Brad Peacock’s mother managed his Little League team, helped son to big league career

Brad Peacock has a good shot at earning a spot in the Houston Astros starting rotation for the 2013 season.

But even if he doesn’t, his baseball roots might be worthy of future royalties from a screenwriter somewhere.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Peacock taught himself to pitch, then refined his talent with his mother, a former softball player who was more interested in baseball than his father.

Just like the '90s classic ‘Rookie of the Year,' Peacock’s mom was the person practicing with him in the backyard.

Jacyne Peacock, however, went farther than the fictional Mary Rowengartner from Rookie of the Year: She coached Peacock’s Little League team and even led it to a league title.

Yes, Jacyne Peacock was her son's Little League manager, and helped spur on Brad's career, because of an off-the-cuff rude comment from a judgmental Little League father:

“One of the male chauvinist guys said, ‘Why don’t you coach a team?’ ” Brad Peacock’s father, Jerry, told the Chronicle. “She said, ‘I’ll coach a team, and I’ll kick your butt.’ ”

That’s precisely what Jacyne and Brad Peacock did, teaming up to earn a title in the Okeehelee Park Little League. The strategy was simple: play to win, and use all of her players’ gifts to get there.

“I told him he was born with a gift and all he had to do was work hard and he was going to make it,” Jacyne Peacock told the Chronicle. “And he said, ‘I know.’ But we couldn’t talk about it in front of anybody.”

Now that gift is fighting for a spot in the Astros rotation just two years after being named the Minor League Pitcher of the Year in the Nationals’ organization and then spending a season as part of the A’s franchise. With his parents still living in Florida, less than a three-hour drive from the Astros’ spring training home in Kissimmee, Brad Peacock is again pitching under his mom’s supervision.

Luckily, this time she doesn’t have the authority to pull him out during a rough inning, though with the way things have gone for the Astros, you might not want to write off Jacyne Peacock showing up in a dugout in Houston this summer, either.