Mary Jung would like you to believe she didn’t have this discussion. At least not until the greatest Mother’s Day gift of her life becomes a reality this weekend.
“I may not be superstitious,” Mary, a San Antonio elementary school PE teacher, said last week between helping with STAAR testing. “But I‘m a little stitious”
It might be testing fate too much to be too cavalier about what it would mean to see her two boys, Texas Rangers third baseman Josh Jung and Detroit third baseman Jace Jung, younger by 2 ½ years, meet as major leaguers.
On Mother’s Day weekend. Nope. Absolutely not. You don’t jinx that.
She’s known about this possibility – a rare bit of baseball serendipity – since schedules were released last September. Eight months of trying to ignore a big-league mama’s dream.
Her husband, Jeff, who years ago resigned as a successful San Antonio high school baseball coach to focus his after-school hours on his young boys, looked at the schedule immediately to see when things might bring the boys together.
When he spotted on the second weekend of May that the Rangers would visit the Tigers, it didn’t take him long to put two and two together. He was, after all, a high school math teacher by trade.
“My mama heart just melted at that possibility,” Mary said. ”But I didn’t want to talk about it in case something came up. I thought about getting a split jersey with both teams. If I looked at flights, I‘d erase the browser history.
“I found a hotel but wouldn’t call to make reservations. If it happened, great, but I really worked hard not to say anything about it. I didn’t want any evidence that I‘d even been thinking about it. Every time I‘d actually say something, I‘d retract it and say ‘what if‘.”
Who could blame her for being concerned something could go wrong?
Josh, 27, has had his promising career with the Rangers sidetracked by a number of freak injuries. In back-to-back seasons, he suffered a broken thumb when he caught a line drive and a broken wrist after getting hit by a pitch. And as spring training ended this year, a sore neck turned into another stint on the injured list. After a promising call-up last August, Jace, 24, had a rough spring training and was returned to Triple-A to start the 2025 season. Wasn’t happening.
Three weeks in, though, the Tigers, who have been trying to find ways to deal with a trio of injured outfielders, decided to move Javier Baez to center field, opening a spot for a third baseman. Jace was recalled.
The possibility of a Mother’s Day Miracle was back on.
“She sacrificed so much for us,” Josh said. “From nights driving us to practice, weekends playing all over Texas, summers all over the country. The amount of money and time she invested into us can never be repaid back but hopefully we can put on a show for her to enjoy on Mother’s Day.”
Mother’s Day miracle
On its own, “miracle” is a pretty apt word to describe MLB brothers facing off on Mother’s Day. Let alone making it the first time they’ve met as pros. Mary was there for Josh’s MLB debut in 2022. She was there for Jace’s last year. Whether she officially acknowledges travel-planning or not, she will be in Detroit this weekend.
How rare is this? Consider this Rangers’ roster. There are five players who have appeared for the Rangers this season who had siblings play in the big leagues. None of them, including Corey Seager and his brother, former Mariner Kyle, ever met on Mother’s Day.
Rangers hitting coach Bret Boone and his brother, current Yankees manager Aaron, faced off 24 times in their careers. Never on Mother’s Day. And pitching coach Mike Maddux faced his Hall of Fame brother Greg nine times. Not on Mother’s Day either, though Mike Maddux has his own special view.
“Through our playing days, anytime we were on the field together, our parents were so proud,” Mike said. “Each game was their own Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.”
There have been more than 400 brother combinations to play in the big leagues and even among the most renowned of them, the occasion of a Mother’s Day meeting has been rare.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, MLB’s statistician, if the Jungs both play Sunday, they will be just the ninth set of brothers to face off on Mother’s Day since 1969.
The Ripkens, Cal Jr. and Billy, never did it. Nor did the Alomars, Sandy Jr. and Roberto, in 72 different meetings. Searching through 16 of the most venerable brother combinations in history on Baseball-Reference.com, turned up six occasions on which brothers faced each other on Mother’s Day. Three of them were by the DiMaggios prior to America entering World War II. Dom beat big brother Joe all three times.
