Bishop Gorman to play Tucson for Chris Moon Memorial championship

March 26, 2015 by Andy Morales, AZPreps365


Chris Moon in 2007 (Ron Benham
The Arizona Diamond Report)

Mar. 27: Tucson Cherry Field

Championship game

Bishop Gorman (NV) vs. Tucson, 3 p.m.

3rd place game

Boulder (CO) vs. Arvada West (CO), 3 p.m.

5th place game

Ralston Valley (CO) vs. Tucson Rincon, Noon

7th place game

San Marcos (CA) vs. Pomona (CO), Noon

 

Chris Moon was the consensus 2007 Southern Arizona baseball player of the year. The Tucson High pitcher/outfielder got the attention of the Atlanta Braves and was drafted in the 35th round.

Moon chose to play for the University of Arizona instead and signed up with Andy Lopez that fall. It was that class of commitments that eventually won the NCAA championship for the Wildcats in 2012 but Moon would not be one of them.

Sometime during that fall season, Moon told Lopez he wasn't happy playing baseball anymore and wanted to fulfill his childhood dream of serving his country as a sniper.

Like Pat Tillman, Moon gave up a promising career in order to serve his country and, like Tillman, Moon never came home.

If you have the chance, read Brian Mockenhaupt’s first-hand account of how Moon died while fighting in the Arghandab Valley in 2010 (The Last Patrol/The Atlantic/Nov. 2010). It’s a very difficult read but a must if you want to get to know a true American hero even better. You see, we in the media all had the story wrong. Moon did not “step on an IED on a roadside” – he was targeted.

Specialist Moon was a successful sniper in what his platoon called “The Devil’s Playground:”

 

“A thunderclap rocked the tree line, and the concussion punched our ears and rolled through our chests. Beside us, along the canal, a cloud of smoke and dirt billowed 100 feet into the air, far above the trees, against a cloudless blue sky. “IED! IED! IED!” a soldier barked over the radio. Knollinger, leading the element along the road, ran into the field between the road and the canal, toward the explosion, yelling into the hand mike clipped to his vest. “I need a sitrep! I need a sitrep!” Soldiers answered, one by one, save for the two snipers with the patrol. “Viper 4,” Knollinger said. “Are you okay? Viper 4!” Sgt. Christopher Rush responded, dazed, his voice slow. “No, I’m not okay.” Beside him, his partner, Specialist Christopher Moon, lay in a crater five feet wide and two feet deep, his legs missing. The triggerman, hidden in the pomegranate orchard, had blown the bomb under Moon, the last man. Gerhart was 75 feet ahead on the canal trail. He ran back, past a few soldiers who had been knocked to the ground, uninjured. He knelt beside Moon, 20 years old, a high-school baseball star who had been courted by the Atlanta Braves, but had chosen the Army. I’d met Moon the day before, atop an earthen barrier beside Guard Tower 2 at the combat outpost, where he had squatted on two ammunition cans and barely moved, perched like a monk for a two-hour stretch. He rested his rifle on an iron beam and watched a compound a half mile south. He’d killed two fighters there earlier, as good at sniping as he’d been at baseball.”

 

Moon would eventually succumb to his injuries a few days later on July 13, 2010 at the US Army Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany.

Again, like Tillman, Moon gave up a promising future in a game played by boys for a chance to stand on an “earthen barrier” somewhere as a man in a country far away with a rifle in his hands where a bat used to be.

Who does something like that?

Heroes don’t hit balls over fences.

Moon was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart, the Army Commendation Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Afghanistan Campaign Medal with Campaign Star, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, the Army Service Ribbon, the Overseas Service Ribbon, the Combat Infantryman Badge and the Basic Parachutist Badge.

And, yes, all of his baseball and other youth sports awards were part of his development so those should not be forgotten. He earned them all.

He also earned our gratitude as did his parents Marsha and Brian Moon. The price they paid for our gratitude was much too high and it continues to be more than we can ever repay as a country or as a friend.

The only way we can even try is to honor his memory.

Every year at this time, Tucson High School holds a baseball invitational in his name. It is a small gesture but an important one. When you honor a hero like Moon, you honor the countless other men and women who have given everything so that we may play a game, coach a game, watch a game and even write about one.

Even the simplest of freedoms should not be taken for granted.

There is also an effort to raise $60,000 to erect a life-sized statue of Moon at Cherry Field. To our knowledge, there is no other statue dedicated to former high school athletes who have died serving our country.