Eyre talks about his daughter

SARASOTA, Fla. - If you want to see a reliever with a look of relief on his face, check out Willie Eyre today. Eyre was given quite a scare yesterday when informed that his 3-year-old daughter, Lily, had fallen into a hotel pool and was being rushed to a local hospital. Eyre was told during warmups to call his wife, and she gave him the news. "Everything kind of stopped for me. It was surreal," he said this morning. "I got to the hospital and, I won't say she was hysterical, but she was not happy. She was crying, she was very worried. My wife said, 'You don't have to come,' and I was like, 'Come on.' I changed real quick, got dressed and drove over there." Doctors at Sarasota Memorial checked her blood and chest. Her breathing sounded fine, but she had an air bubble in her lungs. "We were lucky there was no water in her lungs," Eyre said. "We were there for two or three hours to make sure she was OK. It was more scary than anything. My wife's pretty shook up. But everything seems to be good now. She slept good through the night. We woke her up every hour to make sure she was responding. She was more mad that we were waking her up." Lily, the youngest of Eyre's three children, was coloring by the pool and wanted to wash off her leg. "She told mommy she wanted to get it off and my wife said, 'We'll get it off.' I guess that meant she would go and do it herself," Eyre said. His wife, Rachel, turned to retrieve something from a bag, and her 5-year-old son, Parker, yelled, 'Mommy, mommy, Lily's under water.'" Eyre said Lily was in the pool for five or six seconds. "Long enough to spook you," he said. "She came up and my wife said she was really scared, she was crying, and she spit up some water, but luckily nothing got in her lungs. She never lost consciousness. She seems to be normal now. She'll be fine. "We were coming back from dinner last night and we were in the parking lot and just out of no where she goes, 'Mommy, thanks for getting me out of the water.' It was kind of a crushing blow. But we'll be fine. We'll get some mental toughness out of this and get stronger through it and be better parents because of it."