WELO AND WELA WILL BE THERE IN SPIRIT.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

In the hearts of the Marcial boys, their No. 1 fans - Julian and Ofelia Marcial - are with them on the baseball field, every inning of every game.

Welo and Wela, the boys call them lovingly - a shortened, phonetic version of abuelo and abuela, grandfather and grandmother, in Spanish. ``W+W'' - initials that have been written inside every baseball cap that 18-year-old Robert Marcial has worn since he was 12.

``It keeps them close to me, and keeps me going,'' said Robert, the star player on the Cleveland High School baseball team.

It's been six years since the Marcial boys' grandparents suffered critical head injuries in a Memorial Day weekend car crash on the way home from a youth baseball game in Palmdale. Six years that the two have been in comas.

``Our grandparents were our No. 1 fans, and we miss them a lot,'' added Robert's cousin, Randy, also a senior player at Cleveland High, which heads into the city playoffs today.

While Robert moves on to the University of Nevada-Reno, where he has a full baseball scholarship next fall, these playoffs will close out Randy's baseball career as he prepares to enroll in the Westwood School of Technology to study software design.

So this is it for the Marcial boys, who come from a strong youth baseball family in the East Valley - their last baseball games together.

Both of them know Welo and Wela would move heaven and earth to be there with them now. Know they'd be sitting up there in the stands where they were for every game the boys played - rooting them on and being the best grandparents a kid could ever have, Randy and Robert say.

It's all there in the school papers their Uncle Julio read to the family a few weeks ago. Randy's senior portfolio, reflecting his high school career, achievements and goals.

At the heart of those high school years, Randy wrote, Welo and Wela were standing right beside both him and Robert - the rock they leaned on for inspiration and motivation.

``I wrote how the tragedy affected us deeply, and how we both had worked hard throughout high school to make them proud of us,'' Randy said.

``They were our number one fans not only in baseball, but in everything we did - graduations, birthdays, everything.''

Then, all of a sudden Welo and Wela were gone from their lives. But not really gone.

They were each in a coma, the boys were told - a deep sleep from which they would probably never awaken.

``The boys were only 12 when the accident happened, and the family wanted to protect them as much as we could, keep a routine going in their lives because we weren't sure what the emotional impact on them would be,'' Julio said.

``They had both spent so much time with their grandparents growing up. My mom was their baby sitter, friend, mentor, number one fan, everything to these boys.

``For these past six years, they've kept most of their feelings about the accident inside them. But now, as they graduate from high school, they're opening up and letting those feelings out.''

The Marcial boys are finally ready to tell everyone how much they love and miss their grandparents - and how much they owe them.

``When Randy writes about how this tragedy kind of broke up the family, and how he's going to try and do everything he can to unite us as a family again because that's what Welo and Wela would want, well, that's had a big emotional impact on all of us,'' Julio said.

Margarita and Ruben Marcial, Robert's parents, agree.

``Sometimes we wondered if the boys fully realized what had happened because they didn't open up and talk to us about it much,'' Ruben said.

``But seeing what's been written in these portfolios has put us in awe of their feelings - seeing the love, respect and hurt they've been carrying in their hearts for their grandparents these past six years,'' he said.

Sometimes Wela smiles when they visit her in the convalescent home, the boys say. Welo, unfortunately, never does. His coma is too deep, the doctors have said.

They talk to their grandmother about their baseball games, how they're doing in school, and where they want their lives to go from here.

The past few years, their high school baseball team has done great and made it all the way to Dodger Stadium for the division finals, and they're hoping to make it back again this year - their last year of playing baseball together.

``It's been tough because it's always been a dream of ours to have our grandparents see us playing at Dodger Stadium, and they couldn't,'' Robert said.

``Sometimes, I look up in the stands, and want so badly to see them sitting there again, rooting us on.''

But the boys aren't little anymore. They're on the verge of manhood, and they know their grandparents will probably never wake up.

So they've been doing the only thing they can do to stay close to them while they're in this deep sleep.

Taking Welo and Wela to every inning of every baseball game they play in their hearts.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Robert, left, and Randy Marcial hold a photo of their grandparents, Ofelia and Julian Marcial, who each remain in a coma six years after an auto crash.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer