It was early evening on a Wednesday in September 2021 when Mariners major-league field coordinator Carson Vitale ambled back to the apartment he shared with his wife Lucy following a day game.

He was, let’s just say, not in the best of moods.

The Mariners, who were in the thick of the postseason chase at the time, had just dropped a 9-4 decision to the Red Sox at T-Mobile Park. Each loss in September felt like a punch in the gut. So when Vitale pushed open the apartment door, the result was still weighing on his mind and probably on his face, too.

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“We got crushed,” Vitale recalled. “It was a big series for us in September. And I remember coming home … feeling like shit because we just got our teeth kicked in.”

Lucy Vitale knew what could turn Vitale’s disposition around, though she wasn’t just going to come right out and say it.

“We were going to Kansas City the next day to play the Royals and my suitcase wasn’t packed yet,” Carson said. “I don’t usually pack until the morning. But Lucy said, ‘Can you make sure that your suitcase is done?’ I thought that was weird.”

This next part makes Carson smile.

“So I walk into the room and there’s a little Mariners baby outfit inside my suitcase,” Carson beamed. “That’s when she told me.”

Carson and Lucy Vitale were going to be parents. They hugged, they cried, they laughed, and they imagined what it was going to be like to add to their family.

“Unbelievable,” Carson said. “I wanted to be a father for as long as I can remember.”

Once the season was over, the Vitales made their annual trip to Green Bay with Carson’s father to watch the Packers. The couple traveled to Canada (Carson is from British Columbia) on several occasions to see family. In February, they moved to a bigger apartment in Belltown. Carrying a baby, Lucy thought, was a breeze.

“It was absolutely the easiest pregnancy,” she said. “I never was sick. I had energy. I went to doctor’s appointments and checked out perfect.”

Perfect, until it wasn’t.

On the night of Feb. 24, with Lucy about to enter her third trimester, she started feeling pressure and discomfort. Lucy called Carson, who was already in Arizona for spring training. They both thought that maybe this was Braxton Hicks contractions, which are, essentially, false labor pains.

“I couldn’t get comfortable. I couldn’t sleep,” said Lucy, 32. “At 5 a.m., I called the emergency line and asked if I should be worried about this. They told me to lay down for an hour, drink some water and see if it progresses.”

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An hour later, Lucy was in her car on the way to the hospital.

Little did Lucy or Carson, 1,400 miles away in Arizona, know what would transpire over the next 24 hours. How could they? How could anyone?

On the afternoon of Feb. 25, Lucy — with Carson by her side, but just barely — gave birth to a baby boy, Charlie. He was 27 weeks, four days and weighed just 2.1 pounds. That night, Charlie settled into the NICU for what would be a 91-day stay, not uncommon for extreme preemies.

Lucy and Carson had a lot to process and myriad emotions to sort through that first night — none more important than the health of their baby boy, who arrived 12 or so weeks early. Kirsten Davis, a registered nurse in the NICU at Seattle’s Swedish Health Services, tried to lay out the facts and answer as many questions as the Vitales had.

“I tell all parents that it’s going to be a roller coaster the first few days. But I always told Lucy and Carson the same thing: Charlie is going to go home. And I think they really hung onto that,” said Davis, who was Charlie’s primary nurse.

“It’s hard to explain to family and friends what it’s like in the NICU, because it’s a world outside of reality that you are suddenly thrown into.”

She’s not wrong. My wife, Marilea, and I once walked down this very same path.

On Sept. 30, 2013, Marilea gave birth to our boys, Carson (3 pounds, 5 ounces) and Bennett (2.15). They were early. Too early. They were 27 weeks, 5 days old.

One minute, Marilea is in the hospital, prepared to spend the next two-plus months on bed rest. Hours later, someone is handing you a hospital gown and whisking you off to the delivery room.

Today, Carson and Bennett are readying for third grade, happy and healthy. Our NICU stay (71 days) wasn’t as long as Charlie’s, but our experience followed a similar arc in many ways. We cried the same tears. Had the same fears. We had good days and not-so-good days. None of it seemed fair. And, each day, we wondered the very same thing Carson and Lucy did: When will we get to take our boy(s) home?

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“We had a kid, but it felt like we weren’t able to be parents yet,” Carson said.

In the fall of 2013, Lucy and some friends were at a bar in the Dundee neighborhood of Omaha called Beer and Loathing. She had lived in Omaha since 2005, after moving with her family from Littleton, Colo.

She was going to school part-time and bartending at a place called The Mattress Factory, which you’ve probably stopped in for a drink or two if you’ve been to the baseball College World Series.

Carson was also at Beer and Loathing that night with some friends. He had played at Creighton University in Omaha and was working for the Angels at the time. The night he met Lucy, Carson was days from heading to the Dominican Republic to manage the Angels’ affiliate there.

