Desmond plans more outreach
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ.» Ian Desmond has long been known for his efforts in the community, as evidenced by his nomination for the Roberto Clemente Award last season. And the Rockies’ center fielder has already continued that trend in 2019 by hosting a healthy play camp at Salt River Elementary School on his offday Thursday.
But Desmond has much bigger goals in mind for outreach this season that in the past. The 33-year-old plans to take his campaign to end neurofibromatosis to ballparks across the country, with the hopes of increased impact and awareness about the genetic disorder affecting about 1 in 3,000 people worldwide.
“We’re going to try to spread the support from just the Denver community and (local outreach) which I’ve done a lot of in the past,” Desmond said.
“In Washington and Texas, I met the NF community and they would come out and do meet-and-greets, see batting practice and stuff. This year, we’re trying to extend that and get groups together in as many cities as we can to come out, have a great day at the ballpark and hopefully provide some smiles.”
Desmond said the NF outings at the ballpark — which can be requested in advance of any Rockies’ game, home or away, at www.ctf.org/news/end-nfwith-ian-desmond — bring those dealing with the disorder closer together.
“You can erase a lot of things in that three-hour window,” Desmond explained. “It allows the community to come together to talk about each families’ struggles or each families’ great victories over the last year, or baseball, or whatever. It’s a chance for them to meet each other and have a blast at the game.”
The NF outings usually occur about once a month throughout the regular season at Coors Field, and will be held at Rockies away games as demand dictates.
Footnotes.
Manager Bud Black said the announcement on the team’s opening day starter for next Thursday in Miami will come on Sunday morning, although it’s not hard to deduce southpaw Kyle Freeland is on schedule to take the ball (as expected) considering he’s making his last Cactus League start tomorrow night against the Cubs … Black commented on the continued offensive progression of Raimel Tapia, who will make the 25-man roster as the fourth outfielder. Entering Friday, Tapia was hitting .245, but his manager stuck by the old adage of “you don’t over-evaluate Septembers or spring training … With Raimel, we’ve seen he has a certain way of going about an at-bat, and he’s proved successful in the minor leagues. And through those (limited) at-bats in the big leagues, he’s shown there’s a hitter in there. But there’s times when he’s on and he gets hot and he gets hitterish and there’s other times he’s chasing a bit, and expanding the zone, and he has to improve on that.”