The projected pitching matchups:

OSU – LHP – Luke Heimlich – 15-1, 2.42 ERA, 142 strikeouts in 111 ²?₃ IP
MN – RHP – Reggie Meyer – 8-3, 2.62 ERA, 67 Ks, 103 IP

OSU – RHP – Bryce Fehmel – 10-1, 2.77 ERA, 54 Ks in 97 ¹?₃ IP
MN – RHP – Patrick Fredrickson – 9-0, 1.73 ERA, 63 Ks, 86 IP

OSU – RHP – Kevin Abel – 3-1, 4.13 ERA, 77 Ks in 52 ¹?₃ IP and 5 starts
MN – RHP – Jake Stevenson – 1-1, 5.52 ERA, 15 Ks, 29 ¹?₃ IP

Go Beavs!

Below is the story of Luke Heimlich, from a guest to this blog and family friend of 35 years. It is very long, but worth the read to anyone at all open-minded or curious.

WHAT I SEE IN THE LUKE HEIMLICH STORY

Luke Heimlich’s parents have been my dear friends for 35 years. Since the Oregonian exposed Luke’s juvenile record last year, I have watched in dismay as countless thousands of people have commented on the case, with most of them heaping condemnation on Luke. I am continually amazed that none of them see what I see in the Oregonian story.

I was sexually molested by two teenage neighbor boys when I was five years old, which profoundly impacted me in ways I didn’t fully realize until decades later. There was only one incident, I wasn’t physically injured, and I never told anyone until I was in my forties. Yet 60 years later, I still remember every devastating detail of the abuse.

In the Heimlich story, the girl’s mother said her daughter “doesn’t really remember everything that happened.” Wouldn’t the mother be relieved and thankful that her 11-year-old daughter doesn’t remember being molested? Wouldn’t she do everything in her power to make sure her daughter is shielded from anything that might trigger bad memories? Apparently not. Instead, she cooperated with a journalist preparing to expose her daughter’s reported trauma to the world.

The girl lives in a small town where the family is well-known, and the Oregonian article made her last name obvious. Court documents from the mother’s divorce and subsequent loss of custody are public records that can be accessed online. Did she fail to comprehend this would reveal her daughter’s identity to hundreds of people in the community and to anyone in the world with access to a search engine?

Certainly the reporter had to know, and his story included explicit details from the prosecutor’s charging statement, which would retraumatize the girl if the allegations were true. Sure enough, immediately after the article was published, the girl was questioned about it by some kids in her school. When I was 11, if the sexual abuse I had suffered were publicized in a way that prompted my classmates to discuss it and question me, that would have damaged me more than the original offense.

Juveniles in Washington State are denied certain legal rights that adults have. The supposed justification is that the court will look out for “the best interests of the child.” When the alleged victim and the accused are both juveniles, the best interests of the older child are sometimes sacrificed in an effort to protect the younger one. Luke sacrificed his future to spare his niece from having to undergo “further interviews … or her testimony at trial” (as the Oregonian quoted from the prosecutor’s statement). Now the girl is 12, and by all reports she is happy and thriving in her father’s care, with no sign of lingering effects.

I don’t believe Luke molested his niece, but the Oregonian has abused her in a manner that will have long-term consequences. How will she feel five years from now, when she realizes her uncle’s bright future was destroyed and her grandparents have suffered years of anguish because of something she said when she was six and doesn’t remember? I think she will eventually figure out who has acted in her best interests, but by then the damage will be done.

Part two, after I asked for some follow up information.

As I stated in a previous post, Luke Heimlich’s parents have been my friends for 35 years. Ever since the Oregonian/OregonLive exposed Luke’s juvenile record a year ago, he has been engulfed in an unrelenting tidal wave of condemnation. Much of the reporting and almost all the social media commentary has been based on incomplete, misleading, and/or outright false information.

