Michael Lorenzen made the Phillies, the city, and his mother proud with his no-hitter

The NBC Sports Philadelphia cameras had been cutting to her again and again throughout the late innings, tracking her cheers and her tears and the purest joy a parent can feel as she fidgeted in her seat in Section 121 of Citizens Bank Park. Now she was in a lower level of the ballpark, in the family area where the mothers and wives and babies congregate after a Phillies game, and through her phone, you could hear the congratulations and the happy shouts and murmurs around her.

So, Cheryl Lorenzen, how are you?

“Awesome,” she said.

It was late Wednesday, not yet 90 minutes after her son Michael had thrown the 14th no-hitter in Phillies history. And it was not yet 90 minutes after Cheryl had spent an exhilarating 2 hours and 9 minutes with Michael’s wife, Cassi, and the couple’s 9-month-old daughter, June, watching Michael strike out five, walk four, and finish off the Washington Nationals, 7-0, on his 124th pitch: an 85 mph slider that Dominic Smith lofted to short center field, a sickly little fly ball that landed in the glove of Phillies rookie Johan Rojas and completed a wild and memorable night.

» READ MORE: Lorenzen’s no-hitter: The best social media reactions, highlights and more from a historic Phillies game

It’s not often that, in the same game, one of a team’s two All-Star representatives — Nick Castellanos — hits the 199th and 200th home runs of his career and a 28-year-old journeyman who has ricocheted around the minor leagues — Weston Wilson — hits a home run in his first major-league at-bat with his father on hand to see it … and both are upstaged. But the thrills of those moments soon gave way to the drama and mystery of Lorenzen’s carrying that no-hitter into the sixth, into the seventh, into the eighth. And all the while, the 30,406 at Citizens Bank Park and thousands more watching at home were wondering the same thing: Lorenzen hadn’t thrown more than 101 pitches in a game all season. He is here to add depth to the Phillies’ staff, and the more pitches he throws, the riskier it is for his health. Is Rob Thomson going to send him out there for the ninth?

“The kid loves the game,” Cheryl said. “I, as a mom, know what he can do, what he’s capable of, and for the Phillies to let him prove himself and let him do this. … If he says, ‘Hey, Coach, I’m ready to go,’ he’s ready to go. That’s probably what he did. I told Cassi, ‘He’s probably in the dugout saying, ‘Let me go. Let me go.’”

A baseball player was all he ever wanted to be. He had three older brothers, and he idolized and tagged along with them, practically grew up on baseball fields around Fullerton, Calif.

“We knew at the age of 2 that he was going to be a professional baseball player,” Cheryl said. “He would throw the ball and hit the ball, and people were like, ‘Cheryl, this kid’s going to go far.’”

Except it would have been easy to have his dream fizzle out early. He was 10 when his father abandoned the family, leaving Cheryl behind to work and raise her sons. Clif Lorenzen never returned, and he died in 2016 at 61. Michael’s brothers drank and were troublesome, and Michael did the same. In high school, he got excellent grades — “A lot of it was cheating,” he once said — but those high marks covered up his reality: He was drinking and smoking pot, and only an encounter on a seaside pier with a preacher caused him to get sober, become a Christian, and preserve his dream of playing in the big leagues.

“If the Lord hadn’t come into our lives,” Cheryl said, “who knows where we’d be?”

The Phillies are his fourth team: seven years with the Cincinnati Reds, one with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, not even a full season with the Detroit Tigers. He had been a reliever, mostly, over that period, and had entered the majors as a two-way player, able to hit a bit and dabble in the outfield from time to time. But Cheryl knew he wanted more out of his career. A mother always knows.

“I’m really proud of what he’s accomplished,” she said. “I felt that he wasn’t given an opportunity to prove himself. I felt like being in the bullpen, he was a caged animal. ‘Let me out. Let me out. I want to play the game.’ He works hard. If he struggles in an area, he’s going to go and figure out how to get out of that struggle and do what he can to be stronger, and his performance is showing. Michael’s not a quitter. He’s never been a quitter.”

He’s pitching in the perfect city, then.

“Ever since he’s come to Philadelphia, we’ve just felt this incredible energy that is hard to explain,” Cheryl said. “Nothing wrong with the Reds or Angels or Detroit. But it’s the whole dynamic of Philadelphia. I just love Philadelphia and the fans and everything. It’s incredible.”

She had been in town to help Michael and Cassi move into their new home here, the latest stop in a multi-city journey for her that started once Dave Dombrowski, the Phillies’ president of baseball operations, acquired Michael at last week’s trade deadline in a deal with the Tigers. The day that Cheryl, Cassi, and June flew from Detroit to Philadelphia coincided with Michael’s first start for the Phillies, against the Miami Marlins. At Detroit Metro Airport, Cheryl and Cassi watched as much of that game as they could before they had to board their flight to Philadelphia, and it was only after they got on the plane and Cassi turned her phone back on that they learned he had thrown an eight-inning, two-run gem in what had been his longest outing of the season.

» READ MORE: ‘I think I’m going to go deep tonight’: Inside Weston Wilson’s memorable MLB debut with the Phillies

“So tonight,” Cheryl said, “when we saw what he was doing, we were like, ‘Is he coming back in? If he comes out for the eighth, he had to come back out for the ninth.’ And when he came back out for the ninth, oh my gosh, the tears started to roll.”

She was supposed to fly home to Anaheim on Wednesday. But Michael was starting, and she didn’t want to miss the chance to see him pitch in person, especially in his first home game with his new team. So she stayed. And she cried. And she cheered. On a remarkable night for the Phillies, on a remarkable night for Cheryl Lorenzen’s youngest son, she wasn’t the only one.