best chance to survive – and the second chance in life that Jenn was given on June 26, 2014.
It was the human kindness that I saw at every level – leading up to this 21-year old man who saved Jenn’s life – that inspired me to want to add as many human beings as possible to the bone marrow registry.
So, much like anything else that I’ve ever done that’s worthwhile, this #GiveASpit tour became more of a calling and a “paying it forward” more than any rational decision. And when that happens, the best things in my life have also seemed to happen on the other side of the outcome.
When I told my wife about the tour and the idea – and she knew I was committed and crazy enough to do it from the outset– she initially thought that I’d be driving all across the country and sleeping in the back of a rental car. I had other “delusions of grandeur” when I thought we could secure some real sponsorship and support for a branded tour bus and a staff.
And when the reality set in – that companies like Southwest Airlines and Under Armour didn’t give a damn about my tour or the bone marrow registry and that some MLB teams were going to be cooperative and others were going to ignore or insult us or obstruct us – I looked for a better way to enjoy every aspect of being on the road for 30 days watching baseball while programming a sports radio station and swabbing as many people as divinely possible along the journey.
I conceived the tour in September 2014. I had nine months to organize all of the travel, itinerary, friends, swabbing, rental cars, hotels and basic hourly planning for all 30 days and most of it was done before Thanksgiving.
As a guy who travels a ton already, the travel planning part of piecing together an itinerary and the flights and hotels and fun diversions is honestly a pleasurable indulgence. I like maps. I like figuring out how to design a trip for maximum fun and minimum aggravation. Plus, I have many friends and favorite places in baseball cities all across the continent.
Place to go, people to see, food to eat. New things to do…
This was truly a labor of love and a mission of wonder.
There was no destination – only a journey.
Every part of what I was trying to achieve began and ended with the ability to swab for the bone marrow registry on behalf of There Goes My Hero and Delete Blood Cancer.
I wrote the same letter to all 30 teams in January.
I told Jenn’s story and gave them the date we would be coming to their ballpark.
I asked for two things from every team – both of them cost the teams nothing more than a little space in a corner for two hours and a little kindness and professionalism.
I asked each MLB team for:
- A table on the concourse the night we were in their ballpark so we could swab folks for There Goes My Hero, Delete Blood Cancer and the bone marrow registry. We also asked if we could have volunteers enter the stadium to help assist at our booth for swabbing.
- A press credential for WNST so we could document our journey, have some access to simple things like electricity, the ability to bring a computer into a stadium and get work done while I was traversing MLB ballparks every night. Maybe we could even talk to a player or two about cancer or leukemia or life?
I spent 21 years around Memorial Stadium and Camden Yards with a media credential. I know a ton of people in the Major League Baseball community despite what Angelos and the Orioles have tried to do to my credibility and career over the past decade.
People who know me know what I’m about.
I sized up all 29 franchises and where I still had friends or acquaintances and started firing off personal letters to anyone who could help us get a table for swabbing inside a MLB stadium.
In Boston, Larry Lucchino and Charles Steinberg stepped up right away just as they had done the previous April when Jenn was fighting for her life. In April 2014, with Jenn’s “survival coach” Michele Bresnick Walsh and her sister Jessica and cousin Marilyn representing her at Fenway Park, the Red Sox made her a “14 JennStrong” jersey that every player on the team held up against the Green Monster to inspire her to live.
In Tampa, my old friend Rick Vaughn (Orioles PR director in our youth) was the first to offer a swabbing table and insisted that Jenn throw out the first pitch at Tropicana Field.
In Cleveland, our old Baltimore pal Mark Shapiro guaranteed that we’d have a table at Progressive Field on the final afternoon of the tour.
So I was off to a good start in the first days of tour planning. Plus, I had a list of another hundreds folks in and around MLB that would at least take a call or an email.
I also knew that I could count on a bunch of
