Column: A teen’s organs saved lives. His love for baseball lives on in a family’s first pitch at ONT Field

In the 612 days since Dylan Jones died, his mother Alison, father Jason and younger sister Mikaela are slowly learning the words to describe their grief. Bittersweet. So many of the days since the 17-year-old suffered a brain aneurysm while driving, his pickup truck slamming into a tree on Los Angeles Avenue in Simi Valley.

But the baseball field, that was Dylan’s second home. The Joneses can always find a little way to smile there.

So when Mikaela, 16, wearing her brother’s Royal High School jersey, threw the first pitch at the Ontario Tower Buzzers game against the Fresno Grizzlies on April 16, Alison Jones could hold on to many feelings at once. The night, organized by the nonprofit OneLegacy, was “amazing,” she said. “A little bittersweet. Emotional. seeing my daughter wearing our son’s jersey was a big deal.”

OneLegacy, the Azusa-based organization whose mission is to save and heal lives through organ, eye, and tissue donation, also set up a table at the game in honor of Donate Life Month

Mother and daughter also wore matching #21 jerseys, Dylan’s number as a catcher at Royal High School in Simi Valley.

“The two of them grew up so close,” Alison Jones said.

Dylan started playing baseball at age 4 at North Valley Youth Baseball in Granada Hills. He moved on to Simi Youth Baseball and joined travel ball with the Goonies and Strike One Baseball Academy. One of his most cherished memories was catching and hitting off a major league pitcher during an outing with his team in Arizona.

He also grew up playing basketball, volleyball, football and parkour. His high school’s 2024 varsity baseball roster records his junior season: the catcher hit .370 with two doubles and a triple in 16 games as a junior

The one and a half years since Dylan’s death is still hard. The couple turned his room into a space dedicated to his trophies and jerseys.

“You find a way to get through things. You look for the joy,” she said.

The tree on Los Angeles Avenue where he crashed remains a memorial, tended to by high school friends. Mikaela’s softball team at Royal will also dedicate one of their games in May to organ donation, a way to remember Dylan.

One well of comfort is knowing Dylan’s organ and tissue donations changed at least six lives: his kidneys went to two recipients; his liver split between two others. A lung went to a research facility. One woman received Dylan’s pancreas and kidney.

The Joneses met her, heard her say Dylan was her hero.

And his heart saved a life too, a comfort: “We know his heart is still beating.”

Standing on ONT Field on Thursday, watching the Tower Buzzers, an affiliate of Dylan’s beloved Dodgers, was one of those happy-sad moments. The Tower Buzzers lost to the Grizzlies 3-2 in 10 innings.

In the end, it was still amazing, the love wound around the pain, the ache proof that for the time their son was here was enough to change them, and for six strangers, enough for a second chance.