Mickey Gasper Catches Payton Tolle in Mother’s Day Start
mickey gasper is set to catch Payton Tolle on Mother’s Day, giving the Red Sox lefthander a start that now lands two years after his mother Jina Tolle died. A Saturday rainout pushed his original assignment off the anniversary date and onto Sunday, turning a routine roster decision into a day he said he will not try to avoid emotionally.
Payton Tolle Mother’s Day
Tolle, 23, was supposed to start for Boston on the two-year anniversary of Jina’s death before the game was washed out. Instead, he will take the mound on Mother’s Day, a date that carries its own weight after the family loss.
“I’m not going to shut myself off from what it is like,” he said about the weekend. That is the sharp edge of the story: the start is not just another turn in the rotation, because the rainout changed when it arrives and left him pitching on a holiday tied directly to his mother’s memory.
Jina Tolle’s example
Jina died at 48 after a long fight that began with a Stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis in 2016. Doctors gave her three months to live, but she survived nearly eight years and went through over 125 rounds of chemotherapy.
Tolle said his mother’s influence reached beyond baseball lessons and into how he handles pressure. “The joy that she had, I try to keep with me, especially when it comes to baseball. She always said, ‘Show people why you play, who you play for, and why you love it.’ I just have so much joy playing this game. She helped me know it’s OK to show that.”
Chris Reilly and 2019
That view of him fits the way he was first seen as a player. In 2019, when he took part in a showcase for top high school talent in Oklahoma, he was a two-way player and rising junior listed at 6 feet 5 inches and 220 pounds.
Chris Reilly, then an area scout for the Athletics and now the director of pitching at West Virginia, remembered his first reaction simply: “I was like, ‘Well, this kid’s completely different,’” he said. Reilly later joined the Red Sox in 2020 to scout North Texas and North Louisiana, and his coverage area carried him away from Tolle at Bethany High School and later at Wichita State.
Bethany High School route
Jina also shaped the way Tolle and Charlie were raised, teaching them faith, strength, joy, passion, and humor. Reilly described meeting her as part of what made the family stand out, saying, “The ability to sit down in a game and just meet somebody that’s different than everybody else — more pleasant, more effervescent, more refreshing — as a scout, that’s so unique,”
He also said her feedback never softened the edges. “There was no sugarcoating,” Tolle said. “The reactions you always got were real from her. It was never, ‘Oh, you guys will get them next time.’ No, it was, ‘You could not throw the ball in the zone today — so go get better at it.’” That same directness carried into the development mindset he said came from both parents: “In order to get better, you have to know that you did bad — plain and simple. Own that, and then, ‘OK, now what do I do to move forward with it?’”
For Boston, the practical change is simple: Tolle still starts, but the date now lands on Mother’s Day instead of the anniversary of his mother’s death. For him, the assignment adds one more layer to a day already tied to Jina’s voice, and he said he plans to meet it head-on rather than turn away from it.
