Doyel #SeniorClass: Tech senior lost his baseball season then saved a life
INDIANAPOLIS – The blood wanted to come out of that bullet wound, to rush out of the hole in his stepdad’s stomach and spill onto the floor, but Alonte Durr wouldn’t let it. His stepdad wanted to shut his eyes, to drift away from the pain and never come back, but Durr wouldn’t let him.
A man was going to die that night three weeks ago, make no mistake, but it would not be Alonte’s stepdad. Not Michael Heard.
Durr is a senior at Tech, a baseball player. Or he was. He graduated last month. And the baseball season was canceled by the coronavirus. Those are the bare essentials of the Alonte Durr story, but they don’t matter now. Not with his stepdad bleeding as Alonte carries him inside and lays him on a bed, rushes into the bathroom for a rag, and comes back to apply pressure to the wound. He’d seen it in a movie.
Now Alonte is talking to his stepdad, to Michael Heard. Well, not talking. He’s crying and screaming, trying to wake him up, but Heard’s eyes are rolling back in his head. Alonte runs to the kitchen for a glass of water and pours it on Heard’s face.
There had been gunshots outside their eastside apartment. Two shots, boom-boom, then a third. Alonte doesn’t know what’s happening – he’d been inside for this Memorial Day weekend barbecue – but he knows his mom is out there, and his younger siblings, too. He runs outside, just in time to see his stepdad bleeding from two bullet holes and firing a gun of his own.
The other man, Gregory McGhee, 62, died. There was a story in the newspaper, but it didn’t name the other man in the shootout, the man rushed to Eskenazi Hospital in critical condition. That was Alonte’s stepdad, Michael Heard.
Heard is out of the hospital now, on pain medicine, recovering. At the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, they are still investigating the events of May 24. No charges have been filed. Doctors told Alonte and his mom, Jessica Durr, that Michael Heard would be dead if Alonte hadn’t pushed a rag into that bubbling bullet hole and shouted at his stepdad, dousing him with water to keep him awake.
The things this kid has seen. The life he has lived.
But Alonte’s strong. He’s a hero, as you’ve seen. The life this kid could live, going forward? Sky’s the limit for Alonte Durr. He just needs someone to give him a chance, and two men are trying.
No, Alonte Durr isn’t the only hero in this story.
The kid is a natural
Alonte had never played baseball. Never worn a glove, thrown a ball, swung a bat. Nothing. But he was big and athletic – about 6-2, 165 pounds – and he played basketball and football. This was at Washington High, the school he attended as a sophomore in 2018, and one of the coaches there talked him into playing baseball.
Turns out, Alonte liked baseball. He was pretty good at it, with natural arm strength and speed to burn. He played that season for Washington, then transferred to Tech. Alonte shows up for tryouts last spring – this was 2019, his junior season – and Tech coach Bob Haney is intrigued. He sees the size, the arm strength, the speed. He sees the hands and the work ethic, Alonte’s drive to get better, to make mistakes and be corrected and not make the same mistake again.
“If he’d started (baseball) younger,” Haney says, “by the time he got to high school, there’s no telling how good a player he’d be right now.”
Alonte started for Tech as a junior. Shortstop mainly, but he pitched, too. He didn’t have a glove, but Haney had an old mitt lying around. The glove was stiff, cracked, abandoned for a reason: It had a hole in the palm, where balls would sting Durr’s hand.
“I liked it,” Durr says. “It was small.”
Haney found a better glove for Durr eventually, but never mind that. Imagine a kid who’d never played baseball until his sophomore year pitching and throwing in the low 80s as a junior. Imagine that kid starting at shortstop, hitting close to .300. Statistics are spotty for the 2019 Tech Titans, who went 1-14, but I have three moments to show you.
First: The Titans play Richmond, a baseball school that goes 18-11 in 2019 and wins two games in the state tournament. Richmond beats Tech 18-8, but Durr goes 1-for-2 with a double. He drives in a run, gets a walk, steals a base. He also pitches a hitless inning. Strikes out a batter.
Second: The Titans are invited to a 2019 game at IU. Haney drives his team to Bloomington, and on the way home they stop at the Culver’s in Greenwood. A week letter, someone writes a letter to the Tech principal. This is a stranger who saw the Tech baseball team having fun together, thinking nobody was really watching, and this person wanted Tech principal Corye Franklin to know the Titans were a delight to be around.
Third: It’s the 2019 playoffs. Tech opens at Cathedral, a baseball powerhouse, a 19-7 team in 2019, the 2018 state runner-up. This game won’t be close, and everyone knows it, but in the first inning Tech gets out of a jam – runners on second and third – without giving up a run.
“Coming off the field, you’d have thought we just won the state title,” Haney’s telling me, and he’s laughing so hard. “We went crazy.”
By the fourth inning, Cathedral leads 24-0. The game is called.
A few days later, Tech principal Corye Franklin gets another letter. This one is from a parent at Cathedral, and Haney says it goes something like this:
“I’ve been chasing around my kids at games for five years, and I’ve never witnessed a group that came together and kept its spirit up and showed team morale and didn’t give up like your Titans.”
