A Friend of Baseballisms, Rickey Scarbrough, is the founder of Maggie’s Hope.  The Mission of Maggie’s Hope is to reach out to families who might be in need of funding for unfunded co-pays, alternative treatments and access to special dietary solutions. He hosted a special Autism Awareness Day at Turner Field, and was so kind to share his story with us. You can keep up with his efforts via Twitter or Facebook.

Thanks for sharing Rickey!

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Sunday morning, 29 August 2010, 0900, we pulled the truck into a spot located near the front of the Green Parking Lot at Turner Field, Atlanta Georgia. I kill the engine and glance over my shoulder pausing, if only for a brief moment. “Let’s do it” I say with guarded confidence. Our team springs into action. Gathering our gear I give a nod to my First Mate and Daughter Mia E Scarbrough. Her eyes tell me everything I need to know. Good to go. Her journey to this point in life has been no picnic. Maggie gets a lot of press, and is the face of our organization. Maggie’s therapy, diet, IEP, supplementation, meltdowns and recovery are forever walking point at Scarbrough Headquarters {HQ}. Mia is the un-sung hero, quietly living her life, loving her sister and excelling at everything she tries, all with the compassion and grace far beyond her nine years. I am proud to have her at my side and together we will bring our message to the masses preparing to enjoy our nation’s pastime.

For today’s mission we have secured the assistance of my assistant and first cousin Jennifer W Garten and her husband Stephen. Decked out in their Maggie’s Hope Battle Dress Uniforms {BDU}, they set up position at my flank and gather our essential gear. Ballpoint pen, check. Maggie’s Hope flyer, check. Info Sheet, check, grub {granola bar, plain}, check. Embarking on their first mission {greener} they have yet to develop the thousand yard stare, but do not let that fool you. Their commitment is mission critical and having walked in formation at the Atlantic Station sortie two years in a row they are no stranger to our movement.

Our contact intercepts us at the rendezvous point and lays out the logistics of today’s activities. Thankfully they special ordered overcast weather, nothing like preaching Autism Activism while dancing around to keep the souls of your shoes from melting in place. A small chance of precipitation does not dampen our  spirit and we go about arming the booth and establishing a perimeter. I scout the immediate area and recognize our allies. Odd that the bigger Autism organizations opted out, no matter we have a small but committed contingency. Making my way from position to position I catch up with old friends and sign on some new ones. I am honored to stand among you.

The line to enter the field wraps up three levels and represents every point of the spectrum. How many variations of Autism are represented? Laugh out Loud {you all know that one}. Take a snowflake, magnify it under an electron microscope, count the corners and points, multiply that by 947 and there you have it. Not even close. You would have a better shot of naming each star in the universe. Not just our universe but all that exist, have existed, or will exist in the future. I was witness to one ten year old boy, a Maggie’s Hope candidate, who experiences both epilepsy and autism, walk with his mother and grandmother. His eyes wide, head high and step by step we marched along the warning track. It was his first baseball game, but not his last. I will be there when he takes the field this fall for his special needs team.

The Atlanta Braves must have known that you NEVER give up while fighting through adversity. They trailed the Florida Marlins the entire game. With many fans sitting in their cars beating the traffic America’s Team fought on. As a kid I never saw the end of any sporting event, professional or otherwise. Gotta beat the traffic was my Dad’s mantra. Brian McCann delivered a bottom of the ninth homerun to win it for the home team. Even victory had to wait; the umpires initially called it a double. Yet another classic case of “misdiagnosis”.

I think our kids are a lot like the game we witnessed that Sunday. Fighting an uphill battle, to a dwindling audience, achieving the unthinkable, only to be initially told that it does not count. Better check that re-play booth again ump, unlike Mr. McCann our kids hit a homer every day simply by living and recovering.

Is anyone there to watch it?

~Rickey Scarbrough

Baseball Fan Jen Errigo’s Twitter submissions to Baseballisms.com reprinted with permission. Baseball is a generational game, many times a passion that is passed from family member to family member.  We thank Jen for sharing her first visit to Yankee Stadium and how her rooting interest was stoked at an early age ….

Do you have a story like Jen’s?  We invited you to share how your passion for baseball got started … Send a Tweet to @baseballisms with a quick message, send us an email or visit our Upload page with a video message.  We look forward to continuing to grow a community of fans interested in Wisdom from the Diamond!

