An unbreakable family bond for Travis Snider and mother

LYNNWOOD — Momma's only boy found her lying on the bathroom floor, confused, hallucinating, fading in and out of consciousness. He didn't understand. A common cold? That's what the doctors told them.

Travis Snider noticed his mother acting oddly on the family trip across the mountains for Thanksgiving, acting spacey and out of sorts. And that night, post turkey and post football, they found Patty Snider on the bathroom floor.

The next day, doctors discovered pneumonia on her chest X-ray at Providence Hospital in Everett. She lapsed into a coma there four years ago, IVs snaking around her body, machines controlling every breath. Pneumonia led to a respiratory ailment most do not survive. Days stretched into weeks.

"My kids thought they were going to lose their mother," says Denne Snider, Travis' father. "It was the scariest thing I've ever seen."

Travis made a promise to himself sitting at her bedside. He was going to play professional baseball. This would be his turning point.

So when the Toronto Blue Jays selected him in the first round of baseball's draft this June, mother and son looked into each other's eyes. The last four years — filled with illness, anger, heartache, even death — came racing back.

Back from the coma

Momma's only boy did not lack for company in the hospital. It filled with neighbors and friends, teammates and coaches, anybody who knew Patty Snider or her kids. She remembers angels, too, who took her around the hospital in a series of out-of-body experiences to show her all the people who cared so much.

Folks in Mill Creek spent years building a baseball family, winning youth championships while Denne Snider served as Little League president. They took shifts at the hospital, running errands, making sure the children got to school, filling the family refrigerator full of food with Post-it cooking instructions.

Patty woke up scared, confused and looking at her mom. The coma had been so peaceful. She didn't understand why she had come back or what was next.

"I believe God wasn't ready for me to go," she says. "I needed to be here for my kids. I didn't understand that at first. But my faith just tells me, it wasn't my time."

While machines kept her breathing, the pneumonia developed into Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). She needed medicine, strong medicine, which nearly destroyed the remainder of her healthy liver (weakened after she contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion after giving birth).

It took weeks for Patty, now 48, to even walk again. It took 18 months for life to return to some semblance of normal. She struggled through rehab and with memory. Sometimes she lost her bearings at the grocery store. She would call her only son, and they would try to figure out where she was and how she could get home. If they could not, he would come and save her.

In the interim, Patty and Denne Snider divorced. Patty moved in with friends. Denne and Travis moved in together, although later he moved back in with his mom. Denne worked two jobs to support his ex-wife and kids.

"My mom had been there my whole life," Travis says. "She's the most important woman in my life, really influential. I'm a momma's boy.

"I missed her. And I had to grow up."

"Angry at the world"

Momma's only boy changed while she was in the hospital. He filled with explosive anger, which spilled out over "the littlest things, the weirdest things," his sister Megan says.

Mad at the doctors who diagnosed his mom with a common cold. Mad at his mom, his rock, who could now barely take care of herself. Mad that he resented her for getting sick, for abandoning him. Mad at baseball, throwing bats and punching dugout walls after striking out.

"I lost control of caring when I got pissed off," Travis says. "I was just angry at the world."

This was not the Travis they remembered. The little boy nicknamed "Lunch Box" because he ate everything in sight and busted open his lip trying to fly like Superman off the coffee table in the living room. "Travelin' Trav" to his father's softball teammates who marveled at the maturity of the kid who always tagged along.

The same kid who spent countless hours in the neighborhood with his father, playing baseball, always demanding more.

"I'd have people coming up to me, in my driveway, my garage," Denne says, "and say, 'How can I make my son like yours?' "

They wondered where that kid disappeared to. Patty told him the family would pull the financial plug on baseball if something didn't change.

And then one day during his junior year, Travis returned home from Jackson High School, frantic. Some kids at another school had jumped his friend. They showed up at a basketball game, and Travis confronted them outside. This led to a huge rumble that he did not attend, but he recognized his influence and started to learn his lesson.

Travis agreed to anger-management counseling that day.

Denne understood the reasons his son was angry, but he didn't understand why he had to foot the bill for anger management. Couldn't the kid just grow up?

"I can't say anything bad about it now," Denne says. "There were a couple Mariners scouts we knew, and discipline was something they really stressed. That's why anger management was the best thing for him. He had to do that, or else he was going to fail."

