Mark Ellis, wife, reach out to stricken family after son’s death

CINCINNATI — The youngest of Mark Ellis’ three children is a 2-year-old girl named Dylan. So when Sarah Ellis, wife of the Dodgers’ second baseman, read about the death of an 8-year-old Indiana boy named Dylan Williams following a baseball practice earlier this summer, it haunted her.

“The baseball tie-in and the name of the child and everything kind of struck her. And she reached out to the community to see if there was anything we could do,” Mark Ellis said.

As a result the Ellises have partnered with the Dodgers, Reds and Rawlings sports goods to bus Dylan Williams’ former Little League teammates and their parents to Cincinnati for Saturday’s game. The kids will be on the field during batting practice, after which the Ellises will present the Union City baseball league with a check to pay for medical equipment as well as specially made protective caps the children can wear on the field.

Williams died days after being struck in the head and neck by a thrown ball.

“To be able to do something like this and hopefully shine a little bit of light on this family and this whole community who lost this young kid ... just to bring them out to the ballpark, something that’s little to us is going to be hopefully a big day to them,” Mark Ellis said.

As Ellis spoke, his 6-year-old son Briggs, who missed his first day of school to be with his dad, sat nearby in the Dodgers clubhouse.

“I don’t think you can be a parent and not think about something like that,” Ellis said. “And if you’re a parent, you read an article like that, it’s going to strike you for sure.”

Anyone interested in helping other kids and other leagues may do so through the Dylan Williams Always an All Star Foundation via the Pacesetter Bank in Union City. The foundation creates awareness for organ donation, promotes field safety for kids and educating people on the importance of having automatic external defibrillators at ball fields. Donations can be mailed to:

Pacesetter Bank
Attn: Jennifer Wilcox, Dylan Williams Always an All Star Foundation,
P.O. Box 427, Union City, IN 47390 (Tax I.D. 46-32242201)