"Graber keeps hitting cancer's mean pitches."
"Batter up: after waging war against cancer, Graber just wants to play again."
The newspaper clippings lay on the table, piled on top of each other, each article exposed just enough to reveal the subject matter. The headlines all sent the same message; the pictures all appeared eerily similar. But, more than the content itself, what stood out was the sheer volume: More than 20 articles were sprawled out, clippings from everything from small-town Minnesota newspapers to the nationally circulated USA Today. And though Kevin Graber, a new assistant coach with the Amherst baseball team, had graciously granted interviews to every reporter who had approached him, his tone told a different story, a story of frustration at being solely recognized by his battle with cancer.
Sitting in his assistant resident director's office at UMass, Graber immediately volunteered where, in his mind, "the story really was." At the age of 21, at the end of his senior year in college and less than a month prior to the June amateur baseball draft, he was diagnosed with lymph node cancer. The topic seemed so familiar to him, the explanation of his fight with cancer rolled off his tongue. After his tiresome 15 minutes of fame, he knows how these interviews go. But those who know him today, roughly 15 years after his original diagnosis, insist there is more to Graber: His achievements thus far prove he is much more than a small-town medical miracle.
"I never knew KG battled with cancer until a few months ago. It was a total shock to me, but now I realize that if anyone could beat cancer, it would be KG," said Jared Banner '07, who knows Graber both as a coach and a sports writing professor. "He's the kind of guy you want to be in a foxhole with because you know he's ready to battle."
KG, as friends of Graber affectionately call him, only joined the baseball coaching staff as an assistant coach this year, but he has a long history with the College and with many Amherst students. He served as the college's first full-time Sports Information Director (SID) from 2000 to 2005, and then as the college's Director of Alumni and Parent Programs the following year.
Michael Wohl '07 first met Graber as the SID, and, last year, he leapt at the chance to take Graber's sports writing course, a Special Topics class supported by Professor of English Barry O'Connell. Wohl, who considers Graber "definitely one of the closest friends ... at Amherst College," also helped coach Graber's summer league baseball team last year. "His summer baseball team is coached like it is a minor league baseball team; our class was taught like it was a graduate school class; and the bar he set as Sports Information Director at Amherst College has not been matched-by any SID in the conference," said Wohl.
Although Wohl praises Graber's "alarming amount of professionalism"-a description further supported by Graber's nine national sports writing awards while working as Amherst's SID-Graber is known to be fun-loving and energetic. He has a nickname for almost all of his friends here at Amherst, and he was just recently inducted into the fraternity Pi Kappa Phi as an honorary brother. But, despite being busy as assistant resident director, full-time graduate student, father and husband, he remains extremely passionate about and devoted to baseball. Said Wohl, "He is fun but intense, and expects his players to listen to him and respect him, which is never a problem."
His professional baseball experience has only helped his coaching career. "He is able to say things to his players … that demand attention," said Wohl. "He's basically saying, 'I played pro ball and was good. Listen to me and you will get better.' And they do listen."
Being able to speak from professional baseball experience is no small accomplishment for someone whose baseball prospects were almost shattered while in the midst of his prime. While it may seem like a distant memory today, the much-accomplished Graber had to overcome great obstacles to reach where he is now. Instead of entering the baseball draft after graduating college as he had planned, he endured six months of chemotherapy, three months of radiation, several biopsies and surgeries, and many side effects of the treatments, including hair loss and weight loss.
"But the hard part," Graber said, "was the only thing I really cared about was baseball. That was just how I had always identified myself and people had identified me, as a baseball player. And now I was no longer a baseball player. Now I was just 'that dude who's in the papers because he has cancer,' and that was a weird deal to swallow."
He returned home to be with his family and close friends, whom he truly believes helped him survive this ordeal. With lots of running and weight training, he slowly made his way back to baseball. "I was able to come back from that, and somehow claw my way into professional baseball again when everyone had kind of written me off and I didn't even think I was going to live," he said.
As soon as he could, he started playing in his hometown league and took his first coaching job for a legion team in New York. As a 22-year-old coaching 18-year-old players, he discovered that he had a mind for game planning. So when he was offered a job through Lassen College in Susanville, Calif., he picked up and drove across the country. "Getting away … was really healthy," he said. "I got away from upstate New York where everyone was kind of feeling sorry for me."