The early sessions with the counselor were awkward, but then they started role playing, Travis yelling his way through all the things that bothered him. He learned to lean on humor and laugh about his troubles, learned how to let go.

"I walked out of there a lot of times feeling like this weight was lifted off my shoulders," Travis says.

Megan also noticed the difference in her younger brother. Like the time he borrowed her car and drove it further than allowed. She called him out on it, and instead of blowing up like she expected, he apologized.

"I could see a sense of relief in him," his mother says. "I can't imagine what it's like if you feel like your mother abandoned you. And yeah, mentally I wasn't there."

His most important fan

Momma's only boy loved her father, too. The man gave him $50 for each home run in Little League, and before Travis signed a $1.7 million contract with the Blue Jays (with a $300,000 signing bonus), they agreed together on Arizona State for college.

Denne Snider remembers how his father-in-law, Jim Kinney, never missed anything Travis or Megan did, "rain, snow, sleet, mud, whatever, they were there," he says.

Kinney started the business AAA Marketing Systems in 1983, and Patty runs it by herself now. He was diagnosed with cancer in January 2005. Doctors thought it started in his intestines.

He fought until the end. And then he called the entire family into his hospital room and asked them if he should continue undergoing dialysis. He tried one more treatment, and it wiped him out. He stopped responding to chemotherapy. The family brought him home, took him to a hospice and he died less than 24 hours later on Nov. 24 at age 74.

"That hurt Travis, hurt him hard," Denne says. "He stepped up and said to himself, 'I'm going to dedicate myself to my grandfather and all he's done for me. Grandpa, here I am, and I hope you're watching.' "

The family watched Travis, wary and wondering if the explosions would return. He erased any remaining doubt during the funeral. Patty's eyes mist when she talks about his speech, this big, strong kid crying buckets in front of an audience that lacked dry eyes by the time he finished.

Part of his speech read: "He was the most important fan in the stands. There was not another person in this world who I wanted to impress more than him. He was my idol, my role model and my best friend."

Travis Snider, all grown up.

Momma's best friend

Momma's only boy went to a baseball tournament last summer in California. This was the last trip his grandfather made, the last time they all watched baseball together.

On drives between Los Angeles and San Diego, they pored through everything that happened. Mom finally understood where the anger came from. Her only son finally understood everything she went through.

They finally understood each other.

Then the spring came, and all those kids Denne coached in the Mill Creek Little League led Jackson High School to the Class 4A state championship. Travis savored the celebration at Safeco Field because he already learned how one day can change a life.

Not long after, they scrunched around a computer in a friend's apartment to watch the draft. Denne warned his son about the party, told him if he fell down the board, his friends and family would be there to share in the disappointment.

"I'm having the party to say thank you," Travis told him. "There will be no disappointments."

Travis Snider, now 18, is in Pulaski, Va., with the Blue Jays rookie team. In 43 games, he's hitting .329 with 10 home runs and 35 runs batted in. He leads the league in home runs and slugging percentage (.598).

His mom watches game logs on the computer in her living room, flanked by picture montages of her son, and trips are planned to Virginia this month and Toronto in September.

Travis plans to buy a Cadillac Escalade, and offered to buy his dad a fixer-upper in the future, which fixes one problem for Denne and creates another.

"That could be my dream," Denne says. "But then I think about it, and I realize ... I wouldn't have time to watch him play baseball."

Patty is moving into a condo in Mill Creek that her son purchased with his signing bonus. She's also awaiting a liver transplant at UW Medical Center. She carries her cellphone, waiting for the call. There are still days she feels tired, still some memory issues. But the hardest part this summer was letting go. Four years of illness, anger, heartache, even death, and just when the Snider family patched itself whole again, the same dream they chased for years broke them all apart.

She told herself for months her son was leaving. It didn't sink in until he did. She comforts herself with a saying she repeats often: "It's easier to keep them grounded, but it's harder to give them wings."

"We are best friends," Patty says. "He calls me almost every day, and if he misses a day, I call him. I like to hear how he's doing. I like to hear the happiness in his voice."

Momma's boy. Only. And always.

Greg Bishop: 206-464-3191 or gbishop@seattletimes.com