“When he drops that he’s going to have a child on me, I was floored,” the coach said.
Brown informed Corbin that he and his girlfriend, Jocelyn Butcher, were expecting a baby. Corbin had never coached a Vanderbilt player who had a child during his college career. Brown, in truth, was just a kid himself.
However, Corbin was encouraging to his newcomer.
“I was like, let’s go. Let’s go. We’ll work this out,” Corbin recalled. “I was more encouraged than I was, ‘Oh boy, this isn’t going to work.’ We’ll make this part of you better and happier.”
Brown ultimately enrolled at Vanderbilt as a student-athlete with the heralded baseball program. Almost two years later, he is the father of a 15-month old daughter, Isabella Rose Brown, as well as one of the best relief pitchers in college baseball. This spring, Brown earned First Team All-SEC honors after capping the regular season with an SEC-leading 13 saves. He limited opponents to a .185 average in a team-high 23 appearances during the regular season.
But Brown’s biggest growth has come courtesy of his role as a father to Bella. A rough-around-the-edges farmboy has matured and evolved into a stoic leader on the field for the Commodores — and a proud father off of it.
“For me personally, it has helped me a lot,” Brown said of fatherhood. “It’s given me a little more patience, even though I’m not there all the time.”
Brown learned patience earlier than most as he experienced an up-and-down childhood. His mother, Cindy, was diagnosed multiple myeloma, a cancer of the white blood cells, when he was 8 years old. He was at his home with his two half-sisters on Aug. 3, 2012, when Cindy Brown collapsed from a stroke after a family trip for errands. She died that afternoon.
Tyler’s mother had been the family’s primary caregiver, often working multiple jobs at a time a single mother. In the days following her death – the death of Tyler’s biggest cheerleader, in life and on the baseball field – a 12-year-old Tyler Brown came to grips with his new reality.
“I thought, I’m alone,” Brown recalled. “This is all on me.”
As a teen, Brown bounced around from friend’s house to friend’s house, staying with extended family for stretches at a time. But Brown ultimately found stability through Brandon Oswalt, who had coached Brown in summer baseball leagues in Ohio.
Oswalt’s background mirrored that of Tyler: a former prep pitcher from Ohio whose childhood featured its own tales of pain and despair. Thus, Oswalt felt connected to Brown from the get-go.
“Instantly, you see someone who is like a reflection of yourself,” Oswalt said of Brown. “He was bigger than everybody and you could tell he was physically better than everybody. But he was stubborn and everything that I also was [as a kid]. He thought he knew it all. When I see that, it draws me to that kid. Immediately, I wanted to break that barrier down.”
Brown, at first, was less willing to open up. All too often, those close to him had let him down or passed away. He did not want that to happen again.
But Oswalt persevered. Tough love on the diamond turned into deep talks and fishing excursions. Soon, Brown began staying with the Oswalts. On Dec. 9, 2014, Brandon and his wife, Koren, legally adopted Tyler. Today the couple also have two younger children, daughter Aspen and son Hunter.
“When I say someone is family, it means more than the average person,” Brown said. “Brandon and Koren, no matter how many times I’ve tried to push them away, they are still standing there. Jocelyn and her family, no matter how many times I’ve tried to push them away, they’re still standing there. That’s empowering.”
Brown found the same kind of loyalty with Vanderbilt baseball. He blew out his right elbow as a junior at Olentangy Orange High School, the very week Corbin and his wife, Maggie, had come on a recruiting visit to watch Tyler. Other coaches shied away from the injured pitcher. Corbin stuck with him, a fact Brown has never forgotten.
