Citing a need to give more than just “dingers” back to the community, the Columbia Baseball team has announced that the first home game of the season will be a charity event benefitting a to-be-determined disease.
The reigning Lou Gehrig Division champions made the announcement on the South Lawn of the Morningside Heights campus, where Lou Gehrig once famously played for the Lions.
Lions’ Head Coach Brett Boretti explained the inspiration for the “charity drive thing.” He said, “The idea really came to me because of the whole ALS Ice Bucket Challenge stuff last year, which did great work. Y’know, ALS is a really terrible disease. Talk about being given a bad break, but still, those who have it have an awful lot to live for. Lou Gehrig suffered from it, I think. Or maybe it was chicken pox.”
Speaking about the preparations for the season opening charity event, Boretti said, “Baseball is fun but we’ve been wracking our brains to come up with a way to inject a little more self righteous smugness into the game. Bat flips can only take us so far. That’s what’s great about diseases. It’s like a bat flip that never falls .”
The Lions are asking for suggestions for the disease research their proceeds will benefit. “We really missed the boat on the ice bucket challenge. We want to get in on the ground floor of one of these sweet diseases and bank on it while it’s hot,” Boretti said through a protruding lip of long cut chew. “At first we we’re like ‘AIDS, definitely’, but that’s not fresh. It’s a bit ‘meh.’ There could be something sexy about sleep apnea.”
As of press time, Boretti was seen searching “mouth soreness + bleeding” on WebMD.
