Support ALS Research! Separately, Win Prizes!

OK, I’m breaking away from my mad-dash book rewrite* for a couple of moments because I want to catch everybody up on our PosCast Fundraiser for The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig ALS Center at Columbia University.

*Yeah, this book is definitely getting to me. Yesterday, I was deep into a Bill Buckner story when my wife, Margo, came in to ask me an innocent question, and I completely lost it, I just started screaming for her to leave me alone. Apparently, she and the girls had a lot of fun laughing about that. I am a danger to society until this thing is done. End of the week! Has to be done by the end of the week!

As many of you know, Mike Schur and I have been doing the PosCast for an absurdly long time. Last year, when Meadowlark Media made the dubious decision to pay us, we decided that the least we could do was donate what we make to various causes that are close to our hearts.

So we gave the first $10,000 to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. Obviously.

Then we gave the second $10,000 to our friend Jason Kander’s personal cause, the Veterans Community Project.

A few weeks ago, we had our friend Sarah Langs on the PosCast. Sarah, we believe, loves baseball more than any other human being on planet earth. We asked her to pick our next cause. Sarah was diagnosed with ALS and her choice is the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig ALS Center at Columbia University.*

*Mike and I immediately began calling it the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig ALCS Center, where they research whether the ALCS should be nine games long or if ties should be broken with home run derbies. This represents the level of stupidity of the PosCast and why we are giving any money we make to charity.

Anyway, Mike came up with the idea that in addition to our donation, we should try to raise more money for the ALS Center through a fundraiser. Mike came up with this idea because:

1. He is a generous soul and a good person.

2. He wanted an excuse to buy boxes of unopened baseball cards.

I’m not sure that I put those two reasons in the correct order. This was his plan: We would open up old packs of baseball cards on the PosCast.

“Why would anyone listen to that?” I asked him.

“Why does anyone ever listen?” he quite reasonably asked in return.

While opening the packs, we would ask people to donate money to the ALS Center. And everyone who did would be entered into a special lottery, which would include a fabulous prize package. The package would include:

— Signed copies of our books The Baseball 100 and How to Be Perfect..

— One baseball card of the person’s choice.

— A specially written essay, by me, about that player solely and specifically for that prize winner.

You will notice that Mike’s plan volunteered me to do work but he did not seem to volunteer himself to do anything except sign one of his books. But OK, I liked the idea, and after all, it’s only one essay.

Then we went on the PosCast and Mike unilaterally announced that there would be FIVE winners.

I take all that back about Mike being a generous soul and a good person.

But that’s how it went. We didn’t know how to go about doing it, so we just started a GoFundMe page with all the details and opened it up.

Two things happened more or less at the same time after that.

First, you and others were generous beyond our wildest expectations. As I write these words, you have donated more than $17,000 to the AL(C)S Center. which is mind-blowing. We cannot thank you enough. You will notice, if you go to the page, that our goal was $500. That was not cheekiness on our part. We legitimately hoped we might raise a few hundred dollars.

The second thing that happened was the GoFundMe people freaked out because they do not allow raffles on there, not even for charity, not even goofy ones like this. So yesterday, while desperately trying to finish my new book, WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL, I was going back and forth with GoFundMe offering apologies and trying to figure out how to make this thing work.*

*In retrospect, it might have been the stress from this that caused me to freak out on my wife.

And finally, we worked it all out. So here’s where we are:

We’re asking you, if you have the means, to please donate to The ALS Center. Incredible strides have been made in ALS research and treatment, there’s so much momentum happening. And, of course, ALS has such a close connection to baseball. My good friend Tom Haberstroh was part of a group that convinced MLB to have an annual Lou Gehrig Day. My mentor and friend Joe McGuff, who was instrumental in bringing baseball to Kansas City and is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, died after years of suffering with ALS. And I think of Sarah.

If you can donate a few bucks, it would mean the world.

SEPARATELY:

Wait, let me repeat that … SEPARATELY:

Separately we are going full force on our PosCast giveaway.

To enter, all you need to do is send an email to poscastraffle@gmail.com.

As of right now we have six (grrr) prize packages to give away.

There’s our Baseball Card prize package, which includes:

— Signed books from Mike and me.

— A signed copy of Jason Kander’s incredible book, Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir in Politics and PTSD. Jason will inscribe the book any way you want, and what Mike and I suggest is that you have him sign it, “I know in my heart that ‘Centerfield’ is an atrocious song and I apologize for ever saying otherwise.”

— A signed copy of Jonathan Eig’s wonderful book Luckiest Man, about Lou Gehrig. Jonathan came to us with this generous offer, and I’m unclear if he is offering one signed book or five signed books for each winner. But either way, it’s fantastic.

— Any baseball card that we pull on the PosCast.

— A typed essay — banged out by me on a typewriter, yes, as God and Tom Hanks intended — about the player on the baseball card. Restriction: The player cannot already be in the Baseball 100.

— Some sort of work-intensive Mike task that we have yet to figure out.

— Whatever other prizes people might offer. You never know.

In addition to this, there will be ONE “Get this Derek Jeter stuff out of my house” package that will include.

— A 1993 Topps Derek Jeter rookie card.

— An autographed Derek Jeter baseball that was given to Mike as a gift by the people on his latest TV show, who obviously hate him.

— A Derek Jeter jersey that is still in the plastic because Mike would never wear it except as a sign to family that he has been abducted.

Again, to enter, all you have to do is send us an email. Many of the people who have entered have sent us a receipt from their ALS Center donation, which is really nice, but you don’t have to do that because, as I might have mentioned, this is totally separate. And I should add, if you do not want to be included in the Derek Jeter raffle, all you have to do is put something in the subject line that reflects your ill feelings about Jeter.

OK, I have a book to finish. Thanks, everybody. And I’m sorry, Margo.