By Harry Minium
Brett Smith was a middle school student riding in the back seat of his parents' car when he noticed a homeless couple on the sidewalk. Puzzled and concerned, he asked his parents to explain who they were and what they were doing on the street.
More than a decade later he doesn't recall precisely what Steve and Debbie Smith said, although given their Christian background, it was surely something about the Golden Rule and helping others.
However, Brett's response to their message was a reassuring sign to his parents that they did their job well raising him; that not only would he grow up to be successful, but that he'd also be one good dude.
When he got home, he brainstormed about ideas to help the poor and decided, of all things, to build bird houses. He and his father made them in their garage, went door to door selling the bird houses and then went to the grocery store to buy sandwich meat, cheese, bread and chips.
He would then travel from his home in Chesapeake to a Norfolk homeless shelter to feed the hungry.
"Birdhouses for the Homeless," was the name of the business he started.
"Sometimes if we saw homeless people on the side of the road, we'd stop by and have conversations with them," said Brett, who handed out sandwiches through his senior year at Chesapeake's Grassfield High School.
"You learned a lot about humility when you talk to them. Even though they had so little, they had such a good attitude toward life."
Now 24 years old, and 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds, Smith has gone through some adversity of his own, but remains a big guy with a big heart.
He is in his sixth season with the Old Dominion University baseball team, which tests its new No. 22 ranking this weekend with a four-game series against Rice, including Friday's 3 p.m. opener at The Bud.
Why six years? He's had two medical redshirt seasons because of a grueling string of four surgeries.
He had Tommy John surgery in 2016 before what was supposed to be his sophomore season and when he returned, trainers discovered the surgery had been unsuccessful. He had it again, and this time his body over-compensated and a small bone grew on his elbow. He then needed a third surgery to remove the bone.
Doctors were shocked when the bone grew back once more and once again prevented Brett from extending his throwing arm completely.
After his fourth surgery, at New York City's Columbia University, doctors prescribed radiation treatments that finally prevented the bone from regrowing.
"Most people would have quit a long time ago," ODU coach Chris Finwood said. "You never give up on a kid who refuses to quit.
"There were times when it didn't look like there would be room for him on the 35-man roster. But he found a way to make it."
In spite of his injuries, Brett has proven to be a good player for the Monarchs. He's pitched in seven games for ODU (24-6) this season, mostly in middle relief, meaning he's usually called upon to snuff out a rally.
But he's been a superstar in the classroom. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering in 2019 and will graduate next month with a Master of Science in Engineering with a concentration in biomedical engineering.
He will leave ODU with a 3.85 GPA in his 30 hours of graduate student.
That's nothing short of a miracle when you consider the hundreds of hours a semester that baseball players spend practicing, training and traveling, and the additional time he spent rehabbing from four surgeries.
For his thesis project, he built a pitcher's mound, with a helping hand from ODU pitching coach Mike Marron with "force plates" that analyzed how much energy was expended by both the drive and stride legs. That's the best description I can give – I got a headache when he tried to explain the intricacies of his 60-page thesis, which he successfully defended before a faculty committee on Tuesday.
He has also found time to do volunteer work at ODU, working Veterans Day, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Day and September 11th remembrances, as well as delivering and sorting items for the Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters thrift stores.
"The kid is everything right about college athletics," Finwood said. "Even after talking with him for a few minutes, you can tell he's been brought up right, that he's the real deal."
The Smith family worships together at River Oak Church in Chesapeake, where former ODU basketball player Heath Burris is the pastor. His parents taught their kids to be kind but also demanded they do their chores and do well in school.
Parenting isn't an exact science, but the Smith's apparently went four-for-four.
Brett Smith's family
Brett is the youngest. His brother, Brandon, played baseball at ODU; his sister, Amanda, ran track at Virginia Tech, where she won two ACC championships and was a three-time All-American; and his oldest brother, Ryan, played football at Princeton.
"I grew up in a pretty competitive environment," Brett said. "When I was a kid, we'd go in the back yard onto our basketball court, and it didn't matter that I was nine years younger than my oldest brother. They'd still rough house me and throw me down.
"I'd come into the house with skinned up knees and bruises. I think that's where some of the toughness came from that I needed in battling all of these injuries."
Brett was also a pretty good football player. He threw for 2,268 yards and 23 touchdowns as Grassfield's quarterback and also was an all-star punter, but Finwood said "he was really a highly-regarded baseball prospect out of high school.
"Before he got hurt, he was throwing balls 93 or 94 miles per hour."
He's still throwing at about 93 miles per hour, but doesn't have the stamina he once had. And given four surgeries, it's remarkable he's still throwing at all.
ODU has won 10 of its last 12 games and although the season has a month to go, if the NCAA tournament selection committee met today, the Monarchs would surely make the field.
"I've been on six teams," Brett said. "And this is a really talented team. But we're not a team that's going to become complacent."
He said the Monarchs learned to appreciate the opportunity to play baseball last spring when their season was abruptly ended by the pandemic. Most players went home and took classes online.
"We had guys throwing in parking lots, anywhere we could train," he said. "This team has a gritty mentality. We've overcome a lot."
So has Finwood, whose wife, Annette, passed away a couple of weeks ago. This is ODU's first home stand since and the players will be allowed, but not required, to wear purple patches on their batting helmets and purple shoelaces in her honor.
Finwood said he's not forcing anyone to wear purple, but you can be sure all 42 players will do so Friday.
Annette died of pancreatic cancer and purple is the color used to honor those who have survived or have died from pancreatic cancer.
Finwood said there will be no ceremony to honor Annette this weekend, and that such an event likely will occur when the Monarchs host Western Kentucky May 14-16 in their final home series. Finwood coached at Western Kentucky six seasons before coming to ODU 10 years ago.
"Old Dominion and Western Kentucky were two teams that were special to Annette," he said. "She really cared a lot for both programs."
Brett said Finwood is getting a ton of support from his players.
"Baseball is kind of his way of coping," Brett said.
"We've had so many obstacles and he's been a mentor to all of us. Now that he's going through a hard time, it's given us a chance to gather around him and try to take care of him."
And taking care of people is something Brett knows how to do.
Contact Minium: hminium@odu.edu