For Gamecocks’ Clarke Schmidt, watching brother battle cancer put baseball in … – Charleston Post Courier

COLUMBIA — Clarke Schmidt’s original plan for this past summer involved pitching in the Coastal Plain League and putting himself in position to contend for a weekend starter’s spot with the South Carolina baseball team. But very suddenly, baseball didn’t seem to matter as much anymore.

Everything changed in early June, when Schmidt’s older brother Clate, a pitcher at Clemson, was diagnosed with nodular sclerosis lymphoma. The blood cancer led to rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Clarke was right next to him through all of it.

“When you’re a 19-year-old kid, you don’t expect your best friend and your brother to find out he has cancer. It blew me back. I didn’t really know how to take it at first, but all I could do was support him in any way possible,” said Clarke, a sophomore at USC.

“I was there for every chemo treatment, every radiation. I wanted to be there as much as anybody else was going to be there for him. And it really made me value baseball a lot more, value brotherhood, value anything I have in life. We’re so blessed, and at any moment in time, something can be taken away from you. My brother, baseball was taken away from him for a little bit, but now he has it back. It just makes me that much more grateful for everything I have in my life.”

Clate, a senior, underwent three months of treatment before being declared cancer-free and rejoining the Clemson baseball team. Although very close, the Schmidt brothers know both sides of a heated baseball rivalry that led their parents Dwight and Renee to wear half-Gamecocks, half-Tigers jerseys to last season’s three-game series.

But Clarke saw another side of the rivalry in the support both sides voiced for his brother. “It was unbelievable. When my brother first announced he had cancer, I honestly think he had more support form Gamecocks fans than he did Clemson fans. That’s not bashing on Clemson fans, but it was amazing to see a rivalry come together and two teams come together on one issue like that,” he said.

“We were very blessed. The situation was tough. But now that it’s behind us, we were happy to go through the experience, because we’ve learned so much from it.”

Clarke went 2-2 with a 4.81 ERA and 55 strikeouts last season for the Gamecocks, who are holding fall practice through Nov. 1. Clarke was used often as a weekend starter the second half of last season after staff ace Wil Crowe suffered an arm injury which forced him to undergo Tommy John surgery and will keep him out for the 2016 campaign as well.

“My personal goal is to be a weekend starter, be an impact guy,” Clarke said. “From a personal basis last year, I know I was a weekend starter at the time. I would go out there and just get through my starts. This year, my main goal is to have quality starts every time I go out there and help the team win in every way possible. And I think I can do that.”

Clarke is one of several freshmen from last season whom head coach Chad Holbrook believes are ready to take the next step. “They come in here this fall with a lot more confidence, ready to go, thinking they belong,” said Holbrook, whose team last year missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1999.

And in Clarke Schmidt’s case, with a different viewpoint as well. “Losing as much as we did, when you find out your brother has cancer, it puts it in perspective that losing is not everything, and baseball isn’t everything,” he said, “and there’s more to life than just baseball.”