Orioles outfielder Austin Hays was forced to consider that dad strength was real this spring after he hit a home run in the first game his newborn son attended.
He’d spent the winter surrounded by a more undeniable kind: a mother fighting for her baby, and a baby fighting to come home with his family.
That spring training game in early March was only weeks after his wife Samantha’s February 12 due date for Levi Austin Gerald Hays. By then, Levi was over 2 months old, having defied the odds of a complicated pregnancy and tense December to attend one of his father’s games for the first time.