SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — Ty McKenzie waits on the hill of a black driveway leading to a Little League baseball field in Georgia. Twenty-two other parents did the same.
Minutes earlier, Nolensville Little League earned its third consecutive trip to the Little League World Series with a win over a team from Florida. McKenzie spent most of the game standing in the bleachers behind home plate corralling his young children and leading the crowd in cheers.
“Black!” he shouts.
“Gold!” he heard back.
These moments are why McKenzie, former NFL player and assistant coach who had stints with the LA Rams, Tennessee Titans and Detroit Lions, decided that parting ways seven months earlier with the Miami Dolphins was one of the best things that could have happened to him.
So he waited.
His son with the same name, the kid who made a game-saving play at third base earlier that night, finally made it through the open gate in left field.
“He walked up to me and he melted into my arms with emotion,” McKenzie said. “He has a lot of emotions.
“The second best part is after a season, he’s like, ‘Okay. It’s time to go again. We’re not done yet. It’s time to go.'”
Like son, like father.
Big Ty McKenzie never got to hug his dad like that, at least not after some of the biggest moments of his life. Rupert McKenzie owned a bakery in Tampa, was born in Jamaica, married a woman from Nottingham, England, had a son who played and coached in the NFL and died of complications from diabetes when McKenzie was 9 years old.
McKenzie decided not to pursue another job so he could stand on a Georgia hill on a sultry August night, his wife and children by his side. His son in his arms. So he won’t be missing out on some NFL training camp.
“We would spend countless hours in the cages and he would be there with me,” the young McKenzie said. “I never take it for granted. I love him. He’s always there for me and that’s the reason I’m here.”
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‘man of the house’
Ty McKenzie, the former NFL player and coach, stands behind a counter at a Hampton Inn & Suites in Bradenton, Florida. He recently left Michigan State, unsure if or when he’ll get a chance to put on a football uniform again.
Five times a week, from 11 pm to 7 am
He would give half of his check to his mother Ruth and use the other half to pay a trainer to keep him in shape.
“He trains, like, stay-at-home moms and after-school dads,” McKenzie said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if you know what you’re doing.’ That helped build me as a person.”
Ruth had a car accident. Her daycare business, which she runs until now, is in jeopardy. Bills must be paid. Ty McKenzie has to be a man.
He played 11 games in 2004 as a true freshman at Michigan State. He didn’t play all 12 because he told his coaches in training camp he was going home, and he missed the first game of the season.
After the season he returned to Riverview, about 15 minutes outside of Tampa. Worked at Hampton Inn. Helped take care of his mother and sister.
His father is gone. His mother was hurt. He misses his sister.
“I’m the only person in the house,” he said. “I quit, I went home. I don’t know what the future holds but I always have faith.”
Then he got a call from Iowa State, which recruited him while he was playing for Riverview High School. He had a second chance. But after a season there, in 2006, McKenzie returned to Riverview. More problems at home ensued.
Coach at Iowa State Dan McCarney fired from the job. McKenzie was looking for another school, so he ended up in South Florida in Tampa, near the home of his mother, his sister. One of the top defensive players in the country is a walk-on right now. Fills out financial aid forms. After McCarney joined the South Florida coaching staff, McKenzie stayed for two years and was selected by the New England Patriots in the third round of the 2009 NFL Draft.
He did it. Then he got hurt.
The water boy
Ty and Amy McKenzie, high school sweethearts, have five children: Ty, the oldest, 12; Taylor is 10; Keegan is 8; Tatum 2 and Tate are nine months old.
“That’s relentless,” McKenzie said. “This is my everyday.”
The two are determined to give their children a better life, just like her mother did for her. The same mother who didn’t want her son to play when he was 8 years old because she was afraid he would get hurt.
Ty McKenzie, the NFL player, coach, college football star, was a water boy for the local football league that year. Every game. Every practice. The next year he played – and got hurt.
The following year his father died, robbing both of the precious moments that Ty McKenzie now shares with his children, the most recent being a trip to South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, for the 2023 Little League World Series.
“So I started playing and I didn’t stop,” he said. “I always imagined what would happen if my father saw me play football. He never saw me play … that was always an extra motivation. I wanted to play for my father. I wanted to make him proud. . make something out of my last name.”
Emotion in motion
“Yes, sirs” and “thank you” come naturally for 12-year-old Ty McKenzie, even as his teammates surround him and taunt him as he’s interviewed inside a Pennsylvania indoor practice facility.
It’s as natural as the big plays he makes on the field, like the emotion he shows on it.
The younger McKenzie admitted to Googling his father, whose playing days ended in 2012, when he was just one year old.
“At school,” he said. “I saw pictures. He coached the Titans and this is him in a Titans polo.”
He also remembers Dad introducing him to Tyreek Hill and Dan Marino at 347 Don Shula Drive in Miami Gardens, Florida, where the Dolphins played.
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But he’s most grateful for all the extra time he’s spent with his father this summer.
“It’s really different,” he said. “We went to all kinds of places.”
South Williamsport is the latest. Watching her son make straight A’s on average and getting mad at herself when she scores a “B.”
“LET’S BE GOOD!” read his father’s text to a reporter on Wednesday night. “Driving tomorrow.”
Take me
Ty McKenzie never started an NFL game. He made 17 tackles in 19 games over two seasons – one with his hometown Tampa Bay Buccaneers and one with the Minnesota Vikings.
But he did it.
He did this through the death of his father. Through the accident of his mother. Through his brother’s trouble.
That tenacity is evident in young Ty.
His father remembers a time when his son was about 4 years old, playing in a baseball game. He was sick that day. He hit his first home run of the day.
“He went up to bat, hit the ball,” McKenzie said. “When he went to the first one he threw up. He didn’t stop. He threw up and kept running.”
The ball rolled into the outfield. McKenzie went first, throwing up.
“Rounds second. Vomiting,” he continued. “It’s a lane. I’m grinning in the dugout; I’m going to catch him. I stop. I’m like, ‘Oh, he’s going to keep going.’ And he continued.”
When he reached home plate he fell to the ground, exhausted.
His father was there to pick him up.
Seven years later, in 2022, while playing for the Nolensville Little League, young Ty repeated the scene in a game.
Fathers day
Ty McKenzie “doesn’t know beans about baseball.”
The words of Nolensville manager Randy Huth. About the man who coached the Dolphins, Lions, Rams and Titans. The man who played in the NFL.
“But he knows about a team,” Huth said. “He knows about teamwork. He knows about growth, and being an athlete. He knows about mentality.
“Who did what he did? Nobody I know.”
Huth continued.
“He knows the game,” he said. “He doesn’t teach ground balls, pop flies and running drills. From a mental standpoint, he knows it. He’s very good.
“He’s become a fan. He’s never done that because he’s a coach, and that’s cool. That’s a fun thing to see.”
Huth, whose father died in 2018, understood the elder McKenzie, whose father died when he was young.
“You won’t meet another man who wants to see you be better than your father,” McKenzie said.
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