“Well, apparently I made the first move … after a couple of Bud Lights. I must have liked something,” Lucy said.  “But what’s funny was the way we were introduced was his buddy was like, ‘Hey, do you think this guy looks better with or without hair?’ So I held up my hand and I was like, ‘Without.’”

Carson had hair then. He doesn’t now.

Carson worked up enough courage to ask Lucy for a date. It wasn’t exactly what she had in mind, but they continued to hit it off. “He took me for 18 holes of golf,” Lucy said, grinning.

In the spring of 2014, Carson, then with the Angels, headed to the Dominican Republic to manage their summer entry in the Dominican Summer League. He also managed there in the summer of 2015.

“Dating long-distance was a very weird dynamic,” Carson said. “It was a crazy time in our lives.”

Yet the two grew closer despite considerable distance between them.

Carson was hired by the Dodgers as their international field coordinator in 2016 and did that job for two seasons. He and Lucy were engaged in 2016 right after he left the Dodgers for a job with Seattle as the team’s minor-league field coordinator. The two were married in December 2017.

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This is Carson’s third season as the major-league fielder coordinator for the Mariners. It was when Carson and Lucy got settled in Seattle that they began to talk more seriously about starting a family.

“I think we were always of the mind that my career was all over the place, we were trying to solidify ourselves as a couple and a family,” said Carson, 33. “We wanted to give ourselves to 30 to figure out where we’re at.”

Feb. 24, the day before the day. Lucy’s discomfort persisted through the night. She was hopeful that after her 5 a.m. phone call to the emergency line that the pain would subside. But it didn’t. The pains, contractions as it turned out, were too unbearable and they were coming in waves.

“By 6 a.m., I called back and told them it was happening every five minutes. They said I needed to get to the emergency room ASAP. So I drove myself in there,” Lucy said.

On her way to Swedish, Lucy called Carson. Right away, he had a bad feeling.

“I’m on the Peloton at 6 in the morning, so it was 5 in Seattle. I get a call from Lucy and I’m like, ‘Oh shit, why is she calling me (this early)?’” Carson said.

Lucy was sent to triage on the labor floor at Swedish and told it could be any number of things that were going on. But, “no one really seemed to be worried.” She was hooked up to a monitor. The nurse left to complete some paperwork. At that moment, Lucy had another contraction.

“That’s when Charlie’s heart rate dropped, and that’s when they were concerned about him,” Lucy said.

Retelling the story, Lucy pauses.

“Sorry,” she apologizes. “This is going to be hard for me to get through.”

“That’s when the doctors started talking about options and what to expect,” Lucy said. “They did get the contractions to stop for about two hours. So I thought maybe I’d be on bed rest at that point, but they started back up and his heart rate just kept plummeting. That’s when they decided to deliver.”

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Meanwhile in Arizona, Vitale’s head was swimming based on his first conversation with Lucy. Should he drop what he was doing and get on a flight back to Seattle?

“I remember walking into our morning meeting at roughly 8:45 a.m,” Carson said. “I sat down next to (director of player development) Andy McKay. He asked how everything was going. I said, ‘Not great, Lucy is in the hospital.’ And I think he said something like, ‘Just go.’”

After Charlie’s heart rate had dropped, Lucy, crying, turned to FaceTime to connect with Carson. First he got Lucy, then the triage nurse, who told him all he needed to know.

“She said, ‘You need to get here now,’” Carson said. “That’s when I really knew it was real.”

Carson hopped on an 11 a.m. flight from Phoenix, a nonstop to Seattle. At the gate, he texted Lucy. Once he was seated, he continued to text Lucy. He hung on every morsel of information she had. An hour after the plane was in the air, Carson got a message. Lucy was being admitted for emergency surgery. Desperate for more answers, spotty Wi-Fi was doing Carson no favors. So he sat and stared at his phone waiting for something, for anything.

“Then I don’t hear anything else until I land,” Carson said. “At that point, your mind goes to the worst. I thought there was a real possibility that the plane was going to land and I wasn’t going to have my family with me anymore.”

Carson landed around 2:45 p.m. and made a beeline to Swedish.

“I got there just in time,” he said.

Charlie Alexander Vitale came out weighing all of 2 pounds, 1 ounce. Carson and Lucy got to say a quick hello before he was whisked off to be intubated.

“I just cried,” Carson said. “It went from the worst day to the best day to the worst again, trying to figure out if my son was going to survive the night. It was all of those things.”

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The doctors wanted to give Lucy two steroid shots before Charlie was born to help with his lung and brain function. But because she was pressed into early delivery, Lucy only got the shot for Charlie’s lungs. There was a good sign early, one that Lucy and Carson clung to in the face of uncertainty.

“He knew he had to climb Mount Everest, and to do that he needed the strongest lungs possible,” Carson said.

Charlie got off the ventilator quickly. A positive sign. They needed a positive sign. His kidney function tested fine. That was another good sign. But Charlie’s white blood cell count was down. More questions, more concerns.

