Gabe Koser is like any other teenager.

The soon to be 16-year-old loves sports and religiously watches ESPN's SportsCenter. He cheers on Jim Thome, David Justice and the rest of the hard-hitting Cleveland Indians. He plays baseball. He plays soccer. He likes picking on Tanya, Holli and Annie - his three sisters.

On Feb. 26, 1996, Gabe collapsed. He was outside shooting hoops when the back of his knees grew weak, forcing him to sit down. All he could see was a band of colors - purple, green and yellow. Nothing else.

He screamed Holli's name and told her he couldn't see.

He'd had a seizure. The next time Gabe woke up, he was lying in the back of an ambulance.

The ambulance drove to KCH, where the doctors gave him a catscan and ran numerous tests. They saw something on the catscan they knew wasn't right. Still, they couldn't say for sure what Gabe had or what was wrong with him.

He went to Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne the next morning. The doctors did an MRI. What the catscan couldn't show him and his family, the MRI did.

The MRI showed a brain tumor.

Within a week, his family took him to Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis. The doctors there confirmed the same thing: a brain tumor.

Dr. Regina Jakacki, one of the doctors at Riley, said his tumor is known as a low-grade glioma.

"Those are tumors that are very slow-growing," she said. "Typically, they may not cause symptoms at all, unless they cause seizures, which was the case with Gabe."

His tumor is located deep in the occipital lobe, an area of the brain that has a lot to do with the ability to see. For now, the doctors have decided to leave it alone - it hasn't grown since they started watching it a year ago.

"One of the reasons we haven't biopsied it is because it's so small, and it's in a location that would be difficult to get to," Dr. Jakacki said. "He really has quite a good prognosis that if it were to grow, we would be willing to do surgery. If it's completely removed, then it carries a fairly good prognosis in the likelihood it would not come back.

"We certainly wouldn't say it's terminal. If it was really a dangerous thing, we wouldn't sit on it and just watch it. There is no reason to believe that this will affect him in any negative way, other than it's a hassle for him to come get scans and take medicine."

The doctors told Gabe it would be OK to play every sport but two. He could no longer play football. He couldn't dive into a pool.

Two weeks after the doctors found the tumor, Gabe's mom, Jani, asked him how he felt.

He didn't come right out and tell her. Instead, he wrote a poem. He's written three. One's titled "The Way I Feel." Then there's "I Love You Mom, You Keep Everything So Calm."

"Writing stuff," Gabe explained, "is a lot easier than talking about it."

Gabe dreams of throwing, catching and hitting a baseball at the major league level. He's already played the game for 10 years.

At the end of his bed wallpaper featuring a minor league baseball game covers the wall. His other walls are painted blue halfway up or so with markings - 365, 410, 410. Those walls are painted as if they are outfield fences.

Then you look elsewhere in this baseball haven and see his most prized possessions - three Orel Hershiser autographed pictures. In one of them Gabe sits beside Hershiser, a starting pitcher for the Cleveland Indians.

Last summer one of Jani's co-workers gave Gabe's family tickets to a Cleveland Indians game.

What a day that was.

Gabe spent an hour or so on the field with Hershiser. He met Indians players. He even played catch with Orel.

"He told me I had a good arm," Gabe said.

Gabe plays shortstop, left field, second base and pitcher for Warsaw's junior varsity and freshman teams.

"I like shortstop the most," he said. "It's where all the activity is."

Gabe has not and will not let his tumor stop him from chasing his dream. He's just another kid setting his goals.

"He loves to be treated normal," Jani said.

Unfortunately, 17-year-old sister Tanya says, that doesn't always happen.

Tanya is soft-spoken, so much so that her voice is barely audible on a tape recorder. Her beliefs are another story. They come across loud and clear.

The last three years, Tanya has known three people with tumors - Megan Easterday, Lauren Easterday and Gabe. Tanya lost a good friend in Megan, who died in January.

When her English teacher assigned a research paper, Tanya picked brain tumors as her topic. She discussed brain tumors and treatments in the first half. The last part she talked about Gabe and Megan and what it is and was like for them to live with tumors.

She wrote: ...So for those of you who think they are rare, think again. Please don't act any differently toward these people. Tumors are not contagious, and you will not get them by being a friend to someone who needs one. We should admire these people and not put them down for something they cannot help or have no control over ... Be kind.

"The reason I wrote that paragraph is one of Gabe's best friends wrote a letter to a girlfriend when he was in the eighth grade," she said. "It ripped on him for having to wear a medical bracelet. Called him a faggot. The girl broke up with him two days after she found out."

Gabe's mom confirms this.

"He lost some friends," she said. "Your normal 14- or 15-year-olds don't know what to say. Some of them are coming back."

One has never left.

Gabe's best friend in the whole world is Heidi Workman. They aren't boyfriend/girlfriend; they are the best of friends. They've known each other about three years.

"I consider him one of my very best friends," Heidi said. "I know he's always there for me, and I know I can always trust him."

"Heidi's always there to talk to," Gabe said. "She's always there to help me through things. She's probably the best listener I know."

Gabe's life has changed very little since Feb. 26, 1996. He takes one capsule in the morning and two at night, seizure medication. The only problem he's had since the February night is short-term memory loss that comes and goes in spurts, but the doctors believe the medication, not the tumor, caused this.

He's had no more seizures.

"My head doesn't hurt," he said. "If you would get in a fight, yeah, then you would have to worry about what happens if you get hit in the head."

Yes, Gabe is like you or me or anyone else. He has his good days. He has his bad days. But Jani said there is one thing she has never heard Gabe say.

He has never complained about having a tumor.

Jani still remembers the day she went downstairs to Gabe's room, interrupting his homework to ask him a question.

"I asked him why he never felt sorry for himself," she said. "He put his pencil down, then looked at me. He asked, 'Why should I feel sorry for myself? I can walk. I can talk. I can see. I can run. There are people out there so much worse off than me.

"He had just turned 15 then. I have deep admiration for him."

Just as Gabe has deep admiration for Megan Easterday. When Jani asked him a few months ago who his heroes are, he named Megan.

"I didn't know Megan real well," he said, "but I knew about her and what she stood for. She meant a lot to a lot of people. I don't know what it was ... but she touched a lot of people.

"That's the way I want to be." [[In-content Ad]]