Hello, and welcome to the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon for Charity, raising money through GoFundMe for the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation, the charitable arm of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Over the next three days, you will read pieces from not only me, but some of the best writers, bloggers, Tweeters, researchers, fans, and podcasters on the web. Also, those who donate non-anonymously will be eligible for giveaways of books, a comic, copies of Out Of The Park Baseball, and a “Living Baseball Card”.

So, please, donate! But even if you are unable or unwilling to, I hope you enjoy the next three days of content.

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I’m not entirely sure why I chose to do this. Part of it is because I always enjoyed the “Old Time Family Baseball” Blogathons that Michael Clair ran for Doctors Without Borders (also a very worthy charity), but I think another big reason for why was my grandfather. His name was Jacob “Jack” Glickman. He was a pharmacist, and a baseball fan. Through him, my dad became a baseball fan, and through him, I became a baseball fan.

He also died of cancer. I can still easily remember the day he died- September 30, 2014. That was also the day of the classic Royals-Athletics Wild Card game. The two are very connected in my mind, as earlier that day I had been visiting my grandfather at the place where he was being treated in his final days. Despite the fact that doctors had said he probably didn’t have much time left, and that he wasn’t entirely all “there”, he still wanted to know about the game, when it would be, who was pitching, and who I thought would win.

I found out that he had passed away shortly before the start of the game. I was sad, of course, but I was told to not come to the hospital and instead watch the game. It was, as we all remember, an instant classic, and by the end I wasn’t so much sad about how my grandfather was gone, so much as sad that he hadn’t been able to see that great game.

So, when it came time to figure out what the Blogathon would be for, I came pretty quickly to the idea of raising money for a cancer charity. My grandfather was not the first fan to miss a great game because of the scourge of cancer, and sadly he was far from the last. It’s likely that all of us, including many of the guest writers who will be taking over this weekend, have known somebody who has been affected by the disease, and in many cases we likely know somebody who lost their lives to it.

And after some research, I decided upon Roswell Park Alliance Foundation, which is the charitable arm of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Roswell Park, located in Buffalo but with affiliations across New York and the world, is America’s oldest cancer center, specializing in research and treatment. The RPAF is rated four stars by Charitynavigator.com, and donations will, according to their website, be “put to immediate use to increase the pace from research trials into improved clinical care, to ensure state-of-the-art facilities, and to help improve the quality of life for patients and their families.” Fittingly, Roswell Park has a close relationship with the State University of New York at Buffalo, where my late grandfather studied to become a pharmacist. 

So, again, please donate. You only need a credit/debit card and a few minutes, but it could help people in the future.

Now, that’s how we got here. Make sure to come back next hour as I begin the Blogathon’s baseball content with an installment of “Famous For Something Else”.