Major League Baseball has announced that Newport Beach resident Christine Shively and four other “All-Stars Among Us” will be saluted by all five living U.S. presidents before Tuesday's All-Star Game in St. Louis.
(It's a good thing the MLB stressed “living” U.S. presidents. It coulda got creepy.)
President Barack Obama is scheduled to throw out the ceremonial
first pitch of the 80th Midsummer Classic. But just before that, he will participate in the
seven-minute video tribute along with presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George
H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. It will mark the first time all of the living presidents participate in any sporting-event ceremony.
(It's a good thing the MLB stressed “living” . . . oh, never mind.)
The league and People magazine chose 30 men and
women–each representing an MLB franchise–for their community service. Five, including Shively, were selected to have their specific contributions mentioned by a specific president.
Wouldn't you know it? Bubba got the chick.
Clinton will wax poetic about Shively, the Angels' representative, crocheting and knitting cancer caps
and sending them to 140 cancer centers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico
through her organization, Knots of Love. 'Cause if anyone knows the knots of love, it's Bill Clinton!
Obama will talk up Richard Nares (Padres), whose Emilio Nares Foundation, which he began after his young
son died of cancer, features a program called “Ride With Emilio,” which
takes sick children who lack access to transportation to their cancer
treatments and medical appointments. Dubya does not get the Texas Rangers representative but the Red Sox's Rob Dixon, who founded Project RISE, a non-profit
organization that transforms at-risk youth into serious students. Meanwhile, Bush 41, who lives closer to Boston than Houston, gets Astros' rep Gary Lynn, a 17-year-old with cerebral palsy who started
his own foundation and has raised more than $12,000 for cerebral palsy
research. Rounding it out is Carter, who gets the Atlanta Braves designee (natch), Ryan Housley, who started HeroBox, a non-profit that
supplies packages for soldiers based on their individual
needs.
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.