About five months ago the planning group got together to start planning for the 40th Hutch Award Luncheon. Last Wednesday all of our hard work paid off and the luncheon went off without any major issues. We were able to raise a bunch of money for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and more specifically, the Gregory Fund for early cancer research. The stats are kind of ugly. Cancer will strike one in three American women and one in two American men. Over 1 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer this year and nearly half will eventually die from it. In Seattle we have one of the foremost cancer research centers in the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Among their staff of scientists and researchers are three Nobel Prize winners. Hopefully in our lifetime through their work in early cancer detection there will be simple blood tests that will catch and detect cancer in the early stages. The sooner a cancer can be found the better your chances are of living through it via treatment.
Fred Hutchinson was a major league baseball player and also a coach who took the Reds to the World Series. He himself died of cancer and his brother started the research center in his name. The award itself is given to an active ball player who each year exemplifies his life on and off the field. This year the award was given to Trevor Hoffman of the San Diego Padres. On the field Trevor is a stud and he is third in all-time saves currently with 393. Off the field he does great work in his community. He and his wife host “Trevor’s Kidney Kids” (he lost a kidney as a child) where patients can come to the game to watch batting practice, get autographs, and sit in some of the best seats in the game in their personal dugout seats. His father and father-in-law both former marines and as such he has given away thousands of tickets a year to military and their families in the San Diego area. We also had the Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Palmer as the keynote guest speaker. He did a great job telling baseball stories at the luncheon.
The luncheon itself is held out on the field at Safeco field in Seattle. Many baseball players from Seattle and otherwise attend. I also saw people outside of baseball like Sean Alexander from the Seattle Seahawks. It is a great place to get autographs and have pictures taken. Since I volunteered on the planning committee I was able to meet and talk with both Trevor and Jim before the event. I post a photo with Trevor and my friend how I will just refer to as “CK”. She was worried that she might ruin the photo which is not the case at all. Trevor signed the frame which you can see in the scan I did of the photo and frame.
Here are a few links to articles written up about the event:
Seattle PI http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/208615_hutch20.html
Seattle Times http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/mariners/2002155280_hutch20.html
King County Journal http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/183695
A digital recording of my life 