The Dominican Republic is home to the Oakland Athletics training facility named after Hall of Fame pitcher Juan Marichal. Pick any corner of this country and you will see people playing baseball. An old broomstick is a bat; a ball is made of rags and string, and a short stop fields line drives with bare hands. But judging by the smiles on the faces of its players, homespun sporting goods do not take away from their love for the game. If you look a round the same town in that Caribbean island nation, you will also see people struggling just to get by. For a Dominican who needs a wheelchair but cannot aff o rd one, this struggle is almost impossible.
For many people in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispañola with Haiti, baseball is one of the simple joys that helps them cope with the burdens of poverty. One of the nation’s largest resources is its pool of talented, hardworking baseball players. The best of these players will make it to the major leagues and earn a salary they could only have dreamed about when they were fielding with bare hands. The Oakland Athletics Community Fund purchased 2,500 wheelchairs for the people of the Dominican Republic and share good fortune with the hometowns that need their help so much.
In November of 2000, the Oakland A’s teamed up with the Wheelchair Foundation to bring hope, mobility and fre edom to the Dominican Republic’s most vulnerable citizens by delivering these 2,500 wheelchairs. The two groups, in partnership with 80 local organizations, presented and distributed wheelchairs to needy people at the A’s Dominican training facility in La Victoria. Team President Michael Crowley, Wheelchair Foundation founder Ken Behring, along with A’s standout short stop Miguel Tejada were on hand for the presentation ceremony. Also appearing were Rosa Mejia, the First Lady of the Dominican Republic, Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez and Charles Manatt, United States Ambassador to the Dominican Republic. “The A’s have enjoyed a long relationship with the wonderful people of the Dominican Republic, both on and off the field,” said team President Michael Crowley. “The Wheelchair Foundation gives people a new sense of hope, dignity and independence.
The A’s organization is pleased to share Ken Behring’s vision in this act of pure humanity. ”
The A’s and the Wheelchair Foundation also made a second presentation on Friday, November 10th in Bani, the hometown of Miguel Tejada, who tenderly lifted his neighbors and seated them in new wheelchairs. A player with a long track record of giving back to the community, Tejada was particularly moved by this act of compassion. “A lot of people here need wheelchairs,” he explained. “I hear one of the ladies say ‘that wheelchair is my life’ and my heart just fills up.”
For every person who received a wheelchair there is a story that shows just how the gift of mobility changes a life for the better. For the 26 year-old daughter of a groundskeeper at the A’s baseball academy who had spent the last 13 years of her life in her bed, a wheelchair allowed her to come out into the warm, tropical sunlight. A young man from Bani who was struck by polio as a child was most happy to receive a wheelchair because it would allow him to go to church with the rest of his family. Perhaps the most powerful image of the whole week took place at one of the practice fields at the A’s baseball academy, where young men in wheelchairs played a spontaneous game of pick-up baseball, batting with their free hands and speeding around the bases with newfound freedom. There are many challenges facing the Dominican Republic, and the Oakland A’s a re committed to helping its people face them. Through its partnership with the Wheelchair Foundation, the A’s have helped give Dominicans with disabilities access to the most basic right of mobility and even the simplest pleasure of a game of baseball on a warm afternoon.
Please go to our website www.wheelchairfoundation.org/sponsors.html to watch the video “True Heroes” that tells the story of the Oakland Athletics gift to the people of the Dominican Republic.
http://www.wheelchairfoundation.org/pdf/newsletters/newsletter_1.pdf
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