I don’t know how a human being can survive what Luke has been subjected to. The past year has demonstrated that the world is more heartless than I could have imagined and that Luke Heimlich is the most courageous person I have ever known.

Enough is enough. It’s time to go back to the beginning and outline the facts that can be established based on public records and/or multiple witnesses. In the county where Luke’s family resides, divorce and custody documents are public records that can be accessed online. The following facts are supported by those records, which can be located with a simple Google search. I will refrain from providing the internet link, because the documents reveal the children’s names. Never mind that the June 2017 Oregonian story exposed the daughter’s identity so effectively that she was immediately questioned by some kids in school (an abomination I hope the reporters and editors will never live down).

This is where the story begins. I will outline the events of later years in subsequent posts.

2009
Luke’s older brother divorced his wife. The divorce was finalized in December. There are two children, a son and daughter, and the parties agreed to a parenting plan that included 4 days a week residing with the father and 3 days with the mother. School holidays were to be split between the parents. Based on higher earnings, the father was ordered to make child support payments to the mother.

2010
In February or March, the ex-wife moved from Washington to California, leaving both children with their father. Subsequent court documents indicate she made weekend visits to the children once or twice a month during the rest of the year.

JANUARY 2011
The father petitioned the court to grant him primary custody, and he asked for his child support payments to be eliminated. He attached a parenting plan that called for the children to live with him full-time during the school year and divide school holidays between the parents. The plan allowed for weekend visits from the mother twice a month.

FEBRUARY 2011
The mother submitted her response, which is difficult to interpret. It consists of a form with checkboxes to indicate whether she admitted or denied the “allegations” in the 22 subsections of her ex-husband’s petition. (I hesitate to use “allegations” here, because it’s a loaded word, and the petition doesn’t contain anything I would describe as an allegation. I use it simply for accuracy, because it’s the term printed on the response form.) The mother also checked a box requesting that the father’s petition be dismissed. She attached a proposed residential schedule calling for the children to live with her during the school year and split holidays between the parents.

MARCH 2011
The father submitted his reply to the mother’s response. He asked the court to deny her request for the children to reside with her. In consideration of the fact that she would bear more travel costs, he offered to continue child support payments at a reduced amount. The court subsequently issued an order approving the father’s plan on a temporary basis.

APRIL 2011
The court scheduled a settlement conference for a date in September and notified both parties.

MAY 2011
The father submitted a list of primary witnesses who would testify in support of his petition. The list includes his father and mother, as well as one of his sisters and her husband. There is no record of a witness list from the mother.

AUGUST 2011
The court issued an order modifying custody and approving the father’s parenting plan. The mother apparently capitulated. The court order bears her approval signature, which is dated in July.

The settlement conference scheduled for September was subsequently cancelled. The public record also shows a trial date scheduled for October, and it was cancelled.

DECEMBER 2011
Both children went to stay with their mother during the school holiday. After that visit, the mother told her ex-husband their daughter had described being molested by Luke.

According to media reports, the timing of the alleged abuse progressively morphed from one date span in 2011 to multiple date spans 2009-2011, and finally to a single incident during a new date span stated in Luke’s eventual plea agreement: February to December 2011. There are no public records I can use to verify this information.

The May 2018 Sports Illustrated cover story about Luke includes this statement: “The mother insists that a custody dispute had no bearing on the accusations, saying that she never raised concerns about Luke and her daughter in custody proceedings.” The mother’s statement is incompatible with the timeline of events.

The basis for the father’s January 2011 petition for custody was articulated in a sentence that starts as follows: “The children have been integrated primarily into my family…”

We will never know what actually happened during the girl’s holiday stay with her mother at the end of 2011, but one thing is perfectly clear. That was the end of the “integrated” Heimlich family.

Writeup below by our beloved BeaverGopher, who is going to have a massive case of ambivalence this weekend. Big thanks to him for filling us in on these guys. I had no idea MN was such a storied baseball program.

