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Via the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Make-a-Wish Foundation, a young cancer patient gets to play catch with Andrew McCutchen. This is what baseball is for.
As a former cancer patient who spends a lot of time in oncologists' offices waiting rooms before follow-up exams, I can attest the hardest thing about such occasions is not whatever invasive, uncomfortable test the doctors might subject me to, but seeing the children. You might think about children with serious illnesses abstractly, say, "Aw, so sad," and then forget about it, but when they're right in front of you, some with bandages from recent surgeries, and nonetheless playing as children do, you can't just push it aside. You know how fragile and transient such moments must be, and that however unfairly biology has treated you, at least you're an adult who has lived something like a full life. These kids might not get there, and if they do, it's not going to be the same trip as it was for any of us fortunate enough to be healthy into adulthood.
On Tuesday, 12-year-old Matthew Beichner, who has brain cancer, got to spend a day at PNC park thanks to the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Make-a-Wish Foundation. He spent some extended time with his favorite ballplayer, Andrew McCutchen, played catch with him. "He says I have potential as a ballplayer," Matthew told the press. Here's hoping the kid kicks cancer's ass, and in the meantime, he spends every spare moment dwelling on the day the Pirates gave him. McCutchen is an MVP in more ways than one, and the Pirates might not have won a World Series in awhile, but on Tuesday they proved themselves a first-class organization. This is what baseball is for.
