Thursday, September 17, 2009

Jon Rauch, Ronald McDonald House and a Mascot Attack!

You will not remember when we celebrated Mo Vaughn and his pretty cool work in his community. But we offer that link up as proof that we don't always shit on athletes.

From an inside source, I know that the relatively newly acquired Twins relief pitcher Jon Rauch visited the Ronald McDonald House in Minneapolis. (My source is their House Dog, Jerry, who is on Facebook. Really.)

And here's the thing--Rauch has made a habit of it--he's been a journeyman pitcher (and according to wikipedia, the tallest man who has ever hit a homerun), and he's done some good work for the teams he goes to, but not quite good enough to earn a guaranteed position in any team's rotation. Here's the other thing--if you search Google News for Jon Rauch + Ronald McDonald House, you won't get a single result. Rauch doesn't bring along local media to his visits--he doesn't care whether he gets noticed as being a good athlete community guy or not.

Local media has noticed every once in awhile. The Washington Post's Nationals blog wrote one sentence about his visit to the Ronald McDonald House there.

But for the most part, Rauch gets noted by the Ronald McDonald Houses he visits--shortly before getting traded to the Twins, Rauch was a Diamondback, and he visited the House in Phoenix. So, to sum up--Rauch has been in three cities in 3 years--Washington, Phoenix, and Minneapolis, and he has visited all 3 cities' Ronald McDonald House. And that's quietly cool work worth celebrating.

Now, Rauch very quietly visited the Ronald McDonald House in Minneapolis. But he made one huge mistake, according to my inside source (again, a dog named Jerry). He brought along Twins mascot TC Bear, who the kids loved, but Jerry was unsure of:



No comments: