When the Barracudas baseball team found itself in need of several players, 6-year-old Oscar Stuebe was happy to fill in as a teammate with his 7-year-old brother, Connor.
The Stuebe brothers also played together on The Yankees, another team in Palm Beach County, Florida. During a recent Yankees game, they had pulled off a fun feat. Oscar caught a pop fly in right field and threw it to Connor at first base for a double play.
The day after the double play, the Barracudas played a doubleheader. During the fifth inning of the second game, Oscar stood waiting in center field. The boys’ mother, Sarah, watched eagerly from the stands, snapping photos and cheering along. Their father, Riley, was in the dugout as an assistant coach.
The batter hit a pop fly. It was nothing out of the ordinary, the kind all players and parents had seen dozens of times during the season. But that day was different.
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Oscar took off running, his small legs powering him across the dusty field, his mitt in the air. It looked like he caught the ball. The crowd erupted in a cheer. Then the ball dropped, Oscar bowed his head and he collapsed.
Riley thought his son had the wind knocked out of him. Once he realized there was more to it, he dropped the clipboard he was holding and ran toward his son.
Riley could tell something was seriously wrong. He screamed “Sarah!” in a shrill, panic-filled tone that prompted her to immediately call 911 and rush down from the bleachers to the field.
When Sarah reached Oscar, his limbs were stiff and his eyes had rolled into the back of his head. Sarah thought he was having a seizure, but he had no history of a seizure disorder. Then he went still. His face turned grayish and he gasped for air.
“Oscar, you’re swimming, come back up for air,” Riley pleaded.
More time passed in between gasps. Sarah, who is a nurse, started CPR and shouted for someone to get an AED, short for automated external defibrillator. Only, there was no AED at the facility.
Sarah knew how to deliver quality chest compressions. She went into “nurse mode,” pushing hard and fast in the center of his chest. Oscar remained limp and unresponsive.
“Where’s the ambulance?” Riley yelled.
Sarah’s arms were tiring, her heart racing and tears welling up. The gravity of the situation struck her. She was doing something she never imagined she’d do: CPR on her own son.
Another mother – a physician’s assistant – was watching her son play ball on an adjacent field and heard about what was happening. She ran to the scene and took over CPR from Sarah.
The ambulance arrived five minutes after Oscar collapsed.
First responders continued CPR and hooked him up to an AED. Oscar was in ventricular fibrillation, a life-threatening abnormal heart rhythm that happens when the heart’s lower chambers (ventricles) quiver instead of contracting normally. This can prohibit the heart from pumping blood, cause a collapse, and lead to cardiac arrest. If not treated, it can be fatal within minutes.
As the ambulance sped to the hospital, Sarah and Riley sat up front. EMTs delivered a shock to Oscar’s heart.
But his heart rate was a low 37 beats per minute. EMTs continued CPR and drew up a syringe of epinephrine to help correct his abnormally low rhythm.
Suddenly, his heart rate jumped to 150 beats per minute on its own.
