The Nick Adenhart Memorial Fund, a charitable fund set up in the name of the Angels pitcher who was killed along with two other in an April 9 auto accident in Fullerton, has presented its first $5,000 check benefiting Little League baseball in Adenhart's home state of Maryland.
Jim Adenhart, Nick's father, and Jim Sr. and Connie Adenhart, the pitcher's grandparents, made the donation to the Halfway Little League, where Nick once pitched, at home plate before a tournament game Wednesday, reports the Williamsburg Hagerstown Herald-Mail.
“This is where it all first started,” Jim Adenhart reportedly said. “It all started over there over the hill and he played for six years here. He is here in center field watching us today.”
]
The memorial fund's goal is to help struggling leagues around the
country buy equipment and
cover expenses to keep youth baseball functioning. The Adenhart family
is scheduled to make a similar presentation today to the Hagerstown
PONY League, which also included Nick as a player.
Earlier this season, the Angels announced the creation of the Nick
Adenhart Pitcher of the Year Award, which the team will bestow to a
pitcher on its roster based on a vote by teammates.
The 22-year-old rookie died in surgery hours after he made his season
debut by pitching six scoreless innings in a loss to the Oakland
Athletics at Angels Stadium. Courtney Stewart, the driver of the car Adenhart was riding in, and Henry Pearson, another passenger, were killed.
A third passenger, former Cal State Fullerton Titans catcher Jon Wilhite, is recuperating at his parents' home in Murietta from what doctors described as an internal decapitation.
The driver of the other car, Andrew Thomas Gallo, pleaded not
guilty to three counts of murder on June 9.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.