The Congers know a thing or two about curveballs.
 
Bryan Conger is a baseball guy through and through. His wife, Melanie, is a baseball fan and his oldest son, Maddux, is a pitcher heading into his junior season at Vanderbilt University. His daughter, Kaleigh, competes at the junior college ranks in volleyball, but admits the game of baseball is near and dear to her heart.
 
The patriarch of the Conger family started his baseball career at a young age and competed at Stephenville High School before moving on to Tarleton State, where he continued his career as a pitcher under Hall of Fame Head Coach Jack Allen. From there, he enjoyed a brief professional career in independent baseball before moving on to the coaching profession.
 
There was no place like home for Bryan to begin his coaching career and the former Texan hurler returned to the dugout of the Cecil Ballow Baseball Complex under his mentor, Allen, as the pitching coach for the Texans and wasted little time in developing his coaching résumé. In his first season at Tarleton, the Texans qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time in school history and Conger helped mold one of the top pitchers to take the bump for Tarleton – Paul Darnell, who went on to pitch as high as the Triple-A system in the Cincinnati Reds organization.
 
He made stops at Cloud County Community College and Lamar Community College before making his way to Salt Lake City, Utah as the top assistant and pitching coach for the University of Utah Utes. At Lamar, Conger mentored future big leaguer Brandon McCarthy – who, at 6' 7'' tall, has thrown a few really good curveballs in his career.
 
"I remember Congo being a very productive and a very good baseball coach," said McCarthy, who is currently in his 12^th Major League Baseball season and third with the Los Angeles Dodgers. "He opened me up to a ton of things that I never knew – a lot in the way of shoulder care. He was a stickler for wanting things done the way he wanted and that was exactly what I needed in that time of my life."  
 
Conger went on to Utah and coached another future Major League pitcher, Stephen Fife, who maintains his relationship with the Congers to this day.
 
Fife first met Conger at a camp when he was a high school prospect. After his career at Borah High School in Boise, Idaho, Fife spent one season at Everett Community College before reuniting with Conger as a sophomore in Salt Lake City.
 
"I found him to be a straightforward guy, which I liked. That really matched my personality because I'm kind of a straight shooter myself," said Fife. "Honestly, he is the guy who taught me to pitch. I didn't start pitching until I was 17 so I was very raw. I didn't throw much harder than 84 (mph) and my mechanics were pretty basic. Congo taught me to use my lower half, which created torque. This was also the first time in my life I was physically getting stronger, so the timing of the whole thing really worked. His knowledge of the game changed me while my body was changing."
 
Conger helped Fife find his way to the major leagues as Fife, now throwing a fastball as high as 95 mph, was drafted in the third round of the 2008 MLB June Amateur Draft by the Boston Red Sox and later traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers on July 31, 2011. The next year, Fife made his big league debut with six innings of one-run baseball against the Philadelphia Phillies on July 17, 2012.
 
Meanwhile, Bryan was also enjoying his time as a husband and father of two. He was teaching Maddux the art of pitching – which actually did not include curveballs.
 
"I told him we wouldn't throw a curveball until he was old enough to drive," said Bryan. "I wanted him to learn to beat people with his fastball and be aggressive with his fastball."
 
Maddux developed into a pitcher and was considered a top-round Major League Baseball draft prospect coming out of Stephenville High School but deferred the big leagues to pursue an education and continue his career for Vanderbilt University.
 
Again, the Congers know a thing or two about curveballs.
 
A curveball is meant to keep hitters off-balance. According to Bryan, the purpose of teaching any off-speed pitch is to disrupt timing, keep the hitters honest, and not allow the hitters to commit to just one thing.
 
Well, the biggest curveball of their life came into the world on Christmas morning in 2008 when Jacoby Jax Conger was born.
   
The Conger family got its start in Stephenville, Texas with a blind date.
 
