April 22, 2024

By Melissa Verge

Canadian Baseball Network

When the stats don’t matter and the rules aren’t remembered, in the stands are still Cade Smith’s dedicated supporters.

The four-year-old has two diehard, lifelong fans in his parents.

And he hasn’t even made it big yet.

In fact, he hasn’t made it anywhere.

There’s not a lot of action from Smith in his t-ball debut - his team runs and dog piles on the ball, and he doesn’t move.

“I would apparently stand there and watch them, and do nothing,” Smith said.

So is the relaxing life of a t-ball athlete.

Despite a slow start, mom and dad - Sylvia and Tim Smith - stuck with him. At the end of March, 20 years later, they were once again in the stands to watch his debut. This debut was a little bit different. This time, he was wearing a navy blue and red jersey, “Smith” stitched on his back, thousands of fans in the stands. And this time, they were guaranteed to see some sort of movement from their now 24-year-old son, or he might get cut from the roster.

A section of the Oakland Coliseum was there just for Smith. There for his MLB debut were his parents, wife, sister and brother, in-laws and sister-in-law.

And see movement, they did.

The Canadian right hander from Vancouver came in and struck out five, giving up no hits and a walk, setting a Guardians’ record for the most strikeouts in a debut of two innings or less.

“When I came off the mound for my first inning I saw my family standing up and waving their arms and cheering and going nuts and that's when it kind of clicked,” he said. “Like, ‘oh yeah, I just made my debut and my family was here to see it.’”

It was an audience that almost didn’t make it. His dad had to be cleared to fly, after having open heart surgery in December. It was hard being so far away, and unable to help, Smith said. He hadn’t seen his parents in just over a year, being unable to travel to Canada with the restrictions that are part of the application process for a U.S. residency. But he focused on what he could control, his performance every time he took the mound.

The health issues his dad was facing gave him a different outlook on life and baseball.

“It just gives you a little more perspective on not to get so high and so low based on success or failure in this game,” he said. “But really, like my family’s healthy, praise god, and I get to go play a baseball game.”

Despite his success, baseball wasn’t always the clear path forward for Smith. Not long ago, before he was drafted, he was at a fork in the road.

He could stay in school and pursue a job working in medicine, the sciences, or pursue baseball. The athlete stood out at the University of Hawaii for his skills in the classroom.

He met with his organic chemistry professor at the time, Jeffrey Romine, to talk about his options, after Romine reached out saying he was hopeful Smith would move forward with a career in the sciences.

Out of 150 students, Smith had the highest grade, and was the top student in his class. So much so, that when Romine marked exams, he marked Smith’s first as a benchmark for the rest of the class. He knew if Smith didn’t do well (which he always did) his exam was too hard, Romine said.

“I knew what to expect, here's going to be the best of the answers and then I kind of had a relative scale for all the other students,” Romine said.

“I would actually look for his exam, of the 150 papers I would grade his first.”

He had significant promise in the classroom, but Smith stuck with baseball, and it paid off.

In 11 innings of work and 11 appearances for Cleveland, the right-hander held the opponents scoreless. That put Smith in the top seven Canadian pitchers with the most scoreless innings to start a MLB career ever, according to research done by baseball historian Tyler Partridge. He passed Fergie Jenkins, who went 7 1/3 innings when he started his career with the Phillies.

It’s his teammates behind him on the field that have helped make his start so successful, Smith said.

“Our guys have been hitting, been scoring, there’s good energy in the clubhouse and the defence is making plays, like everything’s coming together right now,” he said. “So it makes it easy to have faith and have confidence in the guys behind you.”

Since his impressive start, as of April 22, Smith has a 3.27 ERA in 11 appearances, with 17 strikeouts.

He’s taking it day-by-day and enjoying all the things he loves about baseball at a major league level - the beautiful stadiums, the atmosphere, and of course, throwing baseballs.

“It’s the beauty of it, you show up at the ballpark every day and there’s an opportunity for you to pitch,” he said.

“I look forward to going out there to compete and trying to help the team win games.”