- Wong, with his team down by two,
makes the last out.
- The St. Louis Cardinals select Kolten Wong.
- Good job. All your hard work paid off.
- You know, I got called up two years into minor leagues.
And I called my mom.
When she answers, you can tell
she was still tired, sleeping.
I was like, "Hey, go put the speakerphone on and get Dad."
So she went and did that, and I told them.
I was like, "Hey, you know,
I'm going to the big leagues."
And ... just a surreal moment.
Gosh, sorry.
It was just crazy, man.
For that split second,
it didn't seem like she had cancer.
Sorry.
You know, my dad was a coach.
Mom was definitely the cheerleader.
You know, she just had such a distinct voice.
You could always hear her no matter where she was.
Top step, yelling as loud as she could
so we knew that it was her,
letting us know that she was there.
And I heard her throughout the stands.
Excuse me.
But ... she just had that voice.
- Congratulations. I'm so proud of you.
Good job. All your hard work paid off.
Congratulations. I'm so proud of you.
- To be put on the postseason roster on
top of that, and then I made it to the World Series roster,
and I'm in a World Series game at this age.
It was intense.
My mom, when she came up for the World Series,
you could tell things weren't good.
She just was barely able to hold food down.
We had to wheelchair her most of the places.
So it was just a lot of things going on and,
me being young, I wanted to do something special.
And I made a mistake.
- Check on the runner ... and they pick him off!
- Oh, boy.
- This game is over!
Uehara picks off Kolten Wong
and the Red Sox win it 4-2.
- No way can this happen.
Wong, with his team down by two,
makes the last out.
- And Carlos Beltran is standing
at the plate with a bat in his hands.
- It's crazy. Guys ... some guys
never even get to a postseason,
let alone a World Series.
And I did all that in a matter of months.
And then to go from the highest of highs....
I got called up and I went to a World Series game,
and then I get picked off in a World Series game.
It was like ... man, I didn't know what to say.
I just kept apologizing
because I just felt like I let St. Louis down.
I felt like I let my family....
I was getting death threats on Twitter,
Instagram, all that. And
in the big scheme of things like ... it's a game.
I think people kind of always forget that.
But people don't realize that
that was nothing compared to
what I had to deal with that off-season.
After that whole thing went down
I just wanted to go home to my family,
collect my thoughts, be around my family,
be around my mom as much as I could.
Because we kind of knew that
her time was almost up.
So we got back and she was sleeping,
not sleeping. She was in and out.
And the day before she passed away
we come up and she's sitting wide up.
She's sitting wide awake, sitting straight up.
And we're like, "What the heck is going on?"
So we go up and see her
and the first thing she tells me,
she's like, "I want you to take care of Alissa.
Make sure you take care of her."
I was, "O.K."
And ... just how much she loves us and this and that.
And we're like, "Oh yeah, we love you, too.
We're glad you're feeling better."
And then she tells me, she's like,
"Continue to play that game." She's like,
"Don't worry about the pickoff,
just go out and have fun."
And the next day we show up and
we find out that she's about to pass away.
She was basically telling me
what I need to do for the rest of my life
in a few words.
Going through that and losing her at that time,
it rocked me.
I think everybody has those times in their lives
when they go through what seems like hell.
That was mine.
So for me, the first two, three years
in the big leagues was kind of a blur.
I went through a lot in '13 that
put my mental part of the game
in a spiral, and I felt like the world was gonna end.
"How do I get out of this?
How do I get out of this funk?
Is this O.K. that I'm feeling this way?"
I didn't start talking to people
and venting my feelings until two, three years later.
Because as a guy you don't really do that.
You be a man, you act like a man.
So for me that was never something I even considered,
talking to somebody back then.
It was just ... it's part of life.
If I could go back and tell myself one thing
it would be to go talk to somebody,
find a counselor, find somebody to kind of just
let it all out.
If there's anybody out there that has similar situations,
understand that things do get easier.
They don't get better, they get easier,
and then eventually you find a purpose
that makes you find that love again.
And that's what I did.
- First up, Kolten Wong.
- He's looking for his third hit
in this postseason for 2014.
- Wong hits it into right!
- Get up, baby! Get up, get up!
- Game over!
Wong wins it in the ninth!
- You know, in the playoffs in '14,
the bat kind of just went by itself
and hit the ball. It was like....
it was one of those where you hit it
and you're like, "O.K., I know you're there."
You know, obviously, I love playing this game.
And I know that I have a bigger purpose in life now,
and it's to try and portray this message of
faith and knowing that struggles are gonna happen in life.
You're gonna get punched in the mouth at some point,
but understand that you can get back up
and dust yourself off and get back out there.
I feel like I haven't been my best in the big leagues yet
because I'm still dusting myself off,
getting up. But last year was a huge moment
where I took my first step of
becoming the guy I know I can be.
And hopefully this year it's taking another step
of becoming a better player.
And at the end of the day I'm gonna look down at my arm
and know that my mom knows that I played the game hard.
So as long as she knows and I know,
that's all I need to worry about.