The sunny Golden State did wonders for his health and his baseball. "I was on the field with these guys and my game started coming back," he said. "And not only that, but coaching really helped my playing."
Even while coaching, his goal remained to return to the field as a player. When a friend told him about a shortstop opening in an Australian baseball league, he leapt at the chance, barely pausing to consider the move. He paid his own way to Australia and found himself in the line-up the day he arrived. From there, things began to come together: One of his coaches in Australia was also a coach in the Chicago Cubs organization and he helped Graber head back to the U.S. for spring training.
His spring training experience helped him hook on with the Minneapolis Lunes. After a season there, he hooked on with the Southern Minnesota Stars and then the Adirondack Lumberjacks. But because his ribcage ultimately suffered as a byproduct of the cancer treatment, he eventually had to stop playing professionally.
As his playing career was drawing to a close, however, his professional managing career began to take-off. He was offered the manager's position with the Stars, where he had worked in the public relations department. Once he accepted the position, he became the youngest manager in professional baseball, and went on to win Manager of the Year while coaching in the Prairie League. "It was a big deal, I guess," he said, modestly.
But after another year of managing, he began to get "a little burned out of baseball," and he decided to return to school. As a graduate student, he took a position as assistant SID at his alma mater, the College of St. Rose. "I started to really like the sports information stuff, so after two months I just stopped going to class. I felt like I could be an SID at a college or university like, now, so I started applying for jobs," said Graber, a communications major.
His first SID position was at the University of Western Alabama. "I was really able to make a name for myself," said Graber. "I built University of Western Alabama's first athletics Web site, which is basically still up today." From there, Graber applied to several schools, with his final decision coming down to Bowling Green University, a Div. I school, and Amherst College. "I just felt like [Amherst] would be a place where I could possibly branch out into other areas," said Graber. "I knew I'd get to do a lot of cool things that didn't have anything to do with athletics. And that's what I really wanted."
Although he had wanted to branch out from baseball, while at a fair in Amherst, he ran into a Little League representative who offered him a position coaching the Mickey Mantle League for 15- and 16-year-old boys. "I decided to do it, and it was an awesome experience," said Graber. "These kids had never really been coached before by anyone other than someone's dad. I threw it all at them … I found I was really attracted to teaching."
Inspired both by his work with local disadvantaged students through the Alumni Office and his coaching, he took a course at UMass called The Work of the Middle and High School Teacher, in which he had the opportunity to observe and assist at local schools. Realizing how much he was drawn to education, he decided to pursue a masters in education, with the goal of becoming an English teacher.
Banner is confident Graber will excel. "As I got to know him further, I realized how great of a writer he is," said Banner. "When I found out that I could take a sports writing class with him, I jumped at the opportunity. I learned more about writing in that semester than I did in my other four years here."
Although it was a difficult decision to leave Amherst last year, he moved to UMass in order to become a full-time student. "There were a lot of people who really saw something in me to offer me that job as the Director of Alumni Affairs," said Graber. "To kind of walk away from the opportunity they had given me wasn't easy."
Yet he was not gone from Amherst for long. While coaching the Mickey Mantle team, he realized that he needed to learn about pitching, and was able to take advantage of men's basketball Head Coach Bill Thurston, a pitching coach legend in the baseball community. "Coach Thurston, to me, is like Vince Lombardi, John Wooden and Connie Mack rolled into one," said Graber. "He is that much of a legend in my eye Everyone knows who he is in the baseball community."
Thurston's willingness to support Graber has paid off. According to Banner, Amherst is lucky to have Graber as a full-time assistant coach. And Graber is making a name for himself within the Amherst community not for any past battle, but for his current accomplishments. "He brings an attitude to the team that we didn't have in the past," said Banner. "His intensity and positive attitude are unparalleled."
While Graber may not want his past to be his defining characteristic, it has definitely shaped who he is today. "The thing is, no one's going to give you anything. I had to really sell myself, to create my own opportunities," he said. "I'm still doing that today."