"I'm going to hate myself for saying this, but he was very funny," said Melanie. "Now he's going to know that I think he's funny but that was one of the main qualities that stood out to me."
 
Bryan, however, sees the start of the family differently.
 
"I don't see it as a blind date," he said. "I see it as me using my wily skills to get it set up. I remember she made the first move. She tried to kiss me at the end of the first date. She leaned in to give me a smooch and her dad, who was a highway patrolman, came home. He didn't try to shoot me, so I took that as a good sign."
 
Years after that initial blind date, the Conger family grew to three with the addition of Maddux. Two years later, grew by one more with the addition of Kaleigh. The family of four was complete for a 10-year period as the Conger family followed Bryan's career through Colorado, Kansas and into Utah. It was there that Bryan and Melanie decided to expand their family to five.
 
"Melanie and I talked about it and joked because we were living in Salt Lake City and a lot of our friends had a lot of children and we kind of feel left out because we only had two," said Bryan. "It was in fun, but it was also about wanting to have one more kid before we get to an age where we can't. It all boiled down to how much we loved being parents."
 
Meanwhile, back in Stephenville, the Texans of Tarleton State University had fallen on hard times after the retirement of Allen. Tarleton posted five straight losing seasons that failed to result in a conference tournament berth and ultimately forced a coaching change.
 
The news of the opening made its way to Utah and sparked the attention of the Tarleton alumnus.
 
"I always said that Tarleton was the only non-Division I job I would have left for," said Bryan. "We loved Salt Lake. Two of my closest friends still are from there. There were no negatives at all to it.
 
"I kept up with Tarleton," he continued. "When the job came open, we had initial interest and it was mostly about getting the kids back around family. It was difficult for grandparents to get up (to Salt Lake City) and as time went on, it would only be harder for them. Personally, that was initial draw. Professionally, there was interest but I loved my job (at Utah).
 
"You don't ever want to make a career decision based solely on career. For me, it was more about family," he continued. "I knew that once I left the Division I level that odds are I would never get back. That's just the nature of the beast. So it boiled down to what's more important – profession or family? Hopefully, when they put me six feet in the ground, people will say that I did everything I could for my family. That's what it came down to."
 
Bryan made his way back to Stephenville for an interview, which he claims he "dominated," before meeting up with his family in Omaha at the NCAA Division I College World Series. Positive feelings following his interview with Tarleton forced the Conger family to return to Salt Lake City with a decision to make.
 
After a family discussion and the official offer from his alma mater, Conger accepted the position and moved his family back to Stephenville in the summer of 2008 ready to begin his new life as the head coach of the Texans.
 
"That first season, you get engulfed with all the things you need to turn a group of young men around and teach them how to win," said Bryan. "You have to teach guys who have never won before. We had seniors that had never experienced postseason play, so you become consumed with 'how do we get them to do that' and that mission never changed."
 
Little did the Conger clan know that life's biggest curveball was looming.
   
In December 2008, the Congers were back in Stephenville and Bryan was halfway through his inaugural season as the head coach of his alma mater. Everything was business as usual heading into the Christmas holiday.
 
"I definitely wasn't expecting a Christmas baby," said Melanie. " He was about six weeks early, so we weren't really prepared for that. We were ready for Christmas Day as usual. We had our tradition of cinnamon rolls ready for the next morning and we were prepared to have our final Christmas with just Maddux and Kaleigh, but my water broke at about 5 a.m. on Christmas morning and we rushed to the hospital. The kids ran right past the Christmas tree and jumped right in the car, which was honestly a little surprising."
 
"Dad ran into our rooms around 5:15 in the morning," said Maddux. "I thought he was just really excited for Christmas, but then I realized that Jacoby was being born. I wasn't expecting it on Christmas at all, but he was and still is the best Christmas present I've ever gotten. We waited at the hospital for almost two hours and I was really happy."
 
The first five months of Jacoby Jax's life appeared to be like that of a typical newborn in the sense that sleep was a rare commodity, however, the youngest Conger's inability to gain weight was troubling.
 