Sophie’s Choice for Beavergopher

I hate the NCAA seeding committee! I would have loved to see this as the championship matchup, but alas, the SEC has to be assured a team in to validate the narrative.
Get to know the Gophers:

CWS champions in ‘56, ‘60, & ‘64
Coach was Dick Siebert for whom our field is named for.
CWS appearances in ‘56, ‘60, ‘64, ‘73, & ‘77
NCAA tournament appearances: (32 )1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1964, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1981, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2016, 2018
B1G championships: 24
B1G Tournament champions: 10
Notable alums: Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, Terry Steinbach, Dan Wilson, Greg Olson, Brent Gates, and Glenn Perkins.
PAC connection. Jerry Kindall the former AZ coach and three time CWS champion was the team caption of the Gophers ‘56 CWS champion.
So there is a proud baseball tradition here. The HS baseball in the state is quite good, but starting in the late 80’s the SEC and ACC have been raiding the state as the elite players want to play in warm weather. Pitchers have ended up at Fl, Vandy, UNC, and TCU just the past few years. Beavs verballed a Lefty for ‘19 from Stillwater, MN.
HC John Anderson got the job at age 26 and has been our coach for 37 years. He is a great coach and even better person. He has been offered jobs at several southern power schools over the years, but thankfully has stayed. He is very well liked and respected by his peers. Teams play very sound baseball and generally don’t beat themselves.

Team star. SS Terrin Vavra. First team AA. Dad was coach for the Twins. 3rd round MLB
draft pick.
This is a veteran team with lots of juniors and seniors in the lineup. They are one pitching meltdown from three-peating as conf. champs. Mainly local kids with a lot of multi sport athletes. They have very good team speed and have been pretty aggressive with the running game this season. The lineup is heavy on lefties and there is power potential 1-9.
Offensively comparing the two squads, I would give the Gophers the advantage at LF, 1st, DH, and SS. Vavra and the LF Mezzenga are hitting in the upper 300’s.

Defensively they are very good, but not to the level of the Beavs. The most glaring difference is CF. Alex Boxwell will make some bad reads and let balls get over his head.
Kwan is really awesome, so big advantage to the Beavs. The CF made the All Region team based on his his bat. The catcher is the son of former Seattle Mariner and Gopher catcher Dan Wilson. Very good player, but Adley is freaking unbelievable. Vavra, the SS, is really good. Not Caydn, but close enough.

The question about this team coming into the year was could they they find pitching.
Two freshman became AA and made the season. Saturday starter Patrick Fredrickson has been fantastic. Great control and good movement. Pitcher of the year and freshman of the year in the B1G. Friday guy, Reggie Meyer, is a big lefty with a good slider and sits at 92 with his fastball. When he is on he is pretty good. If he does not go deep in his start, you can probably buy your tickets to Omaha. The freshman closer, Max Meyer, has been awesome. He basically won the regional with three shutout innings against UCLA. He blew away the UCLA batters with a great slider and was hitting 94/95 on the gun we could see from our seats. He is a very slightly built kid that looks like he should be on a HS tennis team. He seems to have the it factor. If it comes to a third game, the strategy has been to get a few innings out of a pitcher to get to the long reliever Brett Schultz. He was very effective against UCLA. After those two the bull pen is a throw of the dice. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

So the Gophers have a team built to win a Super if the cards fall right. Good hitters top to bottom. They have been very mentally tough and have found ways to win this year. They only had nine true home games at Siebert Field this year due to the horrid spring weather and had to play one of their “home series” at Purdue because of said weather.
They keep the pressure on with their bats. If both teams are on, Beavs win in two. If something goes south, they are capable of an upset. Hopefully it is a well played series. May the best rodent win.

Go Beavs and Go Gophers.

And screw the the NCAA for setting up this nightmare for me.

Here we go. Good luck to the boys.

P.S. If we make it to Omaha let’s have an AB get together.

Go Beavs!