Mary Jung had perhaps the best Mother’s Day an MLB mom could have asked for.
She got to watch her two sons play each other, and throw out the first pitch, at Comerica Park on Sunday afternoon in a rare Mother’s Day brothers meeting in Major League Baseball.
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Mary — who wore a custom half-and-half Detroit Tigers and Texas Rangers jersey — threw out the first pitch on Sunday ahead of her sons’, Josh and Jace Jung, matchup in Michigan. Josh’s and Jace’s dad, Jeff, was also there in a similar custom jersey.
“I mean my heart is just exploding,” Mary said on the Rangers’ broadcast. “I mean, I couldn’t ask for a better Mother’s Day gift. To watch them — we’re all in the same place, to begin with — but then to watch them live their dream, do what they love to do, I couldn’t be more proud.”
Josh, the older brother, is in his fourth season with the Rangers this spring. He’s dealt with numerous injuries that have kept him sidelined throughout his career, including a broken thumb and a broken wrist, and has surpassed only 100 games in a season once.
Jace, the younger brother, was only called up by the Tigers last fall, though he started this season back with their Triple-A team. He was recalled not quite a month into the season, and has been there ever since.
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Now, with both brothers on the field on Sunday, they are just the seventh set of siblings to face off in an MLB game on Mother’s Day in the last 45 years.
“My mama heart just melted at that possibility,” Mary told the Dallas Morning News about when she first saw the schedule line up. ”But I didn’t want to talk about it in case something came up. I thought about getting a split jersey with both teams. If I looked at flights, I‘d erase the browser history.
“I found a hotel but wouldn’t call to make reservations. If it happened, great, but I really worked hard not to say anything about it. I didn’t want any evidence that I‘d even been thinking about it. Every time I‘d actually say something, I‘d retract it and say ‘what if.‘”
And, to make the day even better, Josh hit a two-run home run in the fifth inning. That put the Rangers up 5-0 and pushed them to the 6-1 win.
“I think it will be everything for the family,” Josh told the Dallas Morning News before the game. “Just in general, you’ve got two kids in the big leagues playing against each other. Just to play against each other, that’s something special on its own. We’ve worked forever just to get to the big leagues. It’s going to be an emotional day for them.”
“She might shed a tear here or there,” Jace added. “But, yes, she will be off the wall.”
Without a doubt, this was a Mother’s Day Mary won’t soon forget.
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