A preemie child, Jacoby never gained more than two ounces of weight in a single week over the first eight weeks of his life – leaving his family in dire need of answers before an 11-ounce breakthrough in February 2009 proved to be a cause for praise.
 
"The first three months of Jacoby's life, he was labeled as a 'failure to thrive,'" said Melanie. "We tried every way we could to get him to eat. He would have milk just pouring down his face and we couldn't understand why. They sent us to specialists and swallow studies were done to see why he wasn't able to get formula into his stomach."
 
In a blog that Melanie kept during the early times of Jacoby's life, the matriarch of the family claimed "…we finally found something that works! (We) just make double the bottle, let him make a mess, and hope that half of the bottle gets in his belly."
 
Meanwhile, Bryan's Texans were overcoming a 7-11 start to the season and ultimately led Tarleton back to the Lone Star Conference Championship Tournament in his debut season – ending the five-year drought of the previous years. The season came to an end and the recruiting process started, but things at home were bringing new troubles like nothing the family had ever dealt with before.
 
"It wasn't until five months of age that we started seeing development delays," said Melanie. "One of the first things I noticed was when Jacoby was about three months, we were sitting with some other friends of ours with babies and one of the babies kept reaching out to grab her mom's water bottle. I remember thinking, 'Jacoby doesn't try to grab my water bottle like that. I wonder if there is something with his vision or if something is going on.' We made a pediatric visit and they looked into it.
 
"When he was about six or seven months, he started having seizures," she added.  "He was making movements we've never seen him make. We called the doctor and got in right away. They said it was acid reflux or gas pains. They gave us a prescription, but the movements continue and were more frequent. So, I recorded them and took them back into the doctor. They sent us to Cooks (Children's Hospital). The neurologist said it was Infantile Spasms (I.S.). We come back the next day after running all kinds of tests and it was I.S.
 
"They said there is one drug in America that is known to stop them. There are some drugs that can slow them down and maybe stop them. We looked at each other and agreed to stop these seizures. We looked up the shot," she continued.
 
The drug is Adrenocortiotropic Hormone (ACTH) shots and was expected to a be a daily treatment, injected by a parent, every day for eight weeks. The side effects to ACTH are extensive, but trouble sleeping, loss of appetite and high risk of infection took a toll on Jacoby and the Congers.
 
"Suddenly, we're on our own (for the shots)," said Melanie. "There's no one here to look to. I remember the first shot. The whole family was together and everyone had a role in giving the shot every day. It wasn't easy – from the numbing, to the shot, to the screaming."
 
The shots cured the seizures as soon as the second day of injections, but the shots continued to be a daily ritual in the Conger house – turning Melanie into "more of a nurse than mom."
 
"One of the side effects of the shot, was a lack of immunity," she continued. "With the kids going back to school and Maddux starting junior high school and Bryan was going back to his classes and baseball, how do you even go to grocery store without being exposed to germs? We go to the store, come home, take a shower, and now you can touch Jacoby. The kids came home and went straight to the shower. We did it somehow."
 
"I mean this in the nicest way possible, but (my parents) aged five years in six months," said Kaleigh. "They didn't sleep but two hours a night. It affected me in the sense that I had to grow up a lot and be there for my mom and dad. When I would come home from school, I would have to immediately get in the shower and I couldn't have friends over because we couldn't risk Jacoby getting any sicker."
 
"The lack of sleep was tough at times, but mom and dad never complained," said Maddux. "They never took a day off. They never showed us how tired they were or how stressed they were, but it was difficult on them. The first year I think was maximum two hours a night. I don't know anyone that could that. My parents are special. I love them. I can never imagine how they did it, but they did. They're superheroes."
 
Meanwhile, Bryan is trying to find the balance between personal responsibilities and maintaining his professional goal of turning the program around. The Texans qualified for the Lone Star Conference Tournament in his first year at the helm and as the summer months came around, the importance of recruiting for the second-year head coach proved to be a more daunting task than ever before.
 
