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A GoFundMe account was set up Monday for Mike Romero, the father of a quartet of talented athletes, as the longtime softball hitting instructor has been hospitalized in San Diego due to pneumonia on top of his battle with cancer.
The children of Mike and his wife, Melissa, include a trio of softball standouts in oldest daughters Sierra and Sydney, who were All-Americans at Michigan and Oklahoma, respectively, along with the youngest, Sophia, who signed to play with Boise State in November.
Sydney is also currently a coach at Duke University and both she and Sierra will once again compete in the Athletes Unlimited pro league this summer. Mikey was a first round draft pick by the Boston Red Sox last summer in the 2022 Major League Baseball draft.
*** To access the GoFundMe page: CLICK HERE
The GoFundMe account for the father of four was set up by family friend Patti Horn, who wrote that the goal is to raise $30,000 to offset medical costs:
“Please join me in supporting the Romero family as Mike’s battle with cancer continues. There have been many ups and down over the past 21 months. Hundreds of trips to Moore Cancer Center in SD, chemo treatments, radiation treatments, clinical trials…he has literally been fighting for his life. In an effort to help support his family, he had been doing what he loves and providing hitting lessons to local athletes several days a week.”
“Unfortunately, Mike has taken a turn for the worse. An unexpected illness turned into pneumonia leaving him hospitalized. As a result, he has been forced to cancel his lessons indefinitely. Melissa was able to work a few days a month, but in light of his new circumstance she is unable to continue.”
She explained her connect to the family and why she started the fundraiser:
“I’ve known them for about 10 years,” Pattie begins. “My son, David, played baseball with Mikey for the San Diego Show since they were 10 years old and then against each other in the Trinity League here in California.”
“They are family to me. We have traveled together, stayed together, and spent countless hours at the fields watching our boys do what they love. They are a selfless family who will do anything for anyone but yet are the last to ask for help. When Mike had to give up the lessons it was literally heart-wrenching. My goal in setting it up was to give them a cushion so that all of their energy can be focused on getting Mike healthy and back home.”
A Family United
Extra Inning Softball spoke with Melissa today who said she was “so greatly appreciative” of all those who have already helped with more than 150 donations within the first 24 hours.
“My family has never been one—in all of my 33 years with my husband—to be ones to ask for help. We’re always the ones to help other people and when my friend, Patti, said she wanted to do this, it was hard for me to say ‘yes’ because of how I am.”
According to Melissa, Mike went into the hospital a week ago Sunday, on January 8, just one day after the couple celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. Because of his pneumonia, he was kept until last Thursday (Jan 12) when he was released; however, Mike had to be readmitted the next day and has been in the hospital since then with “no end in sight.”
Today, doctors inserted a gastrostomy tube (also called a G-tube), which goes through the belly to take nutrition directly to the stomach due to the family head’s inability to swallow properly. It will assist in nurturing the body until the pneumonia and aspiration issues are brought under control.
All four of the Romero children are back in Southern California to be with their father during the daytime for hospital visits before driving the 1 hour 20 minute one-way commute back to the family’s home in Menifee (located in Riverside County).
Online Store
The girls in the family have also started a merchandising line offering tee-shirts and sweats in multiple colors to help offset the medical expenses… you can access it by clicking HERE.
According to the site where the apparel is available, it’s about promoting “Oral Cancer Awareness: We hope you join our team and fight with our dad Michael Romero.”
Additionally, the Bonfire-hosted site explains, in the voice of the quartet of Romero kids:
For those of you new to our family store, this was created to help our family with any and all expenses. Our dad was diagnosed with stage 4 Head & Neck Cancer in 2021 and is now at a point where he is no longer able to work, and our mom is his full-time caregiver. We appreciate everyones love and support at this time, it means the world to us!
The patriarch of the athletically accomplished family turned 50 on June 7th of last year but has been battling the reoccurring cancer for since 2011 with it “worsening with a vengeance,” over the last two years according to wife Melissa.
The cancer—officially of the cheek and neck—began as a non-painful bump on the left side of Mike’s tongue, but it was diagnosed as Stage 3 tongue cancer. It was removed and he underwent extensive chemotherapy and radiation but that same year he was forced to undergo a neck dissection– a surgery done to remove lymph nodes that contain cancer–because the likelihood that it would spread to the neck lymph nodes was high.
