Even now, six years later, Sonsy Gaba has a second name she’s better known as around the Baltimore region. When a stranger meets her, their reaction is often predictable.
“They’re like, ‘Oh, the boy from the TV for the Orioles and Ravens, you’re his mom,’” Sonsy Gaba said. “I’m like, ‘Yes, I’m Mo’s mom.’ I don’t have a first name anymore, and that’s fine. I don’t care. Stuff like that makes me happy.”
That’s because people around here still remember Mossila “Mo” Gaba and all he stood for.
Tuesday marks six years since Mo Gaba died. The affable boy whose love of sports and life made him a fixture on the radio and television, and at Orioles and Ravens games, is far from forgotten. On Sunday at Camden Yards, Sonsy stood near the mound with first baseman Pete Alonso, and they watched a tribute video to her son.
This doesn’t get easier. It never will. But for Sonsy Gaba, the continued remembrance of her son keeps him alive.
“If people want to give me a hug and they start crying, you know, ‘Mo would not want us to cry. So we’re not doing that. We’re not crying today,’” she said. “So we smile. The pain is still going to be there, but stuff like that makes me happy, to know that his legacy still lives on, and people still miss him and still remember him.”
Mo Gaba battled four cancer diagnoses in his 14 years, and he spent much of his life in the hospital. The Glen Burnie native, however, didn’t allow his illnesses — which took his sight by the time he turned 1 — to prevent him from shining in Baltimore. He began to call in to radio shows to offer his insight on all things Orioles and Ravens.
He’s memorialized at Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium through a Hall of Fame plaque and the lettering in the west end zone, respectively. And in 2022, when the Orioles hosted their inaugural Mo Gaba Day, an inside-the-park home run from Trey Mancini — who had his own battle with cancer and missed the 2020 season — proved to be a magical moment befitting Mo’s memory.
“I had some help from somebody,” Mancini said that day, wearing a #MoStrong T-shirt while a bobblehead of Mo stood in his locker. “That was absolutely insane. I’d like to thank Mo. He had a hand in it. That was crazy.”
The Orioles inducted Mo Gaba into the team’s Hall of Fame on July 28, 2020, the same day he died. It cemented his legacy with a team he loved dearly.
“People who visit Camden Yards and see his Hall of Fame plaque on the wall and take pictures of it and tag me on Facebook, little things like that are, like, ‘Wow,’” Sonsy Gaba said. “It helps. That’s what I would say. It helps the grief.”
Mo Gaba’s grave at Glen Haven Memorial Park in Glen Burnie has also become a destination for friends and admirers to leave meaningful tokens. This month, however, Sonsy Gaba found the usual well-covered grave mostly empty. It shocked her, and she said on Facebook it “broke my heart” to “see his grave site stripped of everything.”
She said she hopes that the removal of certain items, such as a Mo Gaba T-shirt, was accidental and not malicious. She commended how Glen Haven Memorial Park has treated her son’s grave over the years, and she has learned that items at times go missing — or are stolen — from other graves in the area.
“People are cruel, and to steal from someone else’s resting place is just weird,” she said.
“We work to ensure that everyone who chooses our properties for their loved ones finds peace and comfort when they visit, and we understand how upsetting it can be when personal items are damaged or stolen,” Alan Byrd, the spokesperson for Everstory Partners, which oversees Glen Haven, said in a statement. “When an incident of this nature is reported, we encourage the family to file a police report and we cooperate fully with law enforcement in any resulting investigation.”
While some of the items were missing, Sonsy Gaba was heartened to see the additions of an Orioles flag and a St. Christopher necklace on her son’s grave.
“Little things like that at his tombstone, seeing what people left, that makes me smile,” she said. “There were a lot of things gone, but to see the St. Christopher necklace and the Orioles flag, it was like, ‘You know what? Regardless of everything, someone still left something behind that wasn’t taken.’ And that meant a lot. That really did.”
Sonsy Gaba said she was hesitant to see more items left at her son’s grave because she feared they might be taken in the future, too. But local sports blogger Eric Arditti, a friend of the family who grew close to Mo Gaba, returned to the grave to honor the sixth anniversary of his death.
Arditti has a box full of “Mo Strong” shirts. He hung another shirt at the site around sunset on Sunday. Even if that shirt disappears, Arditti said, he plans to keep hanging them, because he hopes everyone can be nearly as strong as Mo Gaba.
As Sonsy Gaba considers what she hopes Mo Gaba’s story can teach the world, she pointed to two main points.
“Laughter is by far the best medicine, and kindness is free,” Mo’s mother said. “It doesn’t hurt and it doesn’t cost a thing to be kind. That’s one thing about him — he knew he was going through a lot, but he’s more worried about somebody else’s situation being a little better than his. That’s the most selfless little boy I ever met in my life.”
And no matter how many years pass, there’s no changing the impact Mo Gaba had on Baltimore.
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