For Cardinals rookie and his mom, the road from Chicago suburb to Wrigleyville was long
Maggie Orlando and Chris Roycroft have a Mother’s Day tradition. In years past, no matter where the right-hander was pitching on that day, she would trek from her home in the Chicago suburb of Villa Park and see him pitch, adding a game ball from each of his many stops to her collection.
When you’re tucked into freezing seats in an independent park in North Dakota in early May, it can be difficult to keep an eye on the big leagues. This Mother’s Day, though, the St. Louis Cardinals and their rookie reliever were in Milwaukee, close enough to make the drive and collect the ball from his first big league strikeout.
“This game ball is a little different,” Maggie said Friday morning, beaming from underneath a Cardinals hat bearing her son’s autograph on the bill. “This one has the sticker from the authenticator.”
Maggie and her husband, Dan, arrived in Wrigleyville several hours before first pitch, in part owing to Maggie’s ongoing nervous energy. There’s no sitting on the couch to watch Chris pitch, Dan explained.
Even his minor league outings necessitated a great deal of pacing and peering from behind folded hands, and the intensity of watching him pitch in the majors has only ratcheted that up.
“When Chris was in college, Maggie would get up and literally walk down as far away from everybody as she could be, because she just can’t be around people [when he pitches],” Dan said.
The couple happened to be visiting spring training this year when Roycroft was called over to pitch extra innings in a big league game in Palm Beach, getting their first chance to see him throw against major league hitters before they knew it had a real chance of happening.
From there, the prospect of pitching in the majors got much more serious, much more real, just two years removed from independent ball.
“We were like, ‘did you know he was getting put in?’” Dan said he and Maggie asked each other. “It was only the third inning,” she added.
“It’s been such a crazy journey.”
Strolling on a picturesque morning down Clark Street and Sheffield Avenue between Old Crow Smokehouse and Murphy’s Bleachers, Maggie’s phone rang constantly as she attempted to coordinate meeting times and ticket pick ups for the extended crew pouring into town to see Roycoft’s homecoming.
The Orlandos wore matching Cardinals City Connect t-shirts with “Roycroft 58” printed on the back, a custom order for the occasion. They were the only two in sight in that getup, but they won’t be the only two wearing them this weekend; Maggie estimated that she had about 60 of the shirts stashed in a box in their home for family and friends to enjoy.
Of course, when your son is on the team and you grew up a White Sox fan, as Maggie did, it’s easy enough to slip into Cardinals gear. Dan, on the other hand, was (and perhaps still is) a devout Cubs fan with a Bill Swerski’s Superfans-style accent to match. He also has had a career as a union carpenter, working on jobs throughout Chicago, including the years-long renovation project at Wrigley Field. Still, with his stepson in red, he was happy to oblige.
Bill Karales, a friend accompanying the couple, found a compromise. He told Dan and Maggie he wouldn’t wear any Cardinals gear, but he couldn’t bring himself to slip on the birds on the bat, so he settled for some stars and stripes-themed attire, appropriate for Flag Day.
It also had the benefit of being predominantly blue, so Karales could keep his loyalties in order.
Starting the morning at Old Crow was appropriate for the Orlandos, who now operate a barbecue food truck in the Chicago suburbs. The business got off the ground in 2020 when Dan realized he was so heavily overbooked at Thanksgiving with family and friends dropping off meat to smoke that he’d be able to sell it himself.
When Roycroft was playing for the Joliet Slammers in the Frontier League, Dan and Maggie decided to take the truck out for a night of good food for hungry ballplayers. On the planned night – June 21, 2022, Roycroft’s 25th birthday – he called his mom and offered to meet her in the parking lot before the game, very much outside of their normal routine.
“He’s like, ‘well, I’m not playing,” Maggie recalled. “That’s when he looked at his mom and said, ‘I just got called,’” Dan explained, turning a good barbecue party into a great one.
As he climbed rapidly through the minors with the Cardinals, the family routine worked itself out into a phone call to Dan, who would then relay the news of the newest promotion. That held until this May, when Roycroft called his stepfather and simply asked him to put his mom on the phone. Dan said he knew immediately what the news was about to be.
The family made it down to St. Louis for his debut against the New York Mets and then back up to Milwaukee that weekend — Mother’s Day. Then they were back at work, catering events in their food truck, with most clients none the wiser.
One day, though, Maggie was watching Chris pitch on her iPad from inside the truck. An attendee at the event, spotting the ballgame but noticing it was neither the Cubs nor the White Sox, inquired about it.
“The party came over,” Dan said, “and was like, ‘wait, I hear your son is pitching for the St. Louis Cardinals. She flipped [the screen] around, and the whole party came out and started talking to her.”
This weekend, Chicago is party unto itself for the family, capped off with Father’s Day Sunday. A park so close to home seemed impossibly far away just two years ago, and now it’s simply a place where Chris Roycroft has become the second person in his family to go to work.
“To be home here now like this with all his friends and people he grew up with who could never come out to the game,” Maggie said, “it’s super cool.”
“An incredible journey,” she added. Even more so for how long it took to go such a short distance.