Over a 22-year stretch from 1958 to 1978, a set of at least two of three Alou brothers, Felipe, Matty and Jesús, appeared in games together 208 times. Only once did two of them meet on Mother’s Day. The first time they had a chance to do so, Matty actually didn’t play on Mother’s Day for the Pirates against Felipe’s Braves.
The Niekros, Phil and Joe, who combined for more pitching wins than any other siblings, started once against each other on Mother’s Day in 1980. Henrietta “Ivy” Niekro didn’t make the game in Atlanta over a fear of flying.
That would never happen today. MLB has leaned hard into Mother’s Day, with players using pink bats and donning pink sweatbands to raise breast cancer awareness. In 2021, the most recent example of brothers playing against each other on Mother’s Day when Yuli Gurriel’s Astros met Lourdes Jr.’s Blue Jays, their mother, Olga Lydia Castillo, was one of four mothers honored to throw out the first pitch.
You get the point. It’s rare. It’s not lost on Josh, a student of the game’s history, either.
“I think it will be everything for the family,” Josh said. “Just in general, you’ve got two kids in the big leagues playing against each other. Just to play against each other, that’s something special on its own. We’ve worked forever just to get to the big leagues. It’s going to be an emotional day for them.”
“She might shed a tear here or there,” Jace said. “But, yes, she will be off the wall.”
The long, bumpy road
It has been a long road and, as usual, there have been bumps along the way. Maybe it even helps explain the penchant for freak injuries that has dogged Josh. When he was 5, he put rocks on a slide to deter Jace from going down. Jace’s countermeasure: He threw a rock at Josh, “cracking open my skull.”
“Yeah, that was the worst thing he’s ever done to me,” Josh said with a laugh recently. “Had to get six staples and miss PE for a week. It was the worst week of my life.”
And what was the worst thing Josh did? Oh, nothing comes to mind for the angelic older brother, the one Mary calls her analytical thinker.
Jace has his own version of that story: “What he doesn’t get is he was the protagonist in that. He started it.”
“There was a lot of competition,” Jace said. “There were a lot of fights. And there was a lot of competition that led to a lot of fights. We’d take a shower before bed and then start playing on this mini-basketball hoop in the house and get so sweaty we’d have to go take another shower.”
Jace said that as younger brother, it was “100% my job” to get under big brother’s skin. But he also followed his big brother’s steps pretty closely. And it led to the one time the two boys played together, Josh’s senior year at MacArthur High School when he played short and batted third and Jace played second and batted second. Unless Josh pitched; then Jace replaced him at short. The first base coach: volunteer assistant Jeff Jung.
Then Josh went off to Texas Tech. Three years later, when Josh was selected by the Rangers with the eighth overall pick in the draft, Jace was enrolling … at Tech.
The Tech record book is littered with Jung accomplishments. Josh was a first-team All-American once, but Jace was twice. Jace was a Bobby Bragan Collegiate Slugger Award finalist, but Josh won the award. Josh was the co-Big 12 Player of the Year in 2019; Jace won it outright two years later. And then in 2022, Jace was selected by Detroit 12th overall.
This past winter, as Josh was still recovering from complex right wrist surgery, Jace underwent surgery on the right hand, too, to remove a piece of bone.
“Seeing them on the same field living their dream, it just melts me,” said Mary, who has somehow managed to score one of those split jerseys. “I know how competitive they are and how much they both want to win. They are the best kids with the best hearts. They care about everybody.”
Mary has kept every Mother’s Day card and letter – yes, the Jungs write her letters on occasion – the kids have made for her.
She has a heart-shaped magnet that Josh made her in school that has traveled with her from school to school. She still hangs the ornaments they made on her Christmas tree. And she absolutely still drives the car Josh gave her a couple of years ago for her birthday.
“I‘m not all that big on gifts, but I keep all the things they made,” Mary said. “Our biggest gift is family time. And this will be the best gift ever. It is so special.”
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