A West Palm Beach family is working to raise awareness after their six-year-old son was playing a little league baseball game when he collapsed and experienced a cardiac episode.
On Sunday March 10, 2024, Oscar Stuebe was playing game two of a doubleheader at Phipps Baseball Park in West Palm Beach.
Oscar was playing centerfield when a player on the opposing team hit a pop fly. His mom and dad describe the hit as something they’ve seen thousands of times.
“It was a really unspectacular pop fly,” said Sarah Stuebe “Oscar was going towards the ball mitt up, and looked like he had made the catch. Then, shortly after realizing that he didn’t, and something was seriously wrong, he collapsed on the field.”
When Oscar collapsed, his father Riley Stuebe ran to him.
“I didn’t expect what had happened to happen, obviously, I thought he got the wind knocked out of him,” said Riley.
Riley was kneeling next to his son trying to figure out what happened.
“He popped up and he yelled my name. And the way that he yelled my name I knew there was something really wrong,” said Sarah.
That’s when Sarah called 911, handed the phone off to a friend, and ran to her son.
“He had no pulse and wasn’t breathing,” said Sarah. “So I started CPR. After doing chest compressions on my son for about two minutes, I realized that this shouldn’t be happening. We were at a baseball game, a youth baseball game. I broke down. Thankfully, there was someone here, Jaime, who took over CPR until the paramedics arrived.”
Sarah called out for an AED, but there wasn’t one on the field that day.
“I continued chest compressions and, basically looked around. You could hear a pin drop, everyone was in shock, really could not believe what was happening,” said Sarah.
Oscar was experiencing what’s called commotio cordis.
