"I met (Cassandra) when I transferred schools in eighth grade. Her dad actually taught my dad when he was in third grade. I then started dating her my junior year of high school (her sophomore year) and we've been together since.
"In Washington, Illinois, there are four grade schools. We moved, so I had to move school districts. I went to her grade school. We didn't talk that much. Once I got into high school, I walked past her in the hallway and used to flirt with her a little bit. We actually talked for about three months before we started dating. I think her personality was the biggest thing. She thinks I dated a lot in high school-I didn't, really. We just hit it off.
"She has a really good personality. She's one of those people that everyone likes because she's really nice to everybody. There are no bad things ever said about her. She is very caring and will go out of her way to do anything for anybody. I have a little brother that's two years old and she'll text my mom and go take him to the park.
"She doesn't need anything. She doesn't want anything. She just likes to do it out of the kindness of her heart. That's the biggest thing that stuck out to me. Also, the fact that she's so open and she'll just talk and talk (to anyone). She might not know anybody, but she'll just start talking. They get to know each other and then they love her by the end of the night.
"Girlfriends are a big commitment, especially in high school. I started dating her in November, so it was during the end of the summer when I starting talking to her. We hung out all the time and we were wondering 'where is this going?'
"I'm also a guy that can't just ask you. I have to do something to make things extravagant. When I asked her out to prom, I got her pulled over. I knew the chief of police, so I had her pulled over instead of just asking her. I had been wanting to ask, but then she got impatient and asked 'do you want to date me?'
"I was a three-sport athlete. I wasn't going to play baseball. After high school, I had no offers until my junior college two minutes down the road offered. My plan was to get my Associates Degree in Science and then go to Nursing School. After they offered, I decided to put that plan on hold and continue to play baseball for another year or two.
"Baseball has always been my thing ever since I was 5 or 6 years old when I started playing and my dad coached me. You play basketball in the winter and soccer or football in the fall. In the summer is when you jump into basketball (or another sport) for a majority of the year, but I was a baseball player all summer long and almost all year round.
"I really wanted to do nursing, (but) I couldn't get my degree because I had to take clinicals and you're not allowed to miss clinicals. I got my degree from the University of Iowa in Health & Human Physiology, which basically overlapped with a lot of the classes that nurses would take. I hope and pray that baseball works out the way that I want it to, but-if it doesn't-I can be on the fast track to being in a nurse in about a year and a half.
"I don't come from a family that's very wealthy, so my ticket into college was with sports or academics to get a scholarship. So, the plan was always to play a sport somewhere in college to get money to go do that. Cassandra had never been in a big relationship (like ours). I had been in one before, but it was in eighth grade. Once we started dating, she knew and I had told her what this was going to look like. She was all about it.
"I went to junior college and that wasn't a big deal, since I stayed at my house. It was pretty much just like high school. When I went to the Northwoods League, that's when we started the (geographical) separation. I was six hours away for three months away. It wasn't so bad because, at the time, she had the summers off, so she would come up and stay with me for a while. Once I committed to Iowa, it was just two hours down the road, so it was nothing. She'd drive over and it was no big deal.
"My first year in pro ball was three months, too, but the second year from February 17 until September 3, 2018, was when I was never at my house. There was a time where we were engaged and I didn't see her for five months of that year. Five months between December and when I married her that I didn't see her.
"You find a way to work it out. We did struggle quite a bit with it, but you got to make an attempt through FaceTime or whether it's through ordering her a Jimmy John's sandwich with a note when she's at work at 12 a.m. Those little things kind of ease the pressure off.
"Because we started dating so early, got married and didn't come from super wealthy families, we couldn't just buy a flight and get here. We had to worry about my host family and ask 'hey, is it alright if my girlfriend comes and stays?' It's a little different. That's the biggest thing: finding time to be able to (see each other). She was in the middle of a difficult time where she couldn't miss clinicals (and nursing school). She could not come out until she passed her NCLEX in June or July. That's when it started to become a little bit of a struggle.
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(DECEMBER 2017)
"I read a little book about how to propose like a gentleman. That was the title. It started with picking a place that was special to your lives. We went to Marco Island on our first vacation with her family. They go there every year and I got invited. I ended up going four or five years after. We just continued to go, so I figured this would be a good place.
"I had this big idea planned out with a catamaran. Four days before I was going to leave, the catamaran company called and said they couldn't stop the boat, so I had to come up with a bit of a back-up plan. I thought of a bunch of stuff and I came up with this wine bottle, custom etched with our names on it. I took this piece of paper and burned it up to make it look old-fashioned. I rolled it up and tied it and I wrote on the inside 'Will you marry me?' I put it in the bottle.
"On the beach, I had this big heart dug into the sand. In the canal, I filled it with rose petals and candles. In the center, I had a pile of sand and I had the wine bottle in there with some flowers. I also had two shells that I had got the year before. I put a hinge on it and made a ring carrier. She has seven brothers and the two youngest came with me and we had it set up. This was on a public beach, so I had to leave them with the ring and have them finish setting everything up while I went to get her.
"I told her we were going to go on a date, but she did not want to shower and dry her hair. She asked if it was a big deal if she got dressed up and I said that she's going to want to dress up a little bit. She had no idea. We were walking to the beach and I had a photographer there. As we were walking up, she saw her brothers and so she started peeling away from me. I think it started hitting her and she started crying a little bit.
"Previously, we had gone on trips to places and she thought I was going to do it and then I didn't. So, she didn't get her hopes up. She started crying and then started to suck it up. When we got there, we went inside the heart and I gave the glass bottle to her. She was shaking, so she couldn't open the letter. I helped her and she said 'yes.' I didn't say anything. That's my biggest advice because (guys) don't remember what they say 98% of the time anyway. I gave her a hug and a kiss. Everyone on the beach was like 'what did she say?' It was incredible.
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"You've got to figure out what's really, really important in your life. The hardest thing for her was that she had always lived at home. In that month that we got married, we bought a house. That was the first time she had lived outside of her own house. It's in the same town, but it's still the fact that she's living in (a different) house. What hurt me the most is that she had to live in that house by herself for these months that I'm gone. She knows that I know it.
"Her parents told me when I asked for her hand in marriage to chase my dream. She came and visited right before I got called up here. She was so happy that I got called up, but she was crying because she knew she had to go back to that house by herself and she didn't want that. That's what hurts me the most, knowing that.
"She's such a trooper. She tries to pretend that everything is okay, but I know it's not. (Marriage) gives you a different understanding. When you're dating and even engaged, you're still boyfriend and girlfriend. When you're married, she's yours and you're hers. When she has a problem, it's your problem as well. It adds a little bit of stress, but it also relieves a little bit as well because you have a partner who's helping you through everything.
"It's difficult, but it definitely has its perks. It makes every time that she comes here that much more special. People get into the everyday life of living with their significant other. They get into a groove and they don't get that feeling of what it's like when she's not here. I'm with her for those six months in the offseason and it's awesome. Then, I leave and it sucks. When I see her again, everything sparks up again and reignites what you've been missing."