"Thank God for Nate Schlieman," said Bryan. "He helped me out so much with his willingness to take on the burden of recruiting. I don't mean this in a cruel way, but it wouldn't have mattered if we were in the doctor's office in Fort Worth or at a baseball field because we would have been talking about players any way. It was probably good for me because the news we were hearing was shocking and occasionally it was nice to be able to step out in the hallway and discuss recruiting for a minute and then step back into the room and be a dad. Every one of my assistant coaches have been tremendous. You wish life would allow them to stay here because it would be nice. I've been exceptionally fortunate in their ability and willingness to put up with more than most coaches in a two-man coaching crew should have to put up with.
 
"As a coach, you feel guilty when you can't be at certain things (for the players)," he continued. "You feel like you're letting them down, but we had guys that were like 'Don't worry about it, coach. We got it.' The neatest thing was how they took on the big-brother role with Maddux while all of that was going on. The players would go to Maddux's baseball or basketball games and a couple of times they went to Kaleigh's junior high games. That meant a lot to us as a family and it let me know, without them saying anything, that they appreciated what we were trying to do."
 
Following the eight-week round of ACTH, Jacoby's seizures had stopped, but the Congers were starting to realize that things would never again be the same and they entered a seven-year period of not knowing what was wrong with their son.
 
"Most head coaches are type-A personalities and, my family will tell you, me and not-knowing don't get along," said Bryan. "I don't care what an answer is because I can figure out what to do, but how do you take action on what you don't know? It taught me a lot. That's when I started to change as a coach. As I was learning a life lesson, these are the types of things that I hope they can learn.
 
"Learning to be the parent of a special needs child is the greatest thing ever," he continued. "You don't know how you're going to do it, but you figure it out. You get the looks and stares when you're out in public, but he understands and knows more than I think even the doctors can comprehend."
 
While the family struggled in the land of the unknown, so did the doctors working on Jacoby. Countdowns became a frequent terror in the Conger house and birthdays were more of a fear than a celebration.
 
"There's probably a lot of hard things, but the one in particular for me was when the doctors kept giving us countdowns," said Kaleigh. "They kept saying, 'He's not going to live to be one' or 'He's not going to live to be two.' They would say, 'It's time to tell your brother goodbye.' It's also really awesome to see him fight through and prove people wrong."
 
"You get an appreciation for things when someone tells you that you can't do something," said Bryan. "When doctors were saying, he won't make it through the night, well he made it through the night. They say he won't live to be one, well he's one. After the third one of those, Melanie and I said we can't do that anymore and we told them to quit giving us a deadline. Once we got into year three, we weren't going to live in fear of the birthday and the whole time he never stopped. He did his thing. After year three, for me, it was like 'Ok, you're a competitor.' You're going to be competing in a different game than everyone else in this household, but you have got what I've seen in your brother and sister just pointed in a different direction."
 
In addition to maintaining his role of father, husband, and coach, Bryan was still making time as a mentor to his former protégé, Fife, who was able to witness the Congers' new lifestyle in Stephenville.
 
"I actually stopped by Tarleton a couple of times to get a tune up," said Fife. "I stayed at their house and was able to witness first hand what they were dealing with and it was incredible to watch.
 
"I was there when Jacoby was around two or three years old and it was pretty intense," continued Fife. "That was a time when he was running around, starting to move furniture and was hollering and screaming. He was somewhat of a terror, but this was a time when they had no idea what to expect. It was interesting being in the house. Melanie would always have breakfast ready every morning and on the weekends, when I was there, Jacoby was going non-stop. He just had so much energy and his vision wasn't there. He was learning to recognize voices and sounds, which kind of freaked him out when I walked in and started talking."
 
The Conger family spent the first seven years of Jacoby's life living in the unknown, while still never sacrificing the love and dedication to Maddux and Kaleigh as they pursued their athletic careers, which included multiple trips per week from Stephenville to Dallas for Maddux to compete in travel baseball with the Dallas Tigers and D-Bat Mustangs teams.
 
"We had always gone to all of Maddux and Kaleigh's games together, but all of a sudden I had to give that up," said Melanie. "That was extremely hard for me, but it made Bryan more aware of someone not being there for Maddux and Kaleigh. He was able to tweak his schedule more to make sure one of us was at their activities. We were driving two hours one way about three or four times a week to get Maddux to practice, but Kaleigh and Jacoby never once complained. Kaleigh was mom in the car, she'd get out while Maddux was at practice and go play with her friends, then when it was time to leave she was back on her mom duties in the car."
 
Jacoby continued to prove the doctors and modern medicine wrong every day as the child who was labeled 'a failure to thrive' and was given life deadlines of six months, one year, two years, and three years was now approaching eight years of age and his family was finally going to get the answer they had long waited to hear.
   
For most of Jacoby's life, the Conger family lived in the unknown and it appeared that Jacoby was on the verge of making his way into medical journals for a reason that no parent would ever want to comprehend.
 
"When the doctors used to refer to it as the 'Jacoby Conger Disease,' it's not exactly what you want your child to be known for," said Bryan. "You don't want a disease named after them. You want statues built of them because of the great things they've accomplished."
 
"We floated along for five years without a diagnosis. We accepted it, but the doctors were not ever pushing for an answer so he was just developmentally delayed," said Melanie. "Last year, the doctor asked about genetic testing."
 
Following intensive genetic testing from Bryan and Melanie, the doctors were finally able to put a finger on his condition – Cardio-Facio-Cutaneous Syndrome. According to cfcsyndrome.org, CFC syndrome is a rare genetic condition that typically affects the heart (cardio-), facial features (facio-) and skin (cutaneous). Children with CFC syndrome may have certain features that suggest the diagnosis, such as relatively large head size, down-slanting eyes, sparse eyebrows, curly hair, areas of thickened or scaly skin, and short stature. The United State National Library of Medicine estimates that only 200 to 300 people worldwide have this condition.
 
"It was nice to have an answer, which prompted a whole lot of research on our part," said Melanie. "There's not a lot of information out there about CFC. There's 200 or 300 people in the world with this."
 
"You realize how rare and special Jacoby really is," said Bryan. "There's thousands of baseball coaches, but there's not thousands of Jacoby. He's as special as you think he is."
 
CFC Syndrome has no effect on the life expectancy of a child, meaning the nightmarish countdowns of the Conger's lives were now officially a thing of the past.
 
"Now we have a path, so how do we attack this?" said Bryan. "We started pushing him more, especially because now we know we're going to have him for longer. In the beginning, we didn't push him because if he has a two-year limit then what do we want to make sure he can accomplish in that two years? Now, I tease him a little bit like, 'Now that you're going to be stuck with us for a while, our expectations are going to go and we're going to push and challenge you. Here's your next challenge because the disease says you can't do this and the doctors say you can't do this, go compete, dude. That's his challenge every day."
 
In addition to the lack of sleep, Jacoby is now eight years old and legally blind. He does not possess the ability to verbally communicate and can't eat solid food because of his sensory disorder, but is continuing to improve aspects of his life daily.
 
"He understands when he's at the baseball field," said Bryan. "He hears the bat hit the ball. He loves being out there. I've had complaints for why we play the music so loud, but it's because when Jacoby can feel music, he dances and gets happy.
 
"It's neat to see something as simple as seeing him put a correlation together," he continued. "He knows that when he's at the baseball field, dad's there. Fences mean nothing to him. If there's a game going on, he feels like he should be with dad. Something as simple as seeing him put a correlation together – baseball field, dad, go get dad – is really neat. It's simplistic, but it's beautiful."
   