While sailing the Caribbean aboard the cruise ship Adventure of the Seas, a baseball fan named Mike Walter decided to open up about the influential moment in his life when he became a fan of the New York Mets.   At the first stately dinner gathering, everyone around the table introduced themselves and of course their favorite baseball team including Red Sox, Cardinals, Braves and Mike and his Mets. Each night at dinner, and every other moment spent relaxing, the topic of conversation was baseball ….

Thanks to Mike for his submission.  We hope you enjoy his baseball story.

We would love to hear from you. Send a Tweet to @baseballisms with a quick message, send us an email or visit our Upload page with a video message.  We look forward to growing a community of fans interested in the poetry of the game of baseball!

Sue Macy’s submission to Baseballisms.com reprinted with permission.  Note – Sue Macy mentioned Annabelle Lee during the recording of our Cover the Bases podcast discussing her book A Whole New Ball Game: The Story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.  When I watched the documentary Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey on the MLB Network, and saw Annabelle prominently featured discussing her nephew Bill, I reached out to Sue.  Here is her response:

“Annabelle died in the summer of 2008, which just happened to be when I got a new cat. I named her Annabelle Lee. She’s not a lefty as far as I can tell, but she definitely has Annabelle’s spunk.”

Thanks Sue!  A great tale from a true baseball fan …

Sorry our Red Sox Nation didn’t make it to the finals, and maybe with Manny we might have. But I think it is a tribute to the organization that it cared enough about the morale of the team that it was willing to give up a man who obviously caused problems so that the remaining players would have peace of mind.

A personal example of that same kind of class follows.

My niece who now lives in San Diego but whose heart is in Red Sox Nation contracted cancer and has had a difficult time. I felt so helpless wanting to do something and not knowing what I could do. I decided to send an email to her passion, the Red Sox team, stating her love for the team and her situation and hoped that perhaps some token might be sent.

A man named Phil immediately responded wishing her well and saying something would be sent. I hoped maybe for a picture. Not only did a picture arrive but also a little packet containing soil from the Fenway Park infield. She was overjoyed.

October has always been the time that she made her trip to Boston to visit her family and share with them the joys of October. Between chemo sessions, the doctor gave permission for her to go back for a few days. She wanted to, even knowing the risks. She is back now. Wish we were in the series….but what about that 8-7 game! Class act all the way.

Maggie

It’s been stated before, but bears repeating … Baseball is a pastime that bridges generations.

Dads pass the passion on to sons, brothers pretend to be their favorite stars as they play games in the backyard dreaming of a future in “the show” ….. and daughters are born into families where the hometown team acts as a continuum upon which stories are hung.

It is difficult to pinpoint one definitive Baseballism in a person’s life simply because the game can be experienced through the unique perspectives of the various stages of the life.

In this particular case it is sifting through the stories of youth, young adulthood, to business executive .. to reaching the conclusion that the ultimate Baseballism resides in Fatherhood.

We don’t want you to try to limit your submissions to just one all encompassing post .. If you have more than one baseball story to tell, we want you to share them!  If you’d like to submit a Baseballism, please visit our Upload page.  We look forward to receiving it!

I just completed writing a post about taking my two year-old daughter to her very first major league baseball game. Throughout the course of that day I was taking video and documenting the entire experience for presentation here at Baseballisms.com. The entire purpose of this site is to be a niche, video version of Story Corps, capturing personal anecdotes about baseball for posterity sake. How wonderful I thought, capturing and sharing this video with Baseballisms viewers about my little girl’s first game and ultimately her progression into a lifelong fan of baseball, including my influence on that passion.

As I logged the video and started my initial edits to the segments, I started to have nagging questions in the back of my mind. Should I be putting this out there? Am I supposed to be exposing my little girl online like this? Does this constitute exploiting my daughter for the sake of traffic? My mind started down paths that I just didn’t want to go in this era of transparency on line.

I know that the site doesn’t get huge volumes of traffic yet, and the potential of the video taking off virally would be slight, but I do post all of Baseballisms’ videos on numerous video services and get decent viewer numbers. I have also had comments from strangers appear on our home videos posted on You Tube that have made me consider turning them into “private” postings. I wasn’t sure that I could wholeheartedly convince myself, and my wife, that this was appropriate yet. I have no problem putting myself out there, and love developing an entertainment brand where a community can exchange video experiences, but I just wasn’t sure about inserting my own daughter into the community.

So I decided to seek out people on line who I respect, to hear what opinions they might have, especially @samharrelson and @jimkukral who themselves have had their kids in videos that I have seen. In all cases the response was the same, everyone recognizes my uneasy feeling and understands this dilemma in exposing ourselves and our families in this online video age. It’s a hard decision, but one that ultimately comes down to each individual’s comfort level with exposure outside the previous boundaries of privacy, family and dare I say safety.

