Sandy Schwellenbach’s son, Jay, was one of the finest high school basketball players in the area in 1984.

In fact, in the April 1, 1984 sports section of The Journal Times, Jay’s head shot appeared with Horlick’s Robert Barnes, St. Catherine’s Dave Mueller and Bob Letsch (son of the coach) and Burlington’s Chris Paulson as first-team members of the All-Racine County boys basketball team.

Forty years later, the widowed Sandy is the grandmother of one of the finest young pitchers in Major League Baseball.

His name is Spencer Schwellenbach, and he’s a right-handed pitcher for the Atlanta Braves. The native of Saginaw, Michigan, recovered well enough from Tommy John surgery in 2021 to go 8-7 with a 3.35 ERA after making his first career start May 29.

While the Braves’ season ended Wednesday with a 5-4 loss to the San Diego Padres in a National League Wild Card series, Schwellenbach’s future appears bright. He’s just 24 years old and surely will be in line to become a wealthy man at a young age if he can continue this success.

From the comfort of her Mount Pleasant home, Sandy Schwellenbach will be willing her grandson to success. She subscribes to mlb.tv, which allows her to watch Spencer every time he pitches.

“He’s probably not very nervous, but I am,” the 80-year-old Sandy said. “First of all, I love how he takes that little hop and a skip every time he goes out to the mound for the first time.

“He is a class act. He is so cool, so calm — at least he appears that way. And then I think, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s my grandson.'”

Spencer, the youngest of Jay and Robin Schwellenbach’s four children, was born May 31, 2000. That was five years after Sandy’s husband, John, died of a heart attack at the age of 54 on July 2, 1995.

Sandy had limited contact with her grandkids for two reasons as they grew up. One, Saginaw is  250 miles from Racine. And two, Jay and Robin kept their children heavily involved in sports.

Spencer’s older siblings, brothers Jordan and Mason and sister, Taylor, each have maintained a strong relationship with Sandy. But there’s a special bond between Sandy and Spencer.

“I’ve always remembered their birthdays and Christmases,” she said. “They’re all nice to me, but he’s kind of extra-special nice. He’ll go out of his way to send a text message and say, ‘Hey, Gram, I got your letter. Thank you.’

“This is an example: He’s getting married in January to his high school sweetheart. She went to college in Michigan, he went to Nebraska and they stayed together all those years.

“She was down there (in Atlanta) and they were walking down one of the streets and he saw this restaurant that was named John Henry’s. And my husband’s name was John Henry. So he took a picture and sent it to me. I said, ‘Spencer, how did you know your grandpa’s middle name? And he said, ‘Well, from my dad.'”

Sandy recalls a young Spencer and his siblings making visits to her house, typically at Christmas and toward the end of summers. But most of her interaction with her grandchildren came during trips to Saginaw, when she used precious vacation time.

“Once my husband passed away, I really had to go to work full-time,” she said. “But all my vacation was saved to get to Michigan for their events.”

By the time Spencer was 20 in 2021, he was named the Big Ten Conference Player of the Year and earned the John Olerud Award as the best two-way player in college baseball for Nebraska that season. He was named a second-team All-American as a junior.

Spencer signed with the Braves for a reported $1 million after they drafted him in the second round of the 2021 draft. But he first had to overcome a major hurdle before he started trotting out regularly to the mound at Truist Park in Cobb County, Georgia, in his No. 56 jersey.

He sat out the 2022 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery in the summer of 2021. It was a frustrating recovery, as so many pitchers who have undergone this career-saving procedure can attest.

“He had doubts while he was recuperating,” Sandy said. “He said, ‘Am I ever going to get there?'”

But once Schwellenbach was healthy enough to pick up a baseball again, the magic quickly returned. He was effective at several stops in the minor leagues starting in 2023 before finally appearing in his first major-league game in May. Schwellenbach remarkably never pitched at the Triple-A level.

Schwellenbach was an enormous addition to a team that was gutted by injuries, which included the season-ending losses of Ronald Acuna Jr., the National League’s MVP in 2023, and staff ace Spencer Strider, who was limited to nine innings after winning 20 games last season.

And he was at his best when it mattered the most.

Schwellenbach allowed just four hits in seven innings Monday in a crucial game against the New York Mets in Atlanta before a bullpen meltdown resulted in an 8-7 loss. But the Braves regrouped to win the second game to secure a playoff berth.

While Schwellenbach’s season ended two days later with the Braves’ playoff loss to the Padres, Sandy is looking forward to many more years of following her grandson in the Big Show.

“I don’t talk to him much, but I’ll send him a text message every now and then,” Sandy said. “I never realized what a grueling schedule they have. It’s brutal. You play in a game, then they feed them and shower them and they’re on a plane going to the next game. They’ll be a in different time zone and everything else.”

Through it all, Spencer will have a devoted grandmother following him.

“I had choir practice last week and I knew he was pitching,” Sandy said. “I had the game on and my phone was on the floor. Every once in a while, I’d glance down and look at it.”