<wiping tear> Reds Players Help 6 yr Old

[Texsox]

http://www.sportsline.com/mlb/story/8747844/1

 

You know the problem lately?

 

We spend so much time cleaning the fungus from the shower-room tile -- Rafael Palmeiro, Kenny Rogers -- that sometimes we forget why we came to the ballpark to begin with.

 

   

Ken Griffey Jr. has become Antonio Perez's new hero. (AP)   

Soon enough, the pennant races and the October leaves will remind us.

 

For now, there is Bill Summe, Ken Griffey Jr. and a struggling bunch of fifth-place Cincinnati Reds.

 

And when it comes to what baseball is and what it should be, well, good luck to October in topping this one.

 

Summe doesn't play a position with the Reds, unless you know the corresponding number to mark on the scorecard -- 10? 11? -- for a public safety security officer. But when he was summoned into the middle of a crisis in Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park during a game earlier this month, he moved as deftly as Davey Concepcion ever did.

 

A man had collapsed as the Reds were playing the Atlanta Braves and, as paramedics feverishly worked to revive him -- they couldn't; Spencer Brock, 49, passed away later that night from a heart attack -- one of the officers handed a little boy to Summe.

 

One look at the man and Summe, a policeman in Cincinnati's Springfield Township since 1992, knew it wasn't good. So he and Sarah McManus, a colleague in the Reds security office, took little Antonio Perez, 6, and walked him away from his stricken grandfather as quickly as they could.

 

"He looked at me and asked, 'Is my Pawpaw going to be all right?'" said Summe, 39. "I knew from my years of experience as a police officer that the guy didn't have much of a chance. They were administering CPR, and I said 'We'll do everything we can.'

 

"I didn't realize at that point that he was only with his grandfather. I figured they had his grandmother or some others with them."

 

They didn't. It was Tony Perez Bobblehead Doll night at Great American Ball Park, and when you're a 6-year-old boy named Antonio Perez in Cincinnati -- where the Hall of Famer had spent most of his career -- well, don't you have a solemn duty to be at the ballpark on a night like that? So he and grandpa went to the game. Just the two of them, a night out, part of a terrific crowd of 37,157 and, well, there's always so much that happens that the box score doesn't tell.

 

Mostly, Summe simply wanted to get little Antonio away from the seat, away from the section, away from the crowd. They walked up to the concourse first. They weren't too far from the Reds bullpen. So Summe walked him there, told bullpen coach Tom Hume what was going on and asked if it would be OK if the two of them could kind of hide away in there for a while.

 

"I wanted to get the child's mind off of it," Summe said.

 

The rest of the story, Griffey's part, at link.

[SuperSteve]

That is too bad, I couldn't imagine being the little boy asking how he was going to get home. That is a really nice story.

[3E8]

Where would he play?

[Kalapse]

Yeah, read about this in the paper about a week ago. The best part was Felipe Lopez giving the kid his helmet from the All-Star game this year, that thing had to mean a lot to Felipe especially considering how unnoticed he's gone this year and how unexpected his selection was.

[LosMediasBlancas]

Where would he play?

 

 

I hate myself for laughing at that, but lmao.

[SuperSteve]

Yeah, read about this in the paper about a week ago. The best part was Felipe Lopez giving the kid his helmet from the All-Star game this year, that thing had to mean a lot to Felipe especially considering how unnoticed he's gone this year and how unexpected his selection was.

Yeah, I thought the same thing about the helmet from Felipe. I would imagine it was special to him anyways as it was prob his "#1" helmet (for lack of better words).

[YASNY]

Kudos to the Reds organization for handling a dicey and difficult situation with class and compassion.