weren’t and still aren’t. Matter of fact, I was treated like garbage twice in a 72-hour period as a paying customer two weeks ago at their Hall of Fame luncheon and again on their Birdland social media night.
So, yes, the Orioles still treat me like trash.
Not a shock.
It’s who they are and what their culture has begat.
It’s why I picked Baltimore to start the tour back on June 14th. I wanted to get it out of the way. This #GiveASpit tour was important to me. I didn’t need distractions or more torture or abuse at the hands of Greg Bader or the Orioles. This tour was always about leukemia awareness, saving lives and trying to have some fun with my love of baseball in a positive way.
That’s been a very, very difficult proposition with the Orioles when your only option to get along with them is to kiss their ass at all times, lie for them whenever you’re commanded to do so and always be subservient to their whims, losses and excuses over the years.
Sadly, the Orioles weren’t a part of our tour. We partnered with the great folks at Sports Legends Museum and swabbed there before the game with the partnership of our friends at Buffalo Wild Wings. And then Jenn and I went to the game and ate hot dogs we bought from vendors on the street and drank some of the beer we might’ve smuggled into Camden Yards.
We also took some funny pictures.
But as you’ll see, many other MLB teams had kindness, awesomeness and professional people at every level who helped us make the 30-30 #GiveASpit tour a success. The pictures alone will lead you on the trail of who treated us with dignity and who made it difficult on us as we traveled the continent.
This story and my journey this summer was, in many ways, the polar opposite of what the Orioles stand for and what they’ve made me believe about the integrity of baseball.
There are a lot of really kind, good, awesome, big-hearted, amazing people involved in Major League Baseball.
You just need to leave Baltimore to find them.
And I did…tons of them.
* * *
You have to be a little eccentric to try to do something few others have ever attempted to do.
The notion of going to 30 ballparks in 30 days has been pretty-well documented.
Will Leitch, who was a founder of Deadspin, has often opined about going to 30 ballparks.
My pal Eric Mueller of Detroit did it.
One dude made a movie.
And I found this guy in Los Angeles, who is from my wife’s hometown of Manchester, N.H., who did it two years ago. He wrote a book about it.
But, needless to say, this is a very short list of folks. It’s not easy, or cheap or particularly sane to do it.
So why did I do this crazy tour?
It’s unique. It’s different. I like challenges. And this bucket list item seemed like a great way to bring awareness to a cause near and dear to our hearts and lives. And when those doctors walked into Jenn’s hospital room 18 months ago and told us she had leukemia, we knew NOTHING about any of this or how it saves lives.
We’d never heard much about leukemia, bone marrow transplants or “perfect matches” – except on dating sites.
Indianapolis Colts head coach Chuck Pagano was the only person in our world who had leukemia and who also was in my phone contacts. We text him about 15 minutes after the doctors left her hospital room. And ten minutes later he was on the phone with us, counseling Jenn on the horrors of what her life was about to become as a leukemia patient.
Chuck Pagano helped us. He cared. He checked in. He gave her confidence and guidance and hope. Not everyone who is diagnosed has the luxury of a survivor in their phone to help with instant, crucial information about the disease and surviving.
And when we took to social media with her diagnosis and the news that she’d need a stranger somewhere on earth with the same DNA traits to save her life – well, we learned how little everyone in our world knew about leukemia and bone marrow transplants.
We had a crash course on all of this while Jenn fought for her life everyday. We want to make sure the next generations who are afflicted have the
