He's back at college now, recovering in anonymity over a tragedy that broke America's heart.
He took a practice swing at a summer league baseball game. It hit a batboy in the head.
Millions of people immediately discovered Kaiser Carlile, the 9-year-old who died from the swing. Few wondered about the person holding the bat.
His identity will remain a mystery here. The player declined an interview request, and team officials did not want his name used.
But now that the initial shock and mourning have passed, they were willing to talk about the player's plight and how the community has tried to help him.
Maintaining the mystery has helped.
"That was a big part of the story," Roy Allen said. "And it was very good for him, frankly."
Allen is the director of baseball operations for the Liberal Bee Jays. It's a summer collegiate team in Liberal, Kan., a town of about 21,000 people. Kaiser was a hero there before the rest of the world ever heard of him.
He would get as big an ovation as the players during pregame introductions. Maybe it was the way the oversized batting helmet bobbled as he hustled to pick up bats or retrieve foul balls.
Kaiser somehow kept his helmet and glasses on as he merrily went about his duties.
"He was just one of the guys in the dugout," coach Adam Anderson said. "He probably heard a little more language than most 9-year-olds might, but he was one of the guys."
Kaiser hit it off with one guy in particular.
The Bee Jays play in the Jayhawk Collegiate League. College players from around the country show up every summer, live with host families and work on their games.
This particular infielder worked as hard as anyone. He'd just finished his freshman season in college, and he quickly became a team leader.
"You wish you'd have a team full of guys like him," Anderson said. "He may have had four strikeouts, but he didn't care as long as we won the game."
His outgoing personality drew him to the little batboy. They'd play catch before games and crack jokes on the bus rides to towns like Dodge City and El Dorado.
They rode to Wichita, Kan., on July 31 for the National Baseball Congress World Series. Nobody can explain what happened the next day, much less why.
"All the stars had to align in the wrong way at the wrong time," Allen said.
It was the third inning of the Saturday afternoon game. The home-plate umpire turned around when he heard a strange thump from the on-deck circle.
The bat had hit Kaiser's head. Witnesses said it struck the batting helmet, but that didn't matter.
Kaiser dropped to the ground. He got up holding his shoulder, then he collapsed.
A player, not the one who'd swung the bat, gathered him in his arms, then laid him down. Paramedics quickly arrived and rushed Kaiser to the hospital.
The Bee Jays met in center field and decided to play on. They figured that's what Kaiser would have wanted.
Liberal ended up winning 12-5 in 13 innings. The player who swung the bat had left for the hospital hours before.
"He wanted to be a part of it," Allen said. "He wanted to be there as much as the family."
Kaiser was in the intensive-care unit, clinging to life. The news began to spread far beyond Wichita.
From little leagues to the majors, batters take millions of practice cuts every year. Nobody could remember a batboy getting hit by a warm-up swing.
And it wasn't just any batboy. Kaiser was a poster child for cuddliness.
He innocently was doing something he loved, a routine chore that's part of America's pastime, and it cost him his life?
It made for a tragedy people could not resist.
European newspapers ran the photo of the player holding a stricken Kaiser to his chest. As the media storm gathered, Bee Jays management tried to figure out what to do.
"There is no book for something like this," Allen said.
The player's parents drove to be with him. Even if he'd wanted to play that Sunday night, management wouldn't have let him.
"It had taken off and gotten so much attention," Anderson said. "We honestly didn't know how many people would be there, but we didn't want to show up and have news cameras right in his face as soon as we got off the bus."
The player drove to the park with his parents after the game. That's when the team learned Kaiser had died.
Through the grief, Allen braced for what he knew would come next.
"I must have gotten 50 phone calls from the media wanting information," he said.
The team held a press conference the next day. CNN carried it live around the world.
Four players volunteered to participate. The one everybody wanted to hear from was not among them.
The media understood, but then something strange happened. Nobody reported anything about the player.
"Without saying it precisely, we leaned on the media to be responsible," Allen said.
The Information Age demands, well, information. A vital piece was being left out by media who normally feast on such things.
Everybody knew Kaiser and his family were the preeminent victims of the tragedy. But there was a realization that the player was also an unwitting victim.
Few questions were asked about him. His name never was mentioned.
"A player warming up," was how USA Today identified him.
"An on-deck hitter," said CBS News.
Even TMZ, which thrives on sensationalism, went with "a batter."
It was as if he'd organically entered the Federal Witness Protection Program. If only there was a way to protect a 19-year-old from the emotions barreling around in his brain.
"Everybody handles it differently," Allen said, "but he handled it about as well as I imagine anyone his age could handle it."
The Carlile family insisted the team play on. The player took that cue. A return to something normal might help, though the atmosphere was anything but routine for the next game on Tuesday night.
There were cameras and reporters. People in Sri Lanka were discussing what happened three days before, but nobody mentioned it in the Bee Jays' dugout.
It was tense and awkward, then the game began. One of the umpires had worked the game where Kaiser was struck. He noticed the player taking his usual position in the infield.
"I didn't know I could continue," the ump later told Allen. "But seeing him back out there gave me the strength to get back out there."
The Bee Jays played two more games and finished third in the tournament. Everything was swallowed by the outpouring of support for Kaiser's family.
A doughnut shop sold baseball-shaped doughnuts for $2 each to raise funds. People bought 5,000 of them.
The Kansas City Royals held a moment of silence before a game. Kaiser's picture was displayed on the big scoreboard at Kauffman Stadium.
The Royals and other teams donated to the GoFundMe page set up for the family. There was a huge floral arrangement from the Yankees at Kaiser's funeral.
It was held at the Seward County Community Center gym. The Bee Jays sat together, wearing light-blue T-shirts with Kaiser's initials on them.
One player was not with them. He sat up front with his parents, next to Kaiser's mother and father and 8-year-old sister.
Kaiser's father, Chad, got up to speak. He looked over at the player and his parents.
"Thank you all from the bottom of my heart," he said. "You guys have shown a lot of support for us. Our daughter, I couldn't express how much she loves you.
"I might have lost a son in this tragedy, but I feel like I've gained a family."
Then he laid Kaiser to rest in the boy's baseball uniform.
The season was over, and the roster dispersed. The player quietly slipped back to school.
"Everybody wanted to keep it anonymous," Allen said. "He could have shown up on campus and had people asking questions."
The team checks up on him from time to time. Anderson asks about the routine things of college life. There's no need to push it.
"We're there for each other," he said. "If anybody needs anything, we're bonded as a team, and it will be that way for the rest of our lives."
One day, the player might talk publicly about the tragedy. About what it's like to be 19 and handed a potential lifetime guilt trip. About how people have tried to keep that from happening.
And about the question that perpetually has stumped humanity.
"You can ask 'Why?' the rest of your life and never get an answer," Anderson said. "But you can't beat yourself up over it. You have to deal with it the best you can."
Somewhere, the player is doing that. America's heart broke over a little batboy.
Other than Kaiser's family, no one's heart aches more than the player almost nobody knows.
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