OMAHA, Neb. — Ten years after members of Arkansas’ baseball team visited him in an Omaha children’s hospital, 14-year-old Brady Luke and his parents attended the Razorbacks’ baseball practice Friday at Creighton Preparatory School.
The Luke family was given tickets to Arkansas’ College World Series opener against Stanford, which is scheduled for Saturday at 1 p.m. at Schwab Field in Omaha.
Brian and Lisa Luke said they have been Arkansas baseball fans since the Razorbacks’ team visited their son and others at Children’s Hospital and Medical Center on June 20, 2012. Brady Luke was 4 years old at the time and was in the hospital while recovering from a surgery to address a heart defect his father called hypoplastic left heart syndrome.
Arkansas players spent time coloring and solving puzzles with him in a hospital playroom.
Members of Arkansas' 2012 baseball team visit with Brady Luke and his mother, Lisa, at Children’s Hospital and Medical Center on June 20, 2012, in Omaha, Neb.
“It was a special occasion for us because it was showing that somebody cared about Brady and what he was through in his recovery,” Brian Luke said. “It really goes to the heart that Arkansas has for these kids that they have an impact on and what their actions say, coming to the hospital and not just shaking hands and doing a fist bump, but spending time and learning about them, understanding where they’re coming from and what their journey is and where it’s going to lead them in the future.”
The 2012 visit was part of community outreach by the Razorbacks, who had multiple days without a game after a 2-0 start in Omaha.
“It was a huge difference for (Brady), having the visitors on the floor,” Lisa Luke recalled Friday, “and just the extra pep that he needed to keep pushing when it was hard to get up and walk and those kinds of things.
“There were other teams that visited us,” she added, “but it wasn’t the same.”
Friday’s practice was the second time the Lukes have interacted in person with Arkansas’ baseball program in the decade since the initial meeting. They were invited to a post-game news conference following one of the Razorbacks’ previous games at the College World Series in 2015.
Brian Luke said he has followed the program for 10 years and Brady Luke is at the age where he is beginning to follow the Razorbacks more.
“He gets as excited as the rest of us, because to us Arkansas is our team because we had that connection,” Brian Luke said. “That’s family to us.”
The Lukes watched the Arkansas-North Carolina super regional last week “on pins and needles,” Brian Luke said, and added, “We watch all the games.”
Brian Luke said his son has come a long way since his month-long hospital stay in 2012, which was one of three staged surgeries that were needed to reroute blood flow over about a four-year period. Brady Luke’s life expectancy, once thought to be 30 to 35 years without a heart transplant, is now 60 to 65 years.
“I think in looking at him, you don’t know that his body is fragile that way, but he doesn’t live his life that way,” Lisa Luke said. “Our doctors told us when he was just a baby to let him live his life. He doesn’t know any different, and that’s what we try to do.
“He gets in trouble with his brothers. I mean there’s no favoritism.”
That is until his favorite team comes to town.
Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn (right) poses with members of the Luke family during the 2015 College World Series. Brady Luke is shown at bottom right.