In honor of Father’s Day, St. Louis Cardinals recall how their dads helped them
The dirt infields of the West End Khoury League can be a humbling place for a young baseball player to realize that, no matter how many ground balls his dad sends in his direction, there’s probably not a future for him between the white lines. Recommending to a kid that he learns to catch and switch hit is probably good advice for making most teams at the lower levels, but it can’t overcome the challenges of being afraid of the ball.
Major League Baseball players don’t typically have that experience. Indeed, for most of them, the day comes when they realize what likely had already dawned on their father but was in the midst of being processed – they’re a better baseball player than their dad, and it’s starting to show.
“He still thinks he’s better,” St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Alec Burleson cracked in reference to his dad, Jason.
“After the first game here, he tried to tweak my swing. I was like, alright, he’s throwing 102. It’s a lot tougher than you think. Then yesterday, I get two hits, and he’s like, ‘I told you! You did exactly what I told you to do,’” Burleson said during the Cardinals Father’s Day weekend series with the Milwaukee Brewers.
The advice keeps coming for as long as the competitive spirit keeps up. Nolan Gorman said that his dad, Brian, who grew up in New York, has long been a competitive darts player and still is capable of getting the better of his son when they square off.
When the younger Gorman was around 12 years old, though, the family took a vacation to Cooperstown, New York, to see the National Baseball Hall of Fame. On a circuitous drive north, Brian Gorman took young Nolan to see a number of baseball fields he’d played on in high school and throughout his youth, and at a few stops, he threw some batting practice.
“There was one where I wasn’t getting any out. I think it was his bad BP throwing,” Gorman joked. “The other one, I was hitting some homers, and he told me he could never hit a homer out of it to right field, so I think that was probably it.
“There’s some things he can crush me in,” he added of his dad’s athletic prowess. “Golf is not one of them.”
Victor Scott II was also proud to point out that he’d beaten his dad, Victor, in each of the two most recent times they golfed together. The elder Scott, his son said, is a shark on the felt, which is a useful outlet for a man who was a competitive sprinter through college.
That background not only helped provide his son with the speed that has shown as his most impressive tool early in his big league career, but it was also the measuring stick by which the two most frequently competed in Scott II’s youth. When the son beat the father for the first time in a 60-yard foot race at age 16 – and while trailing a parachute from his back – the explanations came fast and furious.
“That’s how I knew I had him beat,” Scott II grinned. “He started blaming it on old age. Whatever.
“My daddy, he played baseball in high school,” he added. “That’s as far as he went. When I was 15 or 16, I noticed I was getting a little bit better at baseball.”
High school was also the time when Burleson said his dad gave up trying to catch his pitches. Drafted as a two-way player from East Carolina University, Burleson dominated the high school 2A circuit in North Carolina as a pitcher, posting a 0.83 ERA as a junior in 2016.
“He couldn’t see,” Burleson said of his dad’s attempts to catch his burgeoning breaking balls. “It got to a point where he just couldn’t see it … He’s got bad eyes. That’s why I question sometimes when he tells me about my swings.”
Manager Oli Marmol is the youngest of four brothers, and said his father, William, “was more like an encouraging figure, not like a super athlete.” All four Marmol boys played baseball, though, and two were drafted – Oli, who was a sixth round pick of the Cardinals in 2007, and his brother Ronny, who was drafted as a catcher by the Colorado Rockies in the 37th round in 1997, but declined to sign and instead attended the College of Charleston, as Oli did.
Ronny Marmol suffered an arm injury that left him unable to continue playing. Will Marmol became a preacher. Eric Marmol, who his brother said “could actually play a little bit,” joined the Marines. “They kept telling me to keep going (in baseball),” Oli said, “and I kept going.”
There comes a time for everyone when the encouragement stops and the gloves and bats are put down for the last time. For some, that comes on dirt fields off Eiler Road, tucked into unincorporated St. Clair County, just outside of Belleville’s city limits. For others, it’s decades later, and only after a long and fruitful career.
Scott II estimated that he was 14 when his dad realized he would be a better ballplayer than him, realizing it years before his son. That can make it a great deal easier to push off the tougher conversation, as well as a great deal more rewarding. And, that’s what the pool table and dartboard are for – never giving up the dream of competition.
This story was originally published June 15, 2025 at 3:25 PM.
