, well, let's go ahead and give this a try."

With guidance and an advertisem*nt from Duncan, Rochester's very own Alternative baseball team — the Med City Moonshots — began to take shape.

To their surprise they had 25 athletes come out for the first meet and great at Mayo Field.

"They just were coming out from everywhere," Carrie said.

It hasn't slowed down since. In fact, it has been confirmed by Carrie that there will be a second Alternative baseball team coming to the area soon. Now, Jeremy and Carrie hope it catches on across the state. They are more than willing to help whoever is trying to get an ABO team started.

Traci Westcott / Post Bulletin

"We've consistently grown," Carrie said. "But the reality of areas like Minneapolis, for instance, there's over 20 something athletes that are just itching to get out there that don't have coaches that don't have volunteers. There's opportunity out there for other folks like Jeremy, that want to step up and take this on.

"Trust me when I tell you, we will help back anyone, anybody that wants to go in on this endeavor and get a team in an area by them. We will help fundraise as we know that there's a lot of expenses that come with this. But we don't want that to ever be an obstacle for people to not be able to play or for people to not want to step up to do it."

Both Jeremy and Carrie encourage anyone interested — volunteers or athletes — to visit the Moonshots' Facebook page.

The hope is to get more teams to eventually get an ABO league together. Right now, the Moonshots practice about twice a week, but don't have any other ABO teams to play. Instead they have scrimmages/games against makeshift teams like the RCTC football team that took place earlier in June.

That's what makes Saturday's Hometown Heroes game at Mayo Field so important. The game, which has the Moonshots play against a team of local administrators, business owners and city officials, is now in its fourth year and has become a home run in a number of different ways.

"We don't have other teams like us nearby for us to play, so these community games that we do are so important," Carrie said. "We count on and look forward to the community support. That first one in 2021, we had people from all walks of life from all kinds of businesses, and some even political affiliations and other places all around, and they came together and it was so united. It was such a beautiful event, there was not a lot of dry eyes in the stadium. It was fantastic. People were coming off the field and they're like, we should be doing this every year."

First pitch is scheduled for Noon Saturday and is open to the public.

There will be a special guest as well.

Duncan is making the trek up from Georgia to be there. It's part of a 4,000 mile road trip that will eventually include stops at Cooperstown, N.Y., Maine and Bluefield, West Virginia to promote the ABO.

He's looking forward to seeing the Moonshots in action.

"They have a great group of players, great group of volunteers with them. Great support from the (Rochester) Honkers up there. It's been wonderful," Duncan said. "This is the year that I'm finally getting to go up there and getting to see everything that they're doing. It's fantastic. I'm really looking forward to it."

It will be the first time Carrie and Jeremy will meet Taylor in person.

"We are really excited and looking forward to meeting him in person," Carrie said. "We're super, super grateful. He's a heck of a cool guy, as soon as you meet Taylor, you're already his buddy. There's no doubt about it. He's super cool. He has great feedback, great, innovative ways how to bring teams like this together. So I'm hoping that when he comes he's bringing the heat for that too."