STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

Here's a story about a strikeout and a small boy in tears.

It's not a sad story.

It's a hero's story.

It begins in the night when his mother heard the boy awake.

"A screaming headache," she said.

Whatever was wrong, it was back and worse. For a while, the boy had been vomiting in the mornings. He'd had headaches so severe he had to lie down. But all that had gone away until that night. Out of bed, teetering unbalanced, he walked into a wall.

Two days later, a neurologist told the mother, "Your son has a malignant brain tumor." Romney Oaks was 5 years old.

On March 28, 2001, surgeons removed the tumor. Then came radiation, five times a week for 45 days.

Because treatment disrupted his brain's normal mechanisms, a shunt was implanted in the boy's body to move cerebral spinal fluid from his head to his abdomen. He also had an adrenal insufficiency, caused by damage to his pituitary gland (in time his mother would carry a syringe and medicine to games in case the boy was injured). Radiation left him bald and skeletal. His father said, "He looked like a Holocaust victim."

During these treatments in Los Angeles, Romney Oaks became a sports fan. His cancer doctor wrote on the boy's arm, in purple ink, "Go Lakers." Soon, with his nasogastric juice tube taped behind an ear, the boy began playing basketball. "We wanted him to have the experience," his father said, and here Marlo Oaks' voice turned a shade softer, "in case he didn't make it."

Now, five years later, living in Bountiful, Utah, the boy has asked his doctors if they can't raise his dosage of human growth hormone because at this rate--he's 4-foot-6 and weighs 63 pounds--he'll never be big enough to be what he wants to be: an NBA player.

The Oakses have no television because they think nothing is worth watching. So Romney catches the NBA on radio and, if he has done his chores, visits a neighbor with a TV.

"Every morning Romney gets the newspaper and reads the whole sports section," his father said. "He memorizes Lakers statistics, knows about Shaq and Kobe. He's got his own world there. It's what childhood is supposed to be."

He didn't play basketball this year, choosing for the first time to play baseball. It's a 9- and 10- year-olds league where the idea is to have fun learning. Everybody bats, even if there are 15 players on a team. If you score four runs, the other team comes to bat. Outfielders chase butterflies as often as they chase fly balls. Only the grown-ups get gnarly about who's winning.

Romney Oaks had fun. In a dozen games, his mother said, "He got two hits. One was a triple." A pause … "The triple was due to so many errors. He hit the ball and just kept running."

Which is the happy way it goes in 10-and-under.

Which makes it so disheartening to learn what happened when Romney's team played for the league championship.

Last inning, two outs. His team a run behind. The tying run at third. His team's best hitter up, Romney on deck.

The other team's coach ordered the good hitter walked. Then they could pitch to Romney, who's a beginner, who hadn't hit the ball in this game, who's weak because there's just so much medicine can do. Later, the local paper, the Davis County Clipper, criticized the coach; The Salt Lake City Tribune joined in, followed by Sports Illustrated and MSNBC television, all ripping the coach for picking on the poor little kid who had cancer.

Romney Oaks did strike out and did it with tears in his eyes. "He told me, 'I felt the pressure,' " his father said.

OK, whatever rips came, the coach earned. It's a kids game, not the freakin' World Series.

But look.

Five years ago, Romney Oaks had a monster in his brain.

This summer, still fighting it, he played baseball.

A boy who might not have made it, made it.

"That night in bed," his mother said, "we talked about Kobe and Michael Jordan. I told him they had important games when they missed 3-point shots at the end and lost. I said he had two choices 'You can quit baseball. That's OK with us. Or you can work to improve your batting and try again next year.' "

The next morning, Romney came to the kitchen. Elaine Oaks, who once heard screaming in the night, now heard her son say, "Mom, I made my decision. Next year, I'm going to play basketball again--and baseball."