As a college baseball fan, particularly when it comes to my alma mater, the University of Georgia, I enjoy finding out how some of the players I watched and followed in Athens are doing after they graduated or moved on to professional baseball. But when I stumbled on one name from the recent past, I was shocked to read a story I’d never heard before.
Zac Kristofak played for the Bulldogs from 2017 to 2019, and I lost touch with his career after that. He’s currently in the Los Angeles Angels minor league organization, playing for the Rocket City Trash Pandas in Alabama, and who doesn’t love that team name?
He grew up in Marietta, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta (and, incidentally, where I was born and lived my first few years of life). Kristofak has been so quiet in the past about the tragedy that befell his family that he shocked his teammates when he told them about it earlier in the season.
A profile in The Athletic detailed how Kristofak went public with the story of how his father shot and killed his mother in 2012. John and Donna Kristofak divorced in 2011, largely due to money problems, but shortly afterward, John’s relationship with his estranged wife grew ever more toxic.
A restraining order did no good. Police arrested John after he chased Donna around a Walmart parking lot. Zac Kristofak told The Athletic that his dad would send him threatening messages about his mom. John threatened his ex-wife directly as well.
“According to police records, John emailed her at one point, writing, ‘both kids would rather come to heaven than lose me’ and ‘have you ever been hit by a car going 140 not knowing where it was coming from?,’ according to police records,” reports The Athletic’s Sam Blum. “There were other notes threatening her life.”
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In October 2012, Donna Kristofak told a judge that the only way she would be safe was for her ex-husband to remain in jail. She told the judge that “it is on the record that I fear for my life.” The judge released John on Oct. 29.
Less than two months later, on Dec. 22, 2012, Donna had arrived home from taking Zac to baseball practice. She was still in her car when John pulled into the driveway and shot her twice through the car window. Zac’s brother Harrison was at home and called 911. Zac arrived home to find out that his mom was dead.
John went on the run for nearly a week, and he told investigators that he had planned to commit suicide but police nabbed him before he could reach for his gun. He admitted that he had planned the murder well in advance and asked that the investigation not leak to the press.
Zac and Harrison had plenty of support following their mom’s murder. They received 300 donated presents for Christmas three days after the shooting, and their neighbors, the Kiebooms — a family that includes one current and one former pro baseball player — took them in until their grandmother moved to Marietta to allow the boys to finish school with their friends.
At 25 years old, Zac Kristofak has turned tragedy into a story that built his character and confidence. He has the goal of making it to the majors, a dream he has held since he was little, and he sees that goal as his way of turning family history around for the good.
Blum writes:
“I’ll get to write my own story,” Kristofak said this summer, sitting on a restaurant patio overlooking his apartment complex in Alabama. “I think that what I want to do, more than anything in life, is rewrite the Kristofak name.”
Kristofak wants to be known as a baseball player. He wants to be known for the community that lifted him up after his mother’s murder — not for the man locked up in Hays State Prison for the rest of his life.
“I know that if my mom were here right now,” Kristofak said, “she would be really proud…”
Zac Kristofak sees the positives that can come out of his experiences. “I can put the light into it,” he told The Athletic. “Because there is light.”
Kristofak wants to encourage others to conquer hardship and adversity — and the sky’s the limit on how many people he can inspire just by being honest about what he’s had to overcome.
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