Doctors removed 30 nodes, but in one of them cancer was found which had not previously been viewable by a scan.
That year and into 2012, Mike received 30 radiation treatments on the left side of his face.
For a decade, until 2021, all appeared to be well until a bump on the left inside part of his cheek was biopsied and found to be position. Further scans showed that the cancer had spread to the right side of the coach’s neck. Despite surgery and 30 more sessions of radiation treatment, the cancer returned later in the year to the right cheek and clinical trials were ultimately begun.
Last year, the cancer returned to the left side of the tongue and Mike was forced to complete five sessions of proton therapy due to the cancer’s rapid growth.
Over the last few years, Mike has received chemotherapy every two weeks with doctor appointments as many as four times per week. He was scheduled to have chemo on Jan. 9th of this month but couldn’t because of the pneumonia complications; Dec. 29 was the last time he actually received the treatments.
“It’s hard right now,” Melissa continued, “because there’s so much unknown. Michael can’t return to clinical trials until the pneumonia is gone.”
No Rhyme or Reason
National championship-winning travel ball coach Mike Stith of the OC Batbusters has coached all three of the softball standouts and feels if any family can deal with the hardships life presents, it’s the Romero’s.
“Mike (Romero) has always believed in hard work and high expectations while raising his kids and it has created some very tough and excellent competitive athletes,” Coach Stith remembers of his time with not just the Romero sisters but the their father also.
“There are no ‘former Batbusters,’ the club coach continues. “They never leave, and Mike Romero is truly one of our strongest-willed fighters in the program’s long history. We all pray for his strong fighting spirit to continue and pray for strength to his family. They are well loved.”
The father of four was cancer free for 10 years, but shortly before a family trip a few years ago, he noticed a spot on his tongue that raised red flags. Mike received more treatments, but began to “feel unwell” per his wife and shortly thereafter noticed another spot on his neck.
“What’s crazy,” Melissa says, “is that he has never been a drinker (of alcohol), chewed (tobacco) or has been a smoker. The doctor said he was in the one percent who got cancer and there’s no rhyme or reason for it.”
The day the pitching instructor announced he had to discontinue his lessons to take care of his health, both husband and wife shed tears. Melissa works as an investigator for a worker’s comp company but has been forced to put her own job on the side to be with her husband.
“We take everything day by day,” she continues. “I do things myself and it’s always been that way. I’ve learned to fight and put my best foot forward. I’ve told myself to be a good person and to be good to other people. I know we’ll be OK, we’re just hitting a rough patch.”
Right now, the family is altogether but their own successful paths may pull them across the country once again.
Sierra is based in Florida working with New Balance as one of the athletic companies sponsored athletes and is preparing to play with the pro league Athletes Unlimited this summer with young sister Sydney, who is also a softball coach at Duke.
Mikey is getting ready to leave for spring training to start his pro baseball career and Sophia is a senior in high school looking ahead to beginning her college softball career at Boise State.
“There’s so much going!” the athletes’ mom says. “We’re just trying to juggle it all and do what we can do. Our focus now is just on getting Mike home.”
Staying Positive
In sports, you typically root for one team against another, but in this battle everyone is united in supporting Team Romero versus cancer.
As word gets out about Mike’s health and his stay in the hospital, more and more people are stepping up to share their love, concern, prayers and, yes, donations to the GoFundMe account which came close to matching its original goal in just one day.
Tony Garcia, a Firecrackers travel ball coach, a high school coach at Eastlake High in Chula Vista, Calif., and father of UCLA redshirt junior catcher Alyssa Garcia, sums up the sentiments of those who are cheering the fastpitch family on to better and healthier days.
“Mike and Melissa are from my neck of the woods, down here in the Chula Vista area,” Coach Tony explains, “and we have many mutual friends, so it’s been easy for us to follow the Romero family’s amazing accomplishments.”
“We’re all heartbroken about Mike’s condition but we all continue to try staying positive. Melissa was there for me with great insights when my daughter was getting recruited at 13-years-old, so I want to be there, as I’m sure does the entire Softball World, in any way–even if it’s just to lift up prayers for the entire Romero family.”
— Brentt Eads, Extra Inning Softball