Taking all of the input into account, without a single definitive “post the video” .. plus considering any hesitancy probably meant that I shouldn’t post it …. I decided I was not ready to put my daughter’s video post out into the public realm at this time.

I want to emphatically point out that in no way do I have a specific lack of trust for anyone who checks out the Baseballisms.com site, in fact we have started to develop some great online friendships around the community. I’m sure that everyone here already has a sense of my family and how we live our lives. I am more concerned about the spread of a video with a cute, two year old little girl who graciously high-fives anyone who smiles at her .. and what the end result of that might be.

I will continue to twitter and post about what we are doing as a family, going to the park, attending festivals & ballgames ….. and later this summer having another baby! …. but it was simply the video component that held me back.

Do you think I made the correct choice?

Thanks for understanding.

During the Memorial Day Holiday weekend, while my wife was still on her expedition to Europe with a group of students, my 2 – year old and I were able to share some serious Father / Daughter time. I was trying to decide what to do on Sunday, and came up with the idea that we would go see her first MLB game!

Here in Atlanta there are still plenty of inexpensive walk up tickets available at Turner Field, and I knew that a sunny Sunday afternoon at the ballpark would be a perfect time for her to have a new experience, while I could catch the Arizona Diamondbacks .. a leading contender for the NL pennant this year.

In preparation for attending the game, I wanted her to have some good gear including a t-shirt and a hat, so we went to a couple of area retailers, striking out on the hat but picking up a number 10 Braves jersey with “Jones” on the back. Of course I had to teach her to say “Yay Chipper!” so that she could cheer on her now favorite player.

She is also a BIG fan of stickers of any kind .. and I figured I’d pick up a pack somewhere so she could wear the tomahawks on her face (getting airbrushed would be a little too much for her to take right now) .. but unfortunately I couldn’t find them at anywhere!!

Sunday morning broke with bright sunshine and the slightest hint of summertime heat right around the corner. Since this was to be a very special occasion, I served her favorite breakfast of waffles and maple syrup, packed up a nice lunchtime meal, extra water, sunscreen and a change of clothes (just in case). I knew I wanted to get there early to avoid the rush of crowds, and I also wanted to visit the kid’s area of the ballpark called “Tooner Field”.

We were both pretty disappointed in the Tooner Field experience for her age group, mostly it was just graphics projected on the walls with some pretend interaction. There was a big covered slide in the middle of the room and a field in the back for a mini game of baseball, but that was for much older kids. Even though she was excited as we waited in line to get in, watching the other kids and asking about the cartoon drawings on the walls, once inside she looked around with her big wide blue eyes and had no intention of leaving my arms. That being said I decided to head up to our seats in advance of game time.

I purchased seats along the third base line in the upper deck because I knew that this was the shaded side of the field where we would be more comfortable. The actual tickets were for Section 410 Row 2 Seat 105. The key there being Row 2 — which was too close to the railing for my comfort of carrying her up and down the stairs as necessary (a fan fell from there a few nights earlier) — as well as the fact that the roof wasn’t shading us during the early portion of the afternoon. The good news was we could move up higher in the stands into some empty seats, the bad (and unpredictable) news was that there are some MAJOR sound effects that blast out of the speakers at stadiums now! Gone are the days of Sherm Feller at the P.A. and John Kiley on the organ as the only required additional sounds at Fenway Park ….. I am dating myself. There were times during the pre-game introductions that I covered up her little two year old ears to prevent potential loss of hearing in the future.

One other factor that I never considered was the problem of the folding seats and too little weight to keep them in place. I never intended to have her sit in my lap during the game, but as she sat back to get comfortable for lunch, the poor little thing got folded right in on! I had to either hold on to the seat, put my leg across it, or just sit her on my lap – it made for less than comfortable seating. We managed to get in our lunch that way, including a few enthusiastic bites of my hot dog since we were at a ballgame after all (sorry mom).

At the start of game time I identified to her that she was going to see future Hall of Famer Tom Glavine pitch for the Braves, but I also realized and kept a secret that Chipper Jones was not going to be starting that day. I’m sure she was deeply disappointed.