Charlie was, essentially, struggling to survive because all of his red blood cells were going to his lungs to help him breathe. Since Charlie was so small, he wasn’t able to handle the contractions, which led to his heart rate plummeting. He was struggling to survive, and he knew it.

“The doctor said his body is like a big ship,” Carson said. “It just takes time to course correct and it turns very slowly and over time, the body course corrected and was able to fix itself.”

Yes, there were going to be some anxious days ahead. At one point, Charlie’s weight dipped to 1.12 pounds. But soon enough, things seemed to normalize, and Lucy was certain of one thing. Charlie was a fighter.

“It wasn’t an ideal situation, but Charlie crushed it,” Lucy said. “And he did it with the cutest personality.”

Carson kept an online journal of sorts through CaringBridge, where he was able to update friends and family about the progress Charlie was making in the NICU.

Every day there is nothing to report is a win. And we take all the wins we can get.

Progress isn’t linear. There’s going to be some ups and downs. It’s not where he starts, but where he finishes.

Now wish me and Mom luck as we attempt to build a crib tonight. Dad, keep your phone on you!

Thank you to everyone who has reached out with love and support. It’s remarkable to see how much love is in the world. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. You can follow Charlie’s journey here. ☮️ and ❤️
Visit Charlie's Site: https://t.co/sONrFIzDrD
Site Name: charlievitale

— Carson Vitale (@carson_vitale) March 3, 2022

During his time in the NICU, Charlie earned a reputation and a nickname: Chillin’ Charlie. The joke was he partied at night and chilled during the day. More than once, laying on his back, he rested his arms behind his head. But mostly, Charlie, after a rough start to life, cleared every hurdle in his way.

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“He’s a total fighter,” Davis said. “He’s just so strong, and any challenge that got thrown in front of him, he overcame it. You always want to prepare parents for what may be ahead, but he really coasted through the NICU. He had little bumps in the road, but he fought and continued to reach every goal.”

And Carson and Lucy? They didn’t do too bad themselves, Davis said.

“They always say that (nurses) teach you so much, but I think that they taught me something about being just so positive and having a good outlook,” Davis said. “They are the kindest people in the world.”

May 25. Graduation day in the NICU. After months of making visits to the NICU to see Charlie, often multiple times a day, it was finally time to go home.

“It’s the best,” Davis said. “Selfishly, I wanted to be there to see him go home. It’s kind of closing the loop when your primary nurse is there to send you off. It was so rewarding to watch them walk out the door.”

Davis cut the ID bracelet off Charlie’s ankle, fed him and dressed him. Then he was on his way home.

“I made sure that I was going to be working that day,” Davis said. “I wanted to be the one to discharge Charlie. It was sort of surreal watching them walk out. Carson texted me later that night and said all the emotions (of the day) finally all hit him.”

And, really, they still do when Carson and Lucy think about their time in the NICU and the care Charlie received at the most critical points in his young life.

“The appreciation I have for anyone in that field is huge, but those nurses … their patience, the nurturing side that they showed during a really tough situation. They just meant a lot to us. We had a bond,” Carson said. “It’s hard to describe. These are people taking care of your baby when you’re not there.”

Lucy is certain that, someday, she’ll have a whopper of a tale to share with Charlie about his time in the NICU.

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“His nurses, I absolutely will share that with him so that he knows how much those people meant to him early on, what they did for him,” Lucy said. “And I’ll tell him how well he did.

“He was just an absolute miracle. Charlie made one of the hardest times in my life very easy because he just did so well.”

Carson, who missed all of the truncated spring training, rejoined the team on Opening Day in Minnesota on April 8 — but only after he had Lucy’s reassurance it was OK to go.

“Lucy is the glue that holds our family together. She encouraged me to get back to the team,” Carson said.

Seeing the coaches and players and support staff in Minnesota warmed Carson’s heart. He missed them. And coaches like Tony Arnerich and Kris Negrón stepped up and filled in, particularly during spring training.

“We had guys who were able to jump in there and really allow Carson to remove himself … to keep his mind and focus on Lucy and Charlie,” said Mariners manager Scott Servais.

Carson has had the support of Servais, president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, and assistant general manager Justin Hollander from Day 1. That meant everything to him.

“A big part for me, rejoining the team, I think I went through an arc where it was grief, happy I had a son, to this is really challenging. Getting back to some normalcy was really important,” Carson said.

Today, Charlie is up to 9 pounds, 12 ounces. He was at T-Mobile Park with Lucy and some family Sunday afternoon. After the game, Carson carried Charlie around the field as they watched kids run the bases. At one point, Charlie smiled, an unmistakable smile.

To be sure, the Vitales have a lot to smile about these days.

“I’m as proud of that kid and proud of Lucy as I can ever be,” Carson said, beaming.

(Top photo courtesy of the Mariners)

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