Talking Sports: Youth baseball tourney brings attention to cancer

My Mom, G-Ma Packer, S. Schroeder, Aunt Cheryl, Dr. Shaw, Aunt Janine, Aunt Char, DaNelle, Grandma Menken, Grandma Mary, Brooke's Mom, My Best Friend, Mom & Kim.

Unfortunately, even many 12-year-olds have known someone who has had breast cancer. That's evident by the above list of names that will be printed on the back of the pink jerseys worn by the Sidney 12U baseball players at this weekend's Wood Bat Tournament in Legion Park. Those names represent people the players know personally.

The tournament is being hosted by the Cheyenne County Community Center and Sidney 12U Baseball. While this tournament served as a fundraiser for the baseball program last year, the event will help two worthy causes in 2015. Besides providing area youth with the funding to keep their baseball program going, it will also raise money for the Sidney Regional Medical Center's Breast Cancer Fund.

"We've had some kids with close family members with breast cancer and it's touched the lives of a lot of people around here," said coach John O'Rourke.

While no gate fee will be charged to those who attend the tournament, the event will raise money through its team entry fees. Additionally, a portion of the money raised from concessions and pink T-shirt sales will also be contributed to SRMC. Donations in any amount will be accepted. Through the entry fees alone, the team has already raised $375.

The wood bat tournament will include six teams, including two from Alliance, a team from Torrington, Wyo. one from Kimball and one from the Sand Hills, Neb., area. The games on Saturday will begin at 9 a.m., 10:45 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2:15 p.m., 4 p.m. and 5:45 p.m. Sidney will play at 9 and 5:45.

Sidney, of course, will wear its pink jerseys made by Shirt Tales and swing their pink bats. Some of the other teams may also show up in pink jerseys. Sidney will make a check presentation to SRMC prior to the start of its 5:45 contest.

On Sunday the tournament will become single elimination with seedings determined by Saturday's results. All the kids will be given a pink wrist band with the top four teams receiving medals.

"The wood bat thing really gets the kids pumped up because they like hearing the crack of the bat just like in the major leagues," O'Rourke said. "And for those who have seen someone have to go through this, it's really meaningful for them."

Sadly enough, the list of names on the back of those pink jersey's will likely continue to grow during their lifetimes. But just maybe that list will be eliminated entirely because they're learning a lesson now that there is something they can do. In fact, the effort is as much about teaching kids to be proactive in tackling a challenge – even one as daunting as helping to eliminate cancer.

"With a number of players on our team having been personally affected by cancer, this seemed like a good opportunity to let the kids learn a few things about group and community," O'Rourke said.

Of course, advancements in the treatment of cancer will not be solved by a single group of community minded youth baseball players. Instead, it's more about the collective efforts of community minded baseball players and citizens all over America and the world.

Years ago when I read David McCullough's book on President John Adams and the part that dealt with his daughter Nabby's battle with breast cancer, I wondered how she would have fared had she lived 200 years later. The most likely answer for Nabby is that she may well have survived well past her father who lived to be 90.

I believe this because when she first noticed a lump on her breast, she had no idea what it was. With all the publicity about breast cancer today, she likely would have been at least suspicious or concerned enough to go straight to the doctor. Her treatment would have been 200 years more advanced as well. Her mastectomy back then was done with the touch of a butcher, not a skilled surgeon.

The publicity and advanced treatment of today must be, in part, a direct result of the many untold millions of dollars that have been raised in small community fundraisers over the centuries. Certainly, mass communications advances and changing mores have helped too.

Of course, huge operations such as the American Cancer Society and Danny Thomas' St. Jude's Hospital raise millions every year. Aside from large donors, they rely, too, on many dollars that come in one at a time. One result of all those dollars that have trickled in one at a time has been the elimination of cancer as an automatic death sentence. I know that from personal experience.

So if you go to the tournament and buy an extra hot dog or donate a dollar at the gate, it's not just a dollar. I'm convinced someone's dollar saved my life and another my sister's life. Someone else's dollar extended by Dad's life by 10 years.

Your dollar will save somebody. Somebody's dollar will be the one to save everybody.