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Chicago Cubs

Ben Brown and his wife Maggie. Photo courtesy of Ben and Maggie Brown.

By Daniel Dunaief

Baseball has been Setauket product Ben Brown’s ticket to ride, or, perhaps, more appropriately, ticket to fly.

The 25-year old Ward Melville High School graduate, whose debut season in Major League Baseball was cut short last year by a neck injury, joined the Chicago Cubs this year for spring training.

Even days before the Chicago Cubs prepared to make a trip across the world to Japan, Brown wasn’t sure if he and his wife Maggie would make the longest flight of his life.

“He only knew a couple of days before that he was going,” said Ben’s mother Jo-Anne Wilson. “Then, they’re scrambling to get people to stay at home and watch their dogs.”

While Brown’s mother was thrilled that her son could enjoy an international trip on a world baseball stage, she had some parental anxiety.

“The night I knew he’d be landing at 3 am, I was still up,” Wilson said. She was greatly relieved when her son texted her.

“I could breathe again,” she laughed. Even though Ben is her third child, she can’t outgrow her parental concern for the well-being of her children.

“I’m sure he was surprised when I texted back within half a second,” said Wilson, who promptly fell asleep after the brief exchange.

Brown’s father Jody Brown was more concerned about jet leg, as Tokyo is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time and 16 hours ahead of the time in Mesa, Arizona, where the Cubs play their spring training games.

Memorable trip to the Embassy

Ben Brown meeting up with another WMHS graduate Anthony Kay, who is also a pitcher. Kay is playing for the Yokohama DeNa BayStars. Photo courtesy of Maggie Brown

Brown’s parents connected with Ben a few times by FaceTime while their son and his conspicuous six foot, six inch frame were traveling around Japan.

The Japanese public was “friendly and so welcoming,” said Wilson. “The kids were very respectful when they were approaching the players for autographs.”

That presented a contrast to some young fans in the United States, who can be aggressive when seeking autographs or pictures with baseball players.

A trip to the American Embassy, where the Cubs attended a party, was a highlight of the journey.

“He said, ‘Mom, you’ve never seen anything like it in your life,’” Wilson said, recalling her son’s delight at the colorful and well-presented offerings. “He never left a table” filled with every type of sushi imaginable.

Brown was impressed with the immaculate condition of the streets.

Brown’s wife Maggie learned about the expectations for garbage the hard way. She had eaten a pastry and was carrying a coffee cup. When she went to throw her garbage in a can in a fish market, she was reprimanded for trying to discard items that didn’t come from the market. People expect to put items in their own trash cans.

The Browns visited Anthony Kay, who is pitching for the Yokohama DeNa Baystars and is another Ward Melville baseball star, while they were in Tokyo.

A well-watched opening game

The first game of the season was a huge draw in Japan, with an estimated 25 million people watching the Cubs and the defending World Series Champion Dodgers take the field at the Tokyo Dome.

Ben Brown interacting with autograph seekers.
Photo courtesy of Maggie Brown

Over 42,000 people flocked to the stadium, paying anywhere between $2,000 and $19,000 a seat, according to Fox News 11 Los Angeles. Three players from the defending World Series champions are Japanese, including hitting superstar Shohei Ohtani, and pitchers Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki. The Japanese players from the Cubs are pitcher Shota Imanaga, who started game one, and outfielder Seiya Suzuki.

Back in Setauket, Brown’s parents got up to watch the start of the game at 6:10 am, sitting down with a cup of coffee.

Imanaga threw four hitless and scoreless innings, allowing four walks and striking out two.

The right handed throwing Brown came on to pitch in the fifth inning.

After striking out Miguel Rojas, Brown walked Andy Pages, bringing up Ohtani. The Dodgers left-handed hitting star laced the team’s first hit of the season, a single to right fight.

By the end of the inning, Brown had given up three runs, two of which were earned, on three hits.

Brown pitched an impressive fifth and sixth inning, recording four additional strike outs, including of Ohtani.

Brown’s brother James Neppell, who is 15 years older than Ben and who helped ignite his passion for the sport, was pleased with his brother’s outing and with his approach to Ohtani during the superstar’s second at bat.

“He struck him out on three pitches” Neppell said proudly. “That was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”

Brown’s father was pleased with his son’s 14 swings and misses, “which is more than any pitcher on the Cubs or the Dodgers” that day as well as the five strike outs.

The Dodgers won the first game 4-1, as Brown took the loss.

