I remembered him. That’s why I chose him.

By the eighth round of a Little League draft, the evaluation ratings in hitting, throwing, running and pitching all start to look the same. Trying to draft a team of 9- and 10-year-old boys is sort of like skimming a phone book of strangers. It’s just a list of names, and back in April, I was scanning for one that looked familiar.

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Garrett Hull. I coached him before.

“Garrett Hull,” I said aloud with a shrug, scribbled his name down on my roster, crossed it off the draft pool list and restarted the search for the next round.

That’s how Garrett Hull became tethered to my life and my family’s life forever. That’s why I had to sit with my kids the other day and explain, “You’re safe here. I promise I will never hurt you like that. You have nothing to fear.”

Garrett Hull was murdered last week, apparently shot and killed by someone who should be protecting him. Police believe his father, Jeff Hull, pulled the trigger. It was a gruesome, heinous murder-suicide in a lakefront community.

Avon Lake is a wealthy Cleveland suburb of around 25,000 people. Some lifers, a lot of transplants, some blue-collar and a lot of white-collar families. The Hulls moved here in 2017 and purchased the house where Jeff allegedly slaughtered his family.

Police believe Jeff Hull shot and killed his wife, Heidi, his 6-year-old son, Grant, his 9-year-old son, Garrett, and the family dog before turning the gun on himself.

Despite coaching Garrett for two years, I didn’t know the Hulls well and they didn’t have any family here. They moved to Avon Lake for Heidi’s job. She was an operations manager at FM Global, the commercial property insurance company where she worked for more than 20 years and last year was named by Business Insider to the prestigious “Women to Watch” list. She scaled the career ladder from a temp employee in the processing department to the first woman ever to be promoted to senior vice president in the 185-year history of the company.

Few people seemed to know the parents well. I think I had one conversation with Heidi — maybe. I didn’t see her at many games. Jeff was around a lot but never said much. He mostly kept to himself. 

He emailed me before the season asking what color our jerseys were so he knew which color pants to buy. We had a conversation about which bats were legal and he alerted me to their vacation plans and the three games Garrett would miss. That was about it.

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Garrett also played hockey and soccer. In baseball, he played second base, loved being a catcher and had a terrific left-handed swing. It was so fluid and natural. I batted him second for our first game, but he struggled at times to make contact. I still loved that swing. If he learns how to track the ball better, I once told Jeff, he could be a terrific hitter. 

There was one game in particular when Garrett seemed noticeably upset. It was out of character for him to cry after strikeouts, but on this day he sat in the dugout and tears streamed down his cheeks after he struck out for the second time. I made eye contact with his father and we both walked toward him. Jeff was outside the dugout trying to console him and I crouched in front of him. Soon, we had the tears dried and he was back on the field.

We had a special group of boys this summer. It was my favorite team I’ve ever coached. All of the kids got along. There were no troublemakers, and they all cheered wildly for one another in the dugout. When we beat the last remaining undefeated team, it was one of the best nights of the season. All the boys were there and they put together their best game of the year. Since some of the kids missed picture day, we wrangled all the boys together at home plate for another team picture after that win. 

They grinned, cackled and ran the bases before diving into home plate and rolling in the dirt as boys do. I rewarded them with ice cream at a local shop that night to celebrate, and while they licked their cones, I went around the tables and told each boy why I loved coaching him. For Garrett, I told him what a sweet swing he had and how good I thought he could be with a little more practice. I said the same thing to Jeff as kids and parents were starting to leave. He quietly nodded. That was the last time I remember speaking to Jeff. 

The day before we played in the championship game, we held a team picnic. I handed out awards and told the kids about how my dad coached my team when I was their age and we won a championship, and how thrilled I was to coach my son and now play for a championship, too. I told them when they were old and fat like me, they’d look back on these days with such fond memories. 

All of the kids and parents in attendance gathered together on one side of the pavilion that day. Jeff sort of sat alone on the other side. It seemed odd at the time. Now, it’s a little bit haunting. 

The kids cried the next night when we lost in the championship game. They cried a lot more last week. That team picture that once brought so much joy now brings hurt and sorrow. I know there was nothing I could do and no way I could’ve known, but as his coach, there is still a sense of guilt and culpability I carry.

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We’ll never know all of the details that occurred inside that house, and frankly, I don’t know that I can handle knowing much more than I do now. I’m writing this because I don’t want Garrett to just be a statistic in history. I don’t want him to only be known as that boy who was allegedly murdered by his father. What an awful way to be remembered. At least now there is another record of who he was and what he was like.

That quiet boy with the sweet left-handed swing and a lifetime of promise ahead of him. Gone far, far too soon.

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. If you or someone you know needs help, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 1-800-273-8255 or suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

(Top photo: Courtesy of Alessia Lloyd)

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