As Arizona’s Chris Young took Glavine deep for a homerun in the first at bat of the game, I had a little sleepy one cradled in my arms. It turned out she never actually did fall asleep for a nap since there was so much excitement going on — everything from the cotton candy and frozen lemonade vendors with their brightly colored products to the action on the field. The field action that caught her attention and truly the only thing she could identify with was the players running … “run, run, run”, … so no matter if they were running out a hit, running out a groundout, or simply coming off the field at the end of an inning, this was what she liked!

The crowd filled in all around us as attendance was announced at 35,628 on the day. We had a three generation family directly in front of us including a newborn baby in a carseat, and a family behind us featuring a know-it-all dad trying to impress his 15 year old daughter (oh how I do not want to be like that guy!). You have to admit that a day at the ballpark can be a pleasurable experience for a family, and they do try to make it entertaining beyond the baseball with the t-shirt cannons, jumbotron features between innings, and in-park amenities.

However, there was only so much sitting & watching the game that a 2 year-old was going to take, and I had resigned myself going in that we would make it about halfway through the game and then we would explore the rest of the stadium. Since the game was already 6 – 3 Diamondbacks, it was time to venture forth.

In the upper left field corner of the stadium is Sky Field, which I believe is the most ingenious family friendly feature built into the ballpark. She loved two key components of this area — the misting tunnel & running the basepath. I can still hear the little giggles I was able to invoke by carrying her through the misting tunnel and especially holding her up close to the sprinkler head for a good blast of cooling mist in her face. She made us walk through there numerous times! We also made it to the basepath area at a perfect moment since there wasn’t a huge line of kids ready to run, but developed a little later on. I placed her down at the “home plate” end of the baseline and pointed her towards the female worker on the other end … she’s a runner alright, and loves to run around the house and out in the yard so this wasn’t too challenging for her. She laughed the whole way as she started and stopped down the line, and even looked over at some ladies sitting on the sidelines cheering her on. She got to the end, considered going back, but was more interested in another trip through the mister!

It was time to start making our way towards the exits but we made one more stop in the gift shop hoping to find her some stickers. No luck, but she did come across a set of soft “nerf” balls with the Braves logos on them that she had to have – not too bad really considering she could have been all over the much more expensive stuffed animals. We couldn’t get out of the stadium without tossing a ball around, so we spent a bunch of time in the concourse area playing catch and attracting some great compliments from onlookers commenting on her throwing arm, to her cuteness, to one slightly inebriated dude who I overheard tell his buddy “that’s why he ‘wanted one’”, and came over to give her a high-five!

Time to go, as we chugged some more water and she looked at me asking “whistle?” … which turned out to be one of the police officers directing traffic who must have caught her eye as we had come in earlier in the day. As I strapped her into her car seat and blasted the a/c to cool down the car .. she turned into a zombie staring off into space, and was slumped over asleep before even getting to the street.

In the end, the Braves lost to Arizona 9 – 3 powered by an Eric Byrnes grand slam. Glavine got the loss, Chipper sat out the game due to back spasms, but none of that really mattered. I had taken my two year old daughter to her first major league baseball game. Doris Kearns Goodwin credits her life long baseball passion to her dad, sharing time together and even teaching her the art of scoring a ballgame. My ideal is that as she gets older we will rely less and less on the entertainment aspects of the ballpark and more on the game itself. It will be a beautiful experience to see the game through her eyes as she adopts favorite players and recounts aspects of the game that I may have overlooked. We can ride home in the car excitedly chatting about the team, and the game, and the prospects for this year’s shot at the World Series crown while looking forward to the next time we get to attend a game.

Come to think about it, Let’s go right now!

When Olympic white water kayaker Joe Jacobi walked his gold medal around the track of Turner Field at the closing ceremonies in 1996, little did he realize he would return to the scene in 2008 to discuss his dad’s passion for baseball coming back to Washington DC.

Joe describes himself as part of the lost generation of baseball fans in Washington DC, who came along too late for the Senators, so ended up following the Baltimore Orioles simply from a geographic standpoint. However, it was a proud day to be at the ballpark with his Dad to see the return of the “red hats with the white W” take the field.

You will be able to catch more from Joe this summer on NBC as he provides his insights into the world of white water kayaking and canoeing during coverage of the Olympics from Beijing.

In this baseballism, Scott tells the story of taking his Canadien grandfather to see his first baseball game in person. It’s 1978 during the late stages of The Big Red Machine, and as the game proceeds, it’s starting to become apparent that something special might be happening.

How special is a memory like this? It is now 30 years later and Scott can still picture where he sat in Riverfront Stadium, while spending a day explaining the intricacies of baseball to his “rookie” granddad.