photo by: Sarah Buchanan/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas senior infielder Michael Brooks is celebrated by Kansas teammates after hitting a home run against Oklahoma State on Friday, March 28, 2025, at Hoglund Ballpark.

As Kansas baseball prepares for its annual Autism Awareness game — a game that is close to the heart of head coach Dan Fitzgerald, whose 13-year-old son Max has autism — Fitzgerald and his staff have something more to be proud of than just the team’s best start in Big 12 Conference play in team history (6-3).

“Whether they like it or not, they get to experience my family, my life, and my assistants’ families, their lives,” Fitzgerald said. “That’s how we built this thing. It’s real and it’s transparent… and to me, if our biggest impact on our players is on the field, that’s an incredibly missed opportunity.

“There are a billion games and summer leagues and practices — all the things they do out throughout their career where they get better at baseball. And we certainly care about baseball development, and we’re obsessed with it. We talk about it all day, but if the impact ends there, it’s a total waste.”

He continued: “(We always say) some of us are going pro, but everyone’s going pro in something — everyone’s going to live life after this… And we have an expression around here: If you’re not experiencing adversity right now, wait about 15 minutes. So things like our Autism Awareness game, our Rare Disease Day, those things are just really near and dear to our program and things that we want to bring awareness to and also celebrate. Having a son with autism has been the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with, and also the greatest and the most eye-opening and life-changing.”

The game, which is in its third year as Fitzgerald implemented it in his first season at Kansas, is a reflection of the culture and atmosphere that the Jayhawks’ coaching squad and administrators hope to provide to their athletes.

“The burden that I carry in my professional life is that the family drops their most precious commodity off on this campus and for better or worse, I become an incredibly influential person in that process,” Fitzgerald said. “I try to tell them that I think a lot about that, I lose sleep over that… Whether you’re Brady Ballinger, Dom Voegele, or a guy that hasn’t played this year, (we know) the impact as a staff and the culture of the program that we have on that young man… So I talk about whether we retire your jersey and put it up on the wall, or it doesn’t work out, you will leave here more prepared to be an awesome human being in this world.”

While the lessons and skills that he can teach his athletes mean more to Fitzgerald than whether his team wins or loses on any given night, this commitment to bettering his players as people has certainly translated to the field.

Last week, the Jayhawks went 5-0 with a tough pair of midweek wins against St. Thomas followed by a three-game sweep against Oklahoma State — a team that Kansas hadn’t swept since 2009, and hadn’t even won a series against since 2019. The Jayhawks finished off the weekend with an 11-2 victory over the Cowboys on Sunday to secure their first series sweep in over 15 years, which put Kansas in the Baseball America top 25 ranking for the first time since 2014, coming in at No. 23.

After a 3-3 start in conference play, the weekend sweep was a good jumping-off point for a Jayhawks team that has sometimes struggled with its pitching consistency, as its bookend starters for the weekend, Voegele and Cooper Moore, pitched eight and seven innings, respectively, and only surrendered two earned runs apiece.

On Wednesday, the Jayhawks host South Dakota State at 6 p.m. Since Kansas doesn’t have a double midweek game for the rest of the year, Fitzgerald hopes that he can have a consistent four-man rotation after overcoming injury setbacks and other roadblocks to start the season.

“It was a huge step for us this weekend because it’s been a little clunky with our rotation throughout the year,” Fitzgerald said, referencing Patrick Steitz’s setbacks after coming back from Tommy John surgery to start the year and Moore’s three missed starts this season. “So the schedule lines up well to have four games a week, and that’s our rotation (Vogele, Kannon Carr, Moore and Steitz). The problem with that is that that’s nine less innings a week to be able to get some guys out there that have earned it. They deserve it, and they need it.”

Even with the sustained success the Jayhawks have found throughout the season, the best options for his players are still what’s at the forefront of Fitzgerald’s mind, saying, “If they allowed us to play 76 (games), we’d play 76,” as he acknowledged nothing prepares guys like being in a real game situation.

But for one game on Wednesday night, Fitzgerald’s focus and awareness — at least pregame – will be more on the stadium environment at Hoglund Ballpark than usual, as he explains that his goal with this year’s Autism Awareness game is to make it an enjoyable environment for families with children with autism to come enjoy the baseball atmosphere.

“I think the biggest chunk of it is bringing awareness and education and then also having an environment where this sensory environment is welcoming… and autism is a massive spectrum, and not every kid is affected by sound and light or whatever, but some are,” he said. “(So) you’ll see the first few innings, we’ll do the national anthem early, the announcements that will be done early, about 15 minutes before the game. There won’t be any announcements made and then the volume will slowly be turned up, and by that fourth, fifth inning we’ll be at full volume.

“But we try to create an environment where, you know, families can be at the game with a special-needs kid and have some peace in terms of the sensory output.”