Red Sox left-hander Payton Tolle honors his mom, who passed away 2 years ago
Red Sox left-hander Payton Tolle took the Fenway Park mound on Sunday afternoon with a heavy heart. Pitching two years and a day after his mother, Jina, died following a nearly eight-year battle with colon cancer, the 23-year-old Tolle wore his pant legs near his knees showing his pink socks on Mother’s Day. When his start was rained out Saturday, Tolle had a lot more time to think about what pitching the next day would be like.
BOSTON (AP) — Red Sox left-hander Payton Tolle took the Fenway Park mound on Sunday afternoon with a heavy heart. Pitching two years and a day after his mother, Jina, died following a nearly eight-year battle with colon cancer, the 23-year-old Tolle wore his pant legs near his knees showing his pink socks on Mother’s Day. When his start was rained out Saturday, Tolle had a lot more time to think about what pitching the next day would be like.
“This week is really tough for me. I’m not going to lie to you,” he said, holding back tears after Boston’s 4-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays. “It’s a tough weekend.
I think yesterday would have been just as hard. I try to … it’s tough. “So, I try to get away from it as much as I can but at the same time it’s life,” he said.
“It’s part of it. Some things are bigger than baseball in that aspect. ” Jina died on May 9, 2024, at 48 and Payton had a song in mind that he was holding for a certain day.