July 24, 2007
Little Leaguers take their swings for Jimmy
Back in the 1950s, Little Leaguers marched for the Jimmy Fund.
When hitters drive balls off the Green Monster at Boston's Fenway Park, fans watching from the stands or on TV often get a quick glimpse at the Jimmy Fund logo emblazoned on the famous left-field wall. It features a smiling, uniformed athlete of Little League age, presumably back in the game after finishing cancer treatment.
The Jimmy Fund logo on Fenway's Green Monster shows a Little Leaguer "back in the game" after cancer treatment.
A pleasing image, it's also an entirely appropriate one. For the past 20 years, children have been helping support research and treatment at Dana-Farber by joining in the Jimmy Fund Little League Program. This summer nearly 4,000 young baseball and softball players participating in summer leagues and tournaments throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire will be trying to strike out cancer along with their opponents. By hosting bake sales and car washes, writing letters and e-mails to family and friends, and other means, grade-schoolers have raised more than $2.1 million for Dana-Farber since the program's 1987 inception — including a record $250,000 last year alone.
"The kids understand they're playing in these tournaments not to win games, but to win for the Jimmy Fund," says George Berardi, head of the Little League Program throughout its run. "Every kid on every team gets a Jimmy Fund canister and cap, and as you go around communities, you see them standing in front of supermarkets and going door-to-door in their uniforms asking for contributions."
Since the first Jimmy Fund drive in 1948, Little Leaguers have done their part for the charity.
The program was the brainchild of Rico Petrocelli, a former double-play partner of Jimmy Fund Chairman Mike Andrews on the Boston Red Sox teams of the 1960s. Later involved as head of the charity's sports programs, Petrocelli thought it would be a good idea if healthy kids could do something to help those who were not as lucky. He and Andrews approached Berardi, then (and now) director for the Massachusetts Little League Association, and things took off from there.
"We started out with four regional districts and raised about $7,000 that first year," says Berardi, "but it quickly grew." Originally just for 9- and 10-year-old players, the effort has since expanded due to popularity to include 11- and 12-year-olds and softball teams. There are now 13 Little League districts in Massachusetts taking part, and the 82-years-young director is determined to expand the program into more of New Hampshire and other New England states.
The 2006 Ipswitch team, including top fundraiser Sean Whooley (third from left, bottom row) collected $20,000 for Dana-Farber.
Winning off the field
Support for Dana-Farber from this contingent is nothing new. Ever since the May 1948 radio broadcast of a visit by Boston Braves baseball players to a young cancer patient's bedside launched the Jimmy Fund, generations of Little Leaguers have passed around canisters and marched in parades for the charity. Many towns now have a number of teams in different age groups playing for Dana- Farber. Besides helping the cancer fight, there is an additional incentive for these young fundraisers. Each year the top-earning teams in each district are invited to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game, while the second-place finishers (and all teams raising more than $5,000) attend a Pawtucket Red Sox minor league contest.
"We decided as a league that even in the years we did not win many games, we could always do one thing well — raise money for the Jimmy Fund," says Ipswich Little League President Kevin Whooley. He and fellow coach Doug Law's 2004-6 teams collected a combined $48,000, and among the players getting in on the act were Whooley's own sons Sean and Connor. They were the district's top individual fundraisers in 2005 and 2004 respectively, when they and their teammates regularly tried to one-up each other in dollars raised rather than home runs hit.
"We had a chart that showed how much money we had collected, and each practice we calculated who was ahead," says Sean, who tallied more than $4,000 as a 9-year-old. Big brother Connor, who notched a similar amount at age 10, states that "Even though our team did not do so well in the tournament, it felt good that we were helping kids who weren't as fortunate as us."
Sometimes the benefits of the program really hit close to home. Keith Agostino, a second baseman on his Arlington Little League squad, had surgery at Children's Hospital Boston to remove a tumor in his brain stem in 1999.
Tests at Dana-Farber determined the growth was not cancerous, but the tumor crushed his optic nerve and left him with vision loss in his left eye. He switched from batting right- to left-handed, and two years later at age 10 raised more than $4,000 while playing on one of his town's first Jimmy Fund squads.
Speaking at a Fenway Park dinner honoring players and coaches for their efforts, he told the crowd, "I was very glad when I was asked to play for the Jimmy Fund team this summer, because if it turned out that I had cancer, you would be playing for me."
For more information on the Jimmy Fund Little League Program, or to make a gift to a team, go to http://www.jimmyfund.org/little-league.
By Saul Wisnia
Softball teams also compete in Jimmy Fund tournaments; here a squad celebrates their success at Fenway Park.
(Steve Gilbert photo)
