Those guys would kneel for the National anthem before parting with a dollar.
@Wingnut Not so.
When I still lived in southern California and worked security in between editorial jobs, I was posted
to the gated community where John Lackey lived when he was with the Angels. A small truckload of
neighbours spoke about him donating money to assorted charities, especially involving children. (He's
also fabled in his clubhouses for being the first player to take rookies out to meals and blow them
to new wardrobes, paying it forward because Angels veterans did likewise with him when he first
made the majors.)
Rick Porcello is heavily involved with Team Joseph, a group battling Duschenne muscular dystrophy;
he's given thousands of dollars to the group including the $20,000 he was awarded last year as part
of the Players' Choice Awards to the group. (He also has a relationship with the boy for whom Team
Joseph was named, ever since meeting the stricken kid when he stood up to cheer, somehow,
when Porcello struck out the first batter of a game the kid was able to attend.)
Derek Holland created a leukemia foundation called 60 Feet 6 and donates thousands of his own money
and percentages of merchandise in his name to that and other children's cancer charities.
Those are just on the public record. More baseball players than people think donate dollars and time
for assorted causes without revealing it publicly. (To name only one such case, Ted Williams insisted
his heavy involvement with Boston's Jimmy Fund and the children it took care of be kept quiet after
he once visited a hospitalised child as a favour and was hammered over it in the press by a particularly
nasty critic of his when he never expected anyone in the press to notice he was there.) There's
something to be said about that.