Things are different around the Conger house now.
 
For them, the curveball isn't quite a '12-6, drop-off-table hook when you're looking for a fastball' any more. It's more of a 'curveball is coming, keep your head down and take a swing' approach in dealing with Jacoby.
 
Bryan is still coaching at Tarleton State University, heading into his 10^th season as the leader of the program, but a very different man than the one who dominated an interview and departed from Salt Lake City in 2008. He's a new type of coach these days and a coach that takes pride in every aspect of his life.
 
"I'm beyond blessed because during the season Melanie bears most (of the sleeplessness)," said Conger. "Honestly, if she didn't, I wouldn't be able to do this. Coaching baseball is a chess match. You should be prepared for things and be several steps ahead always. When I am awake, I take notes and plan things out. If it's 1 a.m. and Jacoby decides he wants to have a party, then I make notes on my phone.
 
"It has taught me that I can't do everything on my own" he continued. "I probably ask for opinions more now than I ever have before. When I was younger, I didn't ask for opinions because I didn't want anyone else's opinion. Now, I realized that I need to lean on my assistants a little more. When you get players that can handle it, you lean on them more.
 
"Whether it's right, wrong, or if anyone wants to judge me, I don't go to 6 a.m. weights anymore" said Bryan. "That's one of the things I felt I needed to sacrifice. We have 6 a.m. weights here and our strength coaches do a great job, but I'm not there like I used to be. Sometimes, Jacoby only wants to sleep from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. so that's when you try to get some sleep. For me, as a husband and father, 6 a.m. weights don't fit in that schedule. As a coach, you kind of get looked at when you're not there but it is what it is. If that's something that people want to hold against me, that's fine. I've got bigger fish to fry than that opinion."
 
"Running a baseball program is like running a full-time business," said McCarthy. "You're planning practices, scouting, getting ready for your next game, and recruiting never ends. There are so many things that go into that and it's not easy being a head baseball coach in perfect conditions. I can't even imagine having to do those things while dealing with the things (Bryan) has had to deal with. I can't imagine the sacrifices."
 
The lack of sleep didn't interfere with Conger's success on the diamond.
 
"The whole situation is really, once you know the intimate details of his daily life, pretty remarkable," said Fife. "First of all, the commitment Congo has to his family and also the commitment he has to the program, it's pretty incredible that he's able to put a quality product on the field. It's also a huge testament to Melanie that she takes care of everything she does that he can handle his business on the field and doesn't constantly have to be worried about checking his phone every five minutes."
 
Conger led Tarleton into the national spotlight in 2011 with the team's first national top-25 ranking. The Texans have since been nationally ranked in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2017. In 2013, the Texans won their first-ever regular season Lone Star Conference Championship and he put together arguably the all-time greatest pitching staff in Tarleton history anchored by all-conference pitchers Pete Perez, Miguel Ramirez, and Matt Buckmaster with Britt Robertshaw closing out games. Perez, Ramirez, and Robertshaw all went on to have professional careers in baseball. The following year, Conger's Texans won the LSC Tournament Championship and advanced to the NCAA regional for the third time in school history.
 
"To me, for him to be able to balance his family life and be able to give the team what it needs is absolutely amazing," said Tim Esmay, who hired Conger as the pitching coach at Utah and spent time as a head coach at Utah, Arizona State, and is now managing the Great Falls Voyagers in the Chicago White Sox minor league system. "He's always been a family man, but to be able to maintain the balance on just a couple hours of sleep a night is amazing. That is just an amazing family. My wife and I are always in awe of watching them. He and (Melanie) are special people."
 
"It's pretty impressive to see him go through the things he goes through on as little sleep as he does and the amount of responsibility that he has – not just with the team, but as a father," said Melanie. "It's impressive to have as much success as he has had."
 
