Dec. 21 – Dec. 27, 2014

Welcome to week one hundred forty-three of the Sports Doing Good newsletter. This week’s 10 stories include:

1. At 107, a Buffalo Bills Fan Who Sees It All
2. Raiders player donates game check to 4-year-old heart patient
3. Italian football great Franco Baresi opens sports centre in Lebanon for UNHCR
4. Randle mentors troubled youth; Stanford’s Chasson Randle makes regular stops at a juvenile detention facility
5. In Africa, Out of Nowhere, There Is Baseball; How America’s Pastime Has Managed to Take Root in Uganda
6. Fighting for India, and Against Prejudice
7. Building shoes and designers alike at the World Sneaker Championships
8. Hockey player thanks parents for support with touching gesture
9. The Orlando Magic Players and Coaches Make This Holiday Special for 21 Homeless Families
10. Seahawks superfan brought to tears by Christmas present from team
    

Introduction
In the long list of great Tom Hanks moments in movies comes his classic line, “There’s no crying in baseball!!” We, of course, know there is crying in baseball and everywhere else in sports and life. And thankfully many of those times we shed tears of joy. We have seen this multiple times in the stories at Sports Doing Good and this week is no different. Well, maybe a little. It seemed each and every story was getting us at least a little choked up. (There is crying at Sports Doing Good!!) From the story of a 107-year old Buffalo Bills super fan/grandmother to another Seattle Seahawks super fan/young dad, we were moved by the purity of their passion for their favorite team. We were also moved by the selfless acts of several athletes, including the Oakland Raiders’ Menelik Watson, who gave his entire game check to a family in need, along with hockey pro Vitaly Lanochkin, who partnered with Molson to show his dad just how much he appreciated all the sacrifices he and the family made to give Vitaly a chance at his dreams.

In addition to those stories, we are happy to feature: Italian football great Franco Baresi; standout student athlete Chasson Randle from Stanford University; Ugandan youth baseball coach George Mukhobe; Indian boxing champion and activist Mary Kom; the next generation of brilliant sneaker designers; and the good folks – players, coaches, and staff – of the NBA’s Orlando Magic.

Please continue to send along your stories. You are both our audience and our best source of stories. Our Twitter handle is @sportsdoinggood, and you can find us at www.facebook.com/sportsdoinggood.

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So enjoy. And have a good week. Happy New Year!

At 107, a Buffalo Bills Fan Who Sees It All
Let’s start with the fact that my grandmother Evelyn Elliott is 107 years old. Add to this that she gave up driving only five years ago, can Skype from her iPad and rode out November’s blizzard stranded in the modest house where she has lived since 1932. Yet these are minor points of family lore when you consider how she spends her Sunday afternoons. The woman is a football fanatic. There is no visiting Grandma during a Buffalo Bills game unless you plan to sit in reverent silence — except if they score, at which point you will hear a faint centenarian whoop.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/sports/football/at-107-a-buffalo-bills-fan-who-sees-it-all.html?src=me

Before the Bills beat the Packers, Evelyn Elliott received a kiss from the former Buffalo quarterback Jim Kelly and a jersey commemorating her age. Credit Brendan Bannon for The New York Times

Raiders player donates game check to 4-year-old heart patient
You know, there are people involved in the NFL who use their vast powers and resources for good. Here’s one of those stories. Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer connected the Oakland Raiders with the family of 4-year-old Ava Urerra of Las Vegas. Ava has a heart condition that Glazer says is like having “half a heart.” The result was magnificent. The Raiders offered young Ava, who has undergone 14 different procedures on her heart, the opportunity to “captain” the team, and gave her signed gear and toys throughout a visit with the team. Offensive lineman Menelik Watson, so touched by Ava’s condition, donated his entire game check, $18,000, to help with the expenses of Ava’s family.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/raiders-player-donates-game-check-to-four-year-old-heart-patient-193501985.html
(Video, http://youtu.be/nyGRSyff4sQ)

Italian football great Franco Baresi opens sports centre in Lebanon for UNHCR
Baresi, who is regarded as one of football’s greatest ever players and won the Champions League three times with AC Milan and the World Cup for Italy in 1982, said he was happy to support Sports for Peace. “It was amazing to see the results achieved, such as the rehabilitation of safe play spaces like the Btekhnay Sport Centre and the training of 45 coaches,” he said after opening the centre last week. Sports for Peace was launched last March and aims to support Syrian refugee children and young people who are trying to overcome the traumatic consequences of their displacement. This will help them better interact and integrate with the local Lebanese community.
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/search?page=search&docid=5494097d6&query=disability

Franco Baresi (second from right) presents an award to a young football player after earlier opening the Btekhnay sports centre in Tripoli, Lebanon.

