traveling all over the continent to watch baseball games and tying a cool charity awareness piece to the effort.
Many of the wonderful, smart, interesting, colorful people I’ve collected in my life were on display and it was gratifying in so many ways to spend time with folks I really like and watch some baseball.
You go to a ballgame with friends or you wind up making new ones. And if you’re really paying attention to the game, and if others around you are paying attention, you’ll have plenty to discuss because the game itself is interesting. And when the game is over and all you have is a ticket stub or a program from a baseball game the part you’ll definitely remember is the company you kept at the game and the memories you shared that day.
It was a trip of a lifetime, for sure.
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8
“THROW ‘EM THE HEATER, JENN,” I screamed at my wife from he first base side of Tropicana Field as she headed to the mound to throw out the ceremonial first pitch before the Rays hosted the Blue Jays on Day 10.
Twelve years of marriage and I had never seen my wife throw a baseball. Unbeknownst to me, she had a co-worker with two gloves and a ball warm her up in her parking lot in early June before the tour started. She was a little nervous but remained calm and delivered a pretty fantastic first pitch.
Here’s the whole story:
So, what’s my wife doing on the field in St. Petersburg about to throw out the first pitch in the hollow dome?
I’ve known Rick Vaughn, who is the Tampa Bay Rays VP of Communications, since I was Ken Rosenthal’s coffee fetcher at The Evening Sun in 1986. He was among the first people I reached to for advice on how to execute the MLB tour. He immediately loved what we were doing and insisted that Jenn throw out the first pitch.
Jenn’s mom and stepfather live nearby in Sarasota and had a chance to witness her shining moment from the field. They’re in the video above.
8A year earlier, on June 22, 2014, Jenn was nervously walking the floors of our condo – bald, frail, fretting that she might be losing her donor if her liver numbers didn’t improve after all of the chemotherapy. Now, 52 weeks later, she was sporting a Barbra Streisand 1976 ‘fro and throwing out the first pitch in Florida to Rays pitcher Andrew Bellatti, who has also dealt with some serious setbacks and heartache on his journey.
We drank beer, ate chicken tenders and our friend even got drilled by a foul ball that became a souvenir with a sore forearm. Jenn got to feed and pet the real rays swimming in the outfield later in the night. Jenn likes animals. This was a really big deal.
But before any of the fun and memories and revelry, we set out to save some more lives at the Tampa Bay Rays game with our swabbing booth on the concourse before the game.
The main reason we reached to every team for months in advance wasn’t to be honored or feted but to get a table space so we could swab for the bone marrow registry and then use the local media to promote that we’d be at the game that night with a way to activate folks to come the ballpark and help us save lives.
8Our goals were clear:
Tell our story.
Educate folks about the bone marrow registry and blood cancers.
Encourage folks to get on the registry and spread the word.
And swab as many people as we can.
Simple as that.
It was our goal to have a table in all 30 ballparks. Clearly, we knew the Orioles would never grant us space so, in reality, I was lowering my bar to the remaining 29 MLB teams – plus Cooperstown.
8In the end, only 11 teams allowed us a table with swabbing privileges. Two permitted us an information table with no swabbing allowed.
And nineteen Major League Baseball teams said “no” to allowing us a table or swabbing for 90 minutes before their games.
Several did come back with incredibly kind gestures, tickets, hospitality or access. Some allowed us a press credential. Many denied us both. Some didn’t even respond to the requests at all. A few team executives sent emails that I felt were borderline demeaning. One set of awful people actually met me at the door in Washington, D.C., to make sure I didn’t get in.
But in Tampa and ten other places, we were treated with incredible respect, love and awesomeness.
We arrived at The Trop at 4 p.m. and started setting up an information table and all aspects of a swabbing station to prepare for fans to be educated. Our goal is to administer a simple 30-second procedure that involves two cotton swabs – one scraping the inside of each cheek – and some vital contact information that would allow our friends at Delete Blood Cancer to find the donor if someone’s life was on the line.
Last year, that life was the one of my wife Jennifer.
It literally takes 30 seconds to get on the bone marrow registry.
8Traveling the country for 30 days I can definitely tell you this – most people don’t even know what it is.
And it saved Jenn’s life last June 26th. So, this summer we got out on the road and rolled our sleeves up and got hundreds of folks onto the bone marrow registry all over the country on our 30-30 MLB #GiveASpit Tour.
As you can see there are “heroes” and lifesavers that come in every uniform you can imagine. We met every single one of these awesome folks as they showed that they #GiveASpit about leukemia patients and folks in need all over the world.
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8* * *
THE NOTION OF HOW MANY HUMAN beings factored into saving the wife of my life keeps me awake at night. Her donor was swabbed somewhere in Germany five years ago at a booth similar to what we’ve done at Ravens shows last fall and what we did all summer in every MLB stadium where they allowed us access.
Early last spring he received a letter saying he might be a match. He gave blood. He came back to the hospital several times. He only knew that it was a woman in the United States whose life was in jeopardy and that he could save her life. He was literally a “one in a million” perfect DNA match for Jenn – a “genetic twin” as he wrote in his letter.
8Then there’s the sheer volume of the doctors, technicians, the drivers of the blood cells in Europe, the pilot who flew the bag of blood across the Atlantic Ocean, the couriers here who delivered it to Johns Hopkins, the technicians who administered all of the testing and then the nurses who set up a bag of blood and saved her life on June 26, 2014 while Elton John blared in the room.
Hundreds of people were involved in handling paperwork, insurance, devices, tests, pills, needles, drugs, poisonous chemotherapy, radiation, serving her food in the hospital, keeping her room clean and safe and germ-free for months while she battled.
And then there are the