"My dad does a great job of balancing life outside and inside of baseball," said Maddux. "That's how he's done such a great job at Tarleton. When I was in high school, he did a great job of working out with me. After he worked out with me, he went and worked out with Kaleigh and Jacoby was up there with us running around. No matter how tired he was, he never showed it."
 
"The ability to learn from Jacoby and learn from my family has made me a better coach. They've never given up or taken no for an answer," said Bryan. "I hope the guys in my program never take no for answer and never accept less than what you are fully capable of. Everybody is capable of being more than what they are at this moment in time.
 
"(When the doctors were still giving us countdowns on Jacoby's life), I realized professionally that I wasn't going to think about a practice four weeks away any more," said Bryan. "It became about focusing on today. Let's give today everything we've got and, when that's over with, let's wake up tomorrow and let's do it again. It sounds cliché, but we never know if we have tomorrow."
 
Meanwhile, Melanie continues to be a working mother and is expected to begin a new position at Jacoby's school this coming fall.
 
"As a father, I'm blessed by the type of family that I have," said Bryan. "My wife has done a tremendous job. If it's not for her, I wouldn't be able to coach. She held it together at home while I'm trying to figure out, as a coach, how to turn this program around or how to still be a father and a husband. She was good at keeping me in check and telling me, 'It's time to be a dad.' Without her, I wouldn't still be coaching."
 
Kaleigh is a student-athlete at North Central Texas College and is studying to work in the medical professional, in hopes of helping future families avoid the struggles her family had to go through.
 
"Kaleigh is studying sonograms and went into that field because of Jacoby so she can help other families," said Bryan. "She said, 'If I can help a family to know then that's what I want.' Seeing the decisions that she and her brother made is special. As a dad, it really makes you proud of them."
 
Maddux, whose love for Jacoby and maturation, showed in a reflective moment for his father in 2015 when a late-night, father-son conversation changed the course of his future. Maddux had just finished his senior season at Stephenville High School and was being scouted and courted by multiple Major League Baseball teams about his plans after high school. Teams had him graded to be a third-to-fifth round MLB draft choice, with some trying to talk him out of a college education with the idea of a mid-second round draft status.
 
"Honestly, the whole reason Maddux is at Vanderbilt, from a parent's perspective, is that he was willing to step out and take a risk," said Bryan. "As parents, you'd love it if he was just up the road a little bit. In his decision-making process, nobody knew what really went on. He made an extremely mature decision at the age of 18.
 
"I remember him coming downstairs and wanting to have a father-son conversation," he continued, fighting back tears. "He said, 'If I go to Vanderbilt, the education I get (as an American Studies major) will allow me to get a job that will allow me to take care of Jacoby.' I remember thinking that no 18-year-old should make this the premise of their decision. He said, 'You always told me that you have to put off the now for what you want most' and what he wanted most was to be able to take care of his brother when his mother and I can't do it anymore."
 
Maddux is set to begin his third year at Vanderbilt this fall, which will be his first season since high school where he is eligible for the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft. His family-based decision has put him one step closer to realizing a lifelong dream of becoming a major leaguer.
 
"I can never pay my parents back for everything they've done," said Maddux. "My parents are superheroes and I love them."
 
And Jacoby? He's just being Jacoby.
 
"Jacoby doesn't care if we win or lose. He only cares if I'm going to take him for a piggy-back ride. He only cares if I'm going to keep his 'Nilla Wafer bowl filled up. He only cares if you are going to do what he wants to do," said Bryan. "That's all he cares about, so as a dad or coach it teaches you an appreciation. He just wants you to be you. At the end of the day, it's just baseball. Now, when it's time for baseball, it's everything you've got. Empty the tank. When the tank is empty, go home and empty the tank with your family. It's not easy, but he's my stress reliever from that. He's taught me a lot more than I'll ever teach him."

There is a complete, full-length feature video with the Conger family associated with this story. You can view it by clicking on the image associated with this story or by visiting the TarletonSID Youtube Channel. You can also go straight to the video by clicking here.