Nine-year-old Joe Sumner IV, great, great grandson of the late Jule F. Sumner, made the initial delivery to Stingrays coach Kennedy Duran crouched behind home plate. The Stowers Elementary third grader plans to eventually return to the mound in a Rays uniform.

“I feel like it’s going to be special,” he said of playing for a team wearing his family name.

Said father Joe III, who took the ball next: “My entire family, we were honored and humbled and taken back by it.”