Randle mentors troubled youth; Stanford’s Chasson Randle makes regular stops at a juvenile detention facility
“It brings fulfillment for me being able to go in there and just try to help somebody and try to brighten up their day, whether it’s with my words or my actions,” Randle said. His mother, Gwen, had always told him the importance of giving back. He quietly observed how his father and two other of his youth coaches looked out for his teammates. The ones from the single-parent homes, the ones whose dads never came to the games, the ones who couldn’t afford even a minimal fee to cover for travel expenses on tournament trips to Chicago or Rockford.
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/12037395/stanford-cardinal-chasson-randle-visits-youth-juvenile-detention-centers-spare

Randle led Stanford in scoring last season. He’s doing it again and could become the Cardinal’s all-time leading scorer by season’s end. AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

In Africa, Out of Nowhere, There Is Baseball; How America’s Pastime Has Managed to Take Root in Uganda
I had talked to George on the phone in 2011. I was writing a column about his recent triumph at Little League’s European Championships in Poland. The same tournament had obsessed me during my 20s, when I coached youth baseball in Brussels. We had taken teams there four different years (18 wins, five losses, three trips to the final and two championships). Talking to George on the phone back then, two things struck me. One, wow, this guy loves baseball. And two, he must be a good coach. I decided then that I would need to visit.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-uganda-out-of-nowhere-there-is-baseball-1419525901

Youth coach George Mukhobe has led the development of an extraordinary baseball subculture in Uganda. John W. Miller/The Wall Street Journal

Fighting for India, and Against Prejudice
She is a five-time world champion, was the Olympic bronze medalist at the London Games, and gold medalist at this fall’s Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea. Her autobiography, “Unbreakable,” was released in 2013 at a ceremony hosted by the Indian actress and former Miss Universe, Sushmita Sen, who called it a story of “a woman’s road to emancipation and empowerment.” She was the subject of an operatic Bollywood biopic released in September that was a commercial success, perhaps the chief indicator of having arrived in India. But her rise has been punctuated by deep grievances, often against what she describes as a sports bureaucracy stacked against her and fellow boxers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/world/asia/for-indias-most-famous-female-boxer-a-fight-against-prejudice-.html?ref=sports

Mary Kom hopes to box for India in the summer Olympic Games scheduled for Rio de Janiero in 2016. In her autobiography, she accuses judges in India of bias against women boxers like her from the northeast Indian state of Manipur. Credit Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

Building shoes and designers alike at the World Sneaker Championships
When students filed out of the presentation room that muggy August night, one of Edwards’ colleagues shook his head in awe. “What you witnessed today is the next part of American sneaker mythology,” Morris says. “You don’t give away half your life in material objects, like they did with selling stuff for plane ticket money, to have an experience unless you really want to. For them to do that, it tells you what the value of sneaker culture is. People write movies about this. People think stuff like this doesn’t happen in shoes — but look at that, it does. “This is the freshest thing I’ve seen in decades. This is the birth of a sneaker renaissance.”
http://www.si.com/nba/2014/12/22/world-sneaker-championships-pensole-dwayne-edwards-portland-jordan

Photo: Marcus Yam/SI

Hockey player thanks parents for support with touching gesture
In a Molson Canadian #AnythingForHockey promotion, Vitaly Lanochkin got to thank his dad by having some one-on-one ice-time on a beautiful rink built high in the mountains in a picturesque setting. Andrei Lanochkin moved his family from Estonia to Canada so that his family could have a better life and Vitaly could chase his dreams. Vitaly got to say thanks by flying alongside his dad to the mountain top rink. Check out the video here.
http://www.si.com/nhl/2014/12/22/vitaly-lanochkin-hockey-player-thanks-parents-video
(Video, http://youtu.be/Zw8C3b_Vj2k)

The Orlando Magic Players and Coaches Make This Holiday Special for 21 Homeless Families
“My sons tell me all the time, ‘Mom, you don’t have to cry anymore,’ and an event like this that the Magic are putting on tells me that it’s going to get better and every day is going to be better,’’ LaShandra said. “This has just been a blessing for our family. When I saw all of these gifts, I literally just wanted to scream and cry. But this time, for once, this was a good cry and not a bad cry. “What the Magic have done truly is magical,” she added. “There’s just something about people who don’t know about the situation that you are in and don’t ask any questions and they just want to help out. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the Magic for making this a great Christmas.”
http://www.nba.com/magic/orlando-magic-players-and-coaches-make-holiday-special-21-homeless-families

Seahawks superfan brought to tears by Christmas present from team
A fan of the Seattle Seahawks said that he met the girlfriend of running back Robert Turbin earlier this year when the team played the Chiefs in Kansas City. The man allowed Turbin’s girlfriend to pose with his Seahawks jacket and in exchange, she promised to introduce the two after the game. That didn’t work out and the man left Arrowhead pretty disappointed. A few weeks later, he received a package from the Seahawks.
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/12/seahawks-superfan-brought-to-tears-by-christmas-present-from-team
(Video, http://youtu.be/k5vGclenONQ)