In his 33 years of coaching baseball, Chuck Fehr had around 1,000 student athletes in his charge, far more when you add his years of assisting at football.
“I consider them my kids,’’ he said.
On the night of Aug. 28, he was in Marietta watching one of his kids, St. Louis Cardinals Adam Wainwright, pitch against the Braves. On the same day, another of them passed away, one who played college but never made the big leagues. Still, Dominique Davis holds a special place on the team roster Fehr holds in his heart.
Davis played three years for the Glynn Academy Red Terrors in the early 2000s, pitching and playing first base.
Davis’ fastball was in the mid 80s and he had a good curve.
A lefthander, his curve had enough movement to keep people off balance.
“He had a little pop to his bat, a low .300s hitter,’’ Fehr said.
But Davis didn’t graduate with his class in 2003. He was one of those who couldn’t meet the state requirement to pass all the graduation tests. He came up short on one, science, and he didn’t miss it by much.
So that was that. Like he had when he wasn’t playing, Davis went to work on St. Simons where he grew up on Mamalou Lane.
“In 2006, he shows up at the cafeteria,’’ Fehr said. “I was at lunch in the faculty dining area.’’
Someone came to the door and said a guy was looking for Coach Fehr. There was no mistaking who it was.
“Most of the time, he had an ear-to-ear grin, and he was wearing it again,” Fehr said.
“He came in, pulled his diploma from behind his back and said, ‘I got it,’’’ Fehr said. “Find me a place to go to school.” And of course, to play ball.
Davis had not given up. He had taken the science graduation test every chance he got, two to three times a year but coming up short.
“It wasn’t by much. He’d make 494, 496,’’ and was always close, Fehr said.
Finally, he made it, and Fehr promised to see what he could do, but first he wanted to see if Davis could still get a ball across the plate with speed and movement.
Fehr’s son, Dane, who had pitched for him at Glynn Academy, was home from Presbyterian College where he was playing for the Blue Hose, so he had Davis throw to him.
Dane’s assessment was, “He could be playing for us at PC right now.”
A week later, Fehr was in McAlester, Okla., coaching Team Georgia in the junior division of the Sunbelt Series when he ran into Travis Lallemand, coach of Crowder College, a two-year school in Neosho, Mo.
“I reintroduced myself’’ and told Lallemand he had a player the Rough Riders may want.
“He said, ‘If you’ve got somebody like Bay Bay, we’d love to have him,’’’ Fehr said.
Brandon “Bay Bay” Johnson had played with Davis and was a year ahead of him in school. Johnson played at Crowder hoping to get an offer from a four-year university, but the Chicago White Sox drafted him. Johnson played several years in White Sox organization but didn’t get called up to the big leagues.
Davis performed well enough at Crowder to get recruited by Central Methodist University in Fayette, Mo., where he finished his career.
Fehr said Davis stayed in Missouri after college but occasionally he’d see him back home on St. Simons. He had come home to Mamalou Lane in April and was working at Epworth by the Sea, Fehr said.
He had come home after work, took his customary nap and his mother went upstairs to wake him. They talked briefly, but Davis said he wanted to sleep a few more minutes. When his mom went back a second time, she couldn’t wake him.
His death at age 37 was the result of natural causes, but Fehr said his family doesn’t understand. It’s hard to understand how an athlete could die so young.
His funeral service was Saturday at Community Church’s Brunswick campus, and he was buried afterward at Village Cemetery, a historic burial ground in the woods of what was formerly Musgrove Plantation.
Fehr has had some players more accomplished on the field, but he truly admired Davis.
“He had adversity, and he went after it. It was just typical of his character,’’ Fehr said.
All during his high school years, he worked just as he was the day he died, and he didn’t let that science test beat him.
“He wasn’t sitting around and saying, ‘I got a bum deal.’ He went to a junior college and furthered his education,’’ Fehr said. “A lot of kids would have said, ‘To heck with this’ and not done anything.’’
It’s a very small percentage of the boys who play high school baseball or any other sport for that matter who get their livelihood from it. Everybody can’t be Adam Wainwright, DeeJay Dallas or Darius Slay.
But Fehr said he’s always tried to teach his kids there’s more to life than the games they play in front of fans and their families.
“I tried to show kids how to move on and lead a good productive life,’’ he said.
It’s not often a player inspires a mentor. Like a lot of other students, Dominique Davis ran into a barricade with science, but he kept going until he turned it into a speed bump.
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