This is what baseball does when it gets properly big: it pulls in everyone around it. Not just the player, not just the club, but the grandparents in St. George, Utah, who are sitting through every pitch with the kind of nerves that make a World Series feel personal. Cooper Pratt may be the one on the field, but for Don and Jenny Wickham, this is about pride, worry and the strange, wonderful business of watching a grandson reach the biggest stage in the game.
The Brewers faced the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 1 on Fox on Friday night, and the Wickhams were exactly where you would expect them to be: locked in, fully invested and, by Don Wickham's own admission, probably more nervous than Cooper Pratt himself. That is the emotional bargain of family support. The player has to perform. Everyone else has to endure.
Jenny Wickham said she is "a very proud grandma," and that is putting it mildly. She and Don watch nearly every game, rarely missing one. That kind of constant follow-up explains why this moment has landed so hard in Southern Utah. It is not just that Cooper Pratt in the World Series is a feel-good line. It is that people who have followed him from afar are suddenly watching him at the sport's loudest volume.
A family story with a very public spotlight
Jenny Wickham said she has received messages, texts and phone calls from people she has not seen in 56 years. That is the ripple effect of a player making it this far. It is not only the Brewers and the Rays and the scoreboard. It is the way one big stage reconnects a family to a community, and a community to a family.
She also made the point that Cooper Pratt is still very young in all of this, even if the calendar says he just turned 22. Four months in the majors is no time at all, and in that sense the awe around him is entirely fair. He has arrived quickly, but the scale of the moment is still larger than the experience behind it.
Don Wickham said the pair will go back to Tampa for Game 3, which only adds to the sense that this is no fleeting viewing party. This is a trip, a routine, a commitment. The Wickhams are not just watching from St. George. They are following the story into the next chapter.
And that is what makes this such a compelling slice of World Series life. The games matter, of course. But so does the fact that somewhere back in Utah, a very proud grandma and grandpa are living every inning with him. That is baseball at its most human.
