« on: August 14, 2009, 05:15:28 PM »
I thought that, with all of the negative publicity around a bunch of our sports lately, that this was worthy of being posted . . .
Camp Sundown shines in the Bronx
Originally Published: August 12, 2009
The Yankees' best game this season came after the lights were dimmed
This column appears in the Aug. 24 issue of ESPN The Magazine.
The team facing Yankees ace A.J. Burnett a few weeks back at Yankee Stadium has to go down as the oddest in baseball history.
For one thing, it plays only at night. The players have no choice. Even one minute of sunshine can kill them.
They're from Camp Sundown, in Craryville, N.Y., and they live life on the other side of the sun. All of them have the rare disease known as XP -- xeroderma pigmentosum. If kids with XP catch the slightest UV ray, they can and do develop cancerous tumors. Even fluorescent lights fry their skin like boiling oil. Most of them don't live to be 20.
So how could they take the field at Yankee Stadium? Because this was 3 a.m. Superstar right-handers should be tucked into bed by then, yet there was Burnett, throwing Wiffle-ball splitters and chasing down line drives.
There is no cure for XP. If you're born with it, you're one in a million. There are only 250 known cases in the U.S. Until Camp Sundown was founded 14 years ago by Caren and Dan Mahar, whose daughter Katie has the disease, few of these kids had met anyone else with XP. For most of them, Yankee Stadium was the first MLB ballpark they'd ever seen -- and probably it will be the last.
A really good story abou the team that Coach calls "America's Team."
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=reilly_rick&id=4391631&sportCat=mlb
Logged
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
"All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk!" -Ayn Rand
"Those that trust God with their safety must yet use proper means for their safety, otherwise they tempt Him, and do not trust Him. God will provide, but so must we also." - Matthew Henry, Commentary on 2 Chronicles 32, from Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible
"These anti-gun fools are more dangerous to liberty than street criminals or foreign spies."--Theodore Haas, Dachau Survivor
Chase her.
Chase her even when she's yours.
That's the only way you'll be assured to never lose her.