Now Haney is pausing. Pretty sure he’s getting emotional. He played three seasons for Tech, graduating in 1981. He planned to play at Hanover, but life got in the way: His girlfriend got pregnant, so he didn’t go to college. Got a job at Cub Foods, then at the Ford plant on East Washington until it closed in 2008, then Honda.
Haney took early retirement from the Honda plant in Greensburg to chase his passion: coaching baseball and helping kids. He’s been at Tech for three years, and is director of operations for Indianapolis RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities).
“I know we didn’t win a lot of ballgames (in 2019),” Haney says after the pause. “We will one day. We’ll turn this thing around. But those letters mean more to me than any win can do.”
But the things he's seen
The day I find Alonte Durr, he’s lugging bags of red rock dirt onto the fields at Forest Manor Park. That’s where Tech plays its home games, and where the Indianapolis RBI program will play this summer. Bob Haney needs help to get the fields ready. Alonte Durr likes to help.
“He’s helping because he’s a Titan, and he’s kind of close to me,” Haney says. “I guess I’m sort of a mentor. He’s a really good kid. He latched on, and we have a good coach-player relationship.”
Alonte’s dad was gone for most of the first 12 years of his life, then came back into the picture. Alonte lived with him for two months when he was 12 – this was in Chicago – but his dad took him back to his mom’s.
“I haven’t seen him since,” Alonte says.
Michael Heard is in the picture now. Marion County prosecutor’s records show Heard was charged with domestic battery in 2015 and ’17 – both times, charges were dismissed – and with pointing a firearm at another person in December. That case remains active, as does the shooting on May 24.
According to the probable cause affidavit from December, Heard pointed a gun at a clerk at Victory Liquors across the street from their eastside apartment complex, then fired six shots outside the apartment building. According to the affidavit, Alonte heard the gun shots. He was there when police officers found Heard hiding in a back bedroom and led him out in handcuffs. They found a silver Smith & Wesson 9mm under the kids’ bunk bed, with 10 live rounds in its 15-round magazine.
The things this kid has seen. The life he has lived.
Baseball could be his way out. Alonte is hoping to play in college, and Wright State University’s Lake campus, an NAIA school in Celina, Ohio – 15 miles east of the Ohio-Indiana border – is interested. First Alonte must navigate the college application process, and it’s not easy.
This is a kid who almost missed his own high school graduation, held two weeks ago by Tech on Facebook Live, with the Class of 2020 watching as Tech administrators called off names. What with the pandemic and the technology gap, Alonte hadn’t heard about his virtual graduation. A Tech counselor noticed his absence on Facebook Live and called him, finding Alonte in a car. This was a week after the shootout at his apartment complex, and his family was moving.
Alonte watched his graduation on a cell phone from his mother’s car. Jessica Durr gently cried when Alonte’s name was called.
“That’s my baby,” she said.
What does Alonte know about FAFSA, about Indiana’s 21st Century Scholars program? Not much. That’s where Tech assistant Dan Turner comes in. Turner coaches the Indiana Stix youth baseball club and is an independent trucking manufacturer’s rep. He tries to help the kids at Tech, the Stix and the RBI program find college opportunities.
Turner and Haney think Alonte Durr would crush that opportunity like a hanging curve.
Says Haney:
“I personally think Alonte could make a college team and get playing time, in time. The first year would be rough, with a learning curve, but I think he’s good enough – as hard as he works – he could have an outside chance at playing minor-league ball. He’s got to work hard, don’t get me wrong. But the worst-case scenario is, he’s such a good kid, he’d get that college degree. He just hasn’t gotten the guidance and the breaks he needs to move forward.”
Says Turner:
“There’s just something about Alonte – he has it. There are some kids you say: ‘That kid is going to do something. There’s just something special about him.’ He’s one of those kids. We talk to Alonte about going to college, signing him up for a meal ticket, and he asks: ‘So I can eat … how many times a day?’ What he is now at 17 or 18 is not what he’s going to be at 25 or 26. There are bigger opportunities out there. You deal with so many kids that are like: ‘I’m entitled, I’m owed.’ Alonte doesn’t look at it that way. He’s just a great kid who needs a break.”
A few weeks ago, Alonte Durr saved a man’s life. If someone wants to give this kid a hand, help change his life, email Bob Haney or Danny Turner at techbaseballplayers@gmail.com.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.
#SENIORCLASS
Sports columnist Gregg Doyel highlights one local high school senior each week this spring, finding special kids whose senior seasons were cut short by the coronavirus threat.
Part 1: The Tindley kid who saved baseball season
Part 2: Perry Meridian's Hannah Bargue finds her speed
Part 3: Never played baseball for Washington, still a winner
Part 4: Surgery can wait for Tri-West softball star pitching through pain
Part 5: The Chatard runner who ran on legs she knew might break
Part 6: Brownsburg's Kaylee Price survived hell, and she is silent no more
Part 7: After the nightmares, this HSE pitcher's dream came true
Part 8: Coronavirus ended IU signee Khristian Lander's junior (and final) season
Part 9: Season's over, but Franklin Central runner has one goal left
Part 10: Alonte Durr from Tech is a natural at baseball ... and a life-saver