Buy Tug a Beer

Some of you nice Faith and Fear readers occasionally make the gracious comment that you’d like to buy us a beer the next time you see us at Citi Field. Well, we’re ready to take you up on your generous offer, but we don’t want a beer from you, per se. We don’t even want a soft drink.

Here’s what we do want:

If you’re coming to the Mets-Astros game on Thursday evening, April 21, we’d like to meet you at McFadden’s between 6 and 7, prior to first pitch. And as we meet, we’d really, really appreciate it if you could help us and our good friend Sharon Chapman in her ongoing efforts to raise funds for the Tug McGraw Foundation.

Sharon Chapman, keeping Tug McGraw's memory alive one race at a time.

Sharon, as she’s been doing virtually nonstop since early 2010, will be running again soon with Team McGraw — in Philadelphia (while wearing a Mets cap, of course) on May 1 in the Blue Cross Broad Street Run. She and they do all this running to raise awareness as well as money for the Tug McGraw Foundation. This wonderful organization was started prior to Tug’s untimely 2004 death from brain cancer and serves as a living tribute to the spirit of the ultimate Believer as well as a beacon of hope for those fighting the same battle Tug knew too well.

The Foundation seeks to accelerate new treatments and cures to improve the quality of life for children and adults affected by neurological conditions such as brain tumors, Post Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury. You can learn much more about its work by clicking here.

We’ve hocked on you good people several times in the past fifteen months about the Tug McGraw Foundation and you’ve come through like champs for this worthy cause. We’re hoping we can engage your patience and better angels just a little more in advance of Sharon’s next race.

We have three ways of asking for your help and hope you can get on board with whichever one works best for you.

1) Come to McFadden’s on April 21 and don’t buy us a beer — buy Tug a beer. We’re going to have a fundraising jar and will ask you to contribute the price of a beer — domestic, imported, whatever you’re comfortable with — to our container. All of the proceeds will go to Sharon’s fundraising kitty and from there, it all goes to support the research being done by the Tug McGraw Foundation.

2) If you yourself would like a drink or two before the game (and we can’t blame you if you do), we have a deal that you might like. McFadden’s has arranged to make available special wristbands that night. For $20, you get all the beer or well drinks you can responsibly enjoy between 6 and 7 on April 21, and 25% of that total will go to our Tug McGraw Foundation fundraising. So in essence you’re paying $15 for “all you can drink” (responsibly) for that hour and $5 to help further the Foundation’s important work. We thank McFadden’s Citi Field for their cooperation in putting this arrangement together.

As an added enticement (we hope), anybody who goes to the trouble of purchasing a wristband will be automatically qualified for a drawing (at around 6:45) for a signed copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets. This is the soft cover 2010 edition that includes an epilogue regarding the first year of Citi Field, in addition to a few hundred pages devoted to exploring a lifetime spent at Shea Stadium. We’ll have a few copies, actually, so your chances of winning are already increased.

3) We’d love to see you at McFadden’s. We’d be thrilled by a massive turnout for Tug, but we understand that not everybody will be going to that particular game (though plenty of good seats are still available). Thus, we’d like to remind