American Heart Association Fundraiser Gives You Chance to Live Out Your Baseball Dream While Helping Others Live Out Their Life

You love baseball. I mean, you LOVE baseball. You play catch with a buddy when you’re having a beer. You still play in a league. (Ok, maybe it’s softball now because the years have started to add up on you, but still.) You follow the Phillies religiously. Hell, you even watch a few innings of a Little League game when you walk by one and you don’t know a single kid on either team.

So, what if I told you that you can have your dream come true? You know which dream. You dig your back foot into the ground at home plate at Citizens Bank Park, cocking a bat above your shoulder just like Howard and Utley and Rollins.  A pitch is delivered. Your lumber meets leather with a crack.  You hit in a major league ballpark.

That would be the greatest thing in the world, right?*

Wrong.

There's nothing better than swinging lumber in an MLB park.

It gets better.

You can fulfill that dream and help people live at the same time. A great moment in your life will give life to others.

On May 6 & 7, the American Heart Association will hold their 16^th Annual Richie Ashburn Home Runs for Heart fundraiser on the field at Citizens Bank Park.  This incredible event ($400 per individual and $1,500 per team of four) is a must-do for any baseball fan, allows participants the opportunity to swing at ten pitches from  home plate, win prizes—and bragging rights—for best hitting performances, and shag fly balls in the outfield.  

Sure, the Phanatic bounces around, there are tours of the ballpark and the Phillies ball girls will be there, but this is about hitting and fielding where the big boys hit and field. This is the dream of every one of you who, like me, keeps a baseball glove in your car.

And those people you’ll be helping? Those aren’t faceless, nameless statistics. They aren’t even the overweight, middle-aged guys you’re thinking of when you think of heart attacks. It’s a guy like Derek Fitzgerald, a local guy I had the pleasure of learning about last Wednesday at this year’s Media Day who was active and healthy and still needed a heart transplant when he was 30 years old due to a heart condition. And thanks to the procedures and care made possible by the American Heart Association, he’s running road races and gearing up for an Iron Man competition this fall.  When we help guys like Derek, we’re helping ourselves.

Take it from me, hitting and fielding in major league ballpark is every bit as great as you always thought it would be. I’ve been fortunate enough to participate in Home Runs for Heart’s Media Day for several years now and stepping between those chalk lines never fails to overwhelm me. Back in 2008, which seems like a lifetime ago, I was named “Best Hitting Print Journalist” in Philly. Even though I haven’t had a sniff of that title since, I still clear my schedule a year in advance to hear my name announced over the PA system, to knock a few balls into left field, and to trot on that spongy, perfect outfield grass and feel a fly ball pop into my glove.

So come out to the Richie Ashburn Home Runs for Heart fundraiser. Better yet, put a team of your buddies together and have the time of your life.

You’ll be adding time to the life of others like Derek.

Oh, and don’t worry about that line about your lumber meeting leather with a crack. The ting of aluminum is acceptable as well.

Details: To learn more or to sign up, go to heart.org/phillywalk or call 215-575-5218.

*Your wedding day and the birth of your child/children are the greatest non-baseball things you’ll ever experience of course. Hi darling!

(This story also ran in the Center City Weekly Press.)

Cole & Heidi Hamels Named Philadelphia Sports Writers Association Humanitarians of the Year

Photo provided by the Hamels Foundation

Twenty-four inches long by six inches wide. That’s the length and width of the rubber on a major league pitchers’ mound. And from this small space, Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels can do great things. With his left foot pushing off that small rectangle during his delivery, he can be the Most Valuable Player of the 2008 World Series, baffling the lineup of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.  Or he can be the shining gem of this past, otherwise dismal, Phillies season, winning a career high 17 games and striking out 216 batters.

But the great things Hamels does from this tiny space have an impact felt far beyond the sixty feet, six inches—the distance from the rubber to home plate—where his foes face him. The impact doesn’t end there with the thump his fastball makes in a catcher’s mitt. It reaches the schools of Philadelphia and Malawi, Africa and the playgrounds of Turkmenistan and beyond.

Hamels, along with his wife, Heidi, have used the notoriety and money that have come from his pitching success to start the Hamels Foundation, a charity devoted to enriching the lives of children and giving them the tools to achieve their goals.

And for this, the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association (PSWA)—the oldest organization of its kind in the United States, and of which I am a member—have named the Hamels their 2013 Humanitarians of the Year. 

The Hamels will be recognized at the PSWA 109^th Annual Awards Dinner January 28 at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

According to Hamels Foundation Director of Operations, GN Kang, the Hamels Foundation, created in 2008, has donated over $660,000 to over 20 Philadelphia public schools. (You may have heard how the School District of Philadelphia has recently proposed closing three schools that have received over $400,000 worth of playground and library equipment donated by the Hamels Foundation.) They will also have donated-- by the end of this year-- over 1.8 million dollars to improve education worldwide, including the building of a school in Malawi, Africa, a country where HIV/AIDS have left a million children orphaned an living in extreme poverty. The school is expected to be finished in 2015. 

Along with tending to the education of children worldwide, the Hamels Foundation is also devoted to helping children…well…enjoy childhood. In Turkmenistan (formerly part of the Soviet Union) the Hamels Foundation has donated to a Peace Corps volunteer who had written to them enough equipment and uniforms for two whole youth baseball teams for both boys and girls.

Those of us who have been fortunate enough to attend decent schools and live healthy lives can only imagine the good the Hamels and the Hamels Foundation are doing for the tiny minds and hearts of schoolchildren everywhere they have touched.

But it shouldn’t be hard to imagine that the good is coming from Cole Hamels and his team. After all, he’s used to doing great things in small places.

*To learn more about the Hamels Foundation, visit TheHamelsFoundation.org. To learn more about the 109^th Annual Philadelphia Sports Writers Association Dinner January 28-including a list of this year’s award winners and ticket information (tix are $95.00), visit PSWADinner.com.

* Here's a list of athletes/sports people who will be there:

Mike Trout Los Angeles Angels centerfielder

Larry Bowa former Phillis shortstop and manager

Todd Herremans Eagles offensive lineman

Carli Llyod Women's US Olympic Soccer team

Heather Mitts Women's U.S. Olympic Soccer team

Charlie Manuel  Phillies Manager

Jimmy Rollins Phillies Shortstop

Speedy Morris college/high school basketball coaching legend

Danny Garcia Boxing champ

Ruben Amaro Jr. GM of the Phillies

Tommy Green  Former Phillie

Elena Delle Donne University of Delaware basketball

Keenan Reynolds Annapolis (Navy) quarterback MVP of Army/Navy game
Ed Snider Chairman of Comcast Spectacor which owns the Flyers