ALBION (AP) -- A retired high school teacher and coach who helped to popularize T-ball as an organized youth sport is being remembered as a man whose patience and faith lifted him to greatness.
A funeral was held Wednesday for 93-year-old Jerome Sacharski. He died Friday of natural causes at his home in Albion, about 85 miles west of Detroit.
The exact origin of T-ball is unclear but behind Sacharski, Albion in 1956 became one of the nation's first communities in which the variation of baseball was played as an organized sport.
During the funeral Mass at St. John Catholic Church, the Rev. Carl Peltz said Sacharski's efforts involving T-ball were his way of embracing and blessing young children as he believed Jesus Christ embraces and blesses them.
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