The Browns shared the excitement of the trip with their son from a distance, while they also mirrored some of his activities on Long Island.

“We had sushi while he was gone,” Jody Brown said.

Next steps

Just before a spring training outing against the Atlanta Braves earlier this week, Ben found out he had been named the club’s fifth starting pitcher.

Brown and his wife Maggie. Photo courtesy of Ben and Maggie Brown

“It’s a real honor,” Brown said during an interview with an MLB broadcast after his 75-pitch outing in which he allowed two earned runs in four and a third innings against the Braves. “To say that you’re a part [of the team] from day one is pretty incredible.”

Brown suggested that the engagement of the fans, which he likened to European soccer style chants, was a “real blast.”

Jody Brown recalls how travel baseball, which now includes a trip across the world, started when his son was young.

“I remember his first [baseball] trip when he was eight years old to Maryland,” said Brown. “The local coach called and said, ‘We need him to come.’ I thought, ‘That’s crazy.’ That was the start.”

At around that same time years ago, Neppell told his friends he thought his brother might make it to the major leagues. His friends, who thought he was crazy at the time, are impressed that the 33rd round pick by the Philadelphia Phillies in the 2017 draft has come this far.

The Browns appreciate the thrilling ride they have taken with their son.

“We’re on the same journey,” said Wilson. “We’re enjoying every minute of it, even the stress.”

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief,
Publisher

Please note that we have added something new to the front page of the newspaper. In the upper right hand corner, next to our flag, is a QR code. When you open that code with your cellphone, you will immediately be transported to the home page of our website, and there you will find a button that says, “LISTEN NOW.” Click there and you will be able to hear the current week’s podcast.

Do you know about our podcast?

Each week, after the newspaper comes out, members of the editorial team sit around a table in the recording studio and chat about the week’s news for a little over half an hour. We talk about what lies behind the headlines and perhaps throw in other bits of information that may not have fit into the limited space in the paper. 

Called “Pressroom Afterhour,” our regular participants include Samantha Rutt, managing editor; Mike Vincenti, co-producer; and myself. At the other end is our audio engineer, Michael Dunaief, in California. 

Different reporters, who have contributed stories each week, join us, either in person or as a call-in, and give more depth to the stories they have written, as well as commentary on other articles. We also include sports, with our sportscasters, Bill Landon and Steve Zaitz, and a weekly round-up of the news. 

Sometimes, we invite guests, like Councilmember Jonathan Kornreich, historian Bev Tyler, estate lawyers Nancy Burner and Gail Prudenti, and SCWA Chairman Charlie Lefkowitz, when they have participated in the week’s events.

This week, beginning tomorrow, May 31, we have joining us Dr. Suzanne Fields, interim co-director of the new Center for Healthy Aging at Stony Brook Medical Center. A distinguished geriatrician, she speaks about the Center, its purpose and goals, and offers an insightful overview of the aging process. Interviewing her this week, both for the newspapers and on the podcast, is reporter Daniel Dunaief. 

The podcast is available after noon every Friday, can be heard from the car or wherever you have your cellphone, and is available throughout the ensuing week either from our website, via the QR code, the home page at www.tbrnewsmedia.com or Spotify.

Please join us for a better understanding of the local news and the fun of discussing what’s happening in our daily lives. We would welcome any comments from you, as well as suggestions for articles to be featured on future podcasts. 

This is a bit of news with a local perspective you might not get elsewhere. Ben Brown, a freshman pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, pitched seven innings of no-hit ball on Tuesday against the the Milwaukee Brewers before he was taken out of the game by the manager, after throwing 93 pitches, for fear of straining his arm. At that point, the Cubs led by the score of 1-0.

Now, Ben Brown is a graduate of Ward Melville High School in the Three Village School District. He is a hometown boy, drafted right out of high school, at the age of 17, by the Phillies, as we wrote in a comprehensive previous article a couple of months ago. Brown, 24, was traded to the Cubs and brought up from the Minors this Spring.

The reliever, after getting the first out, opened the door. The Brewers tied the game by the ninth inning.

Fortunately for the Cubs, they were able to score five runs in the top of the tenth, and although the Brewers threatened in the bottom of the inning, scoring two, the Cubs shut the door, winning 6-3. And all of the game was played by the Cubs with some of the team, including Brown, ill with a bug.

We will surely talk about this game on the podcast this week, even though neither of the major league teams is local. But Ben Brown is and is richly worth a shout-out.

This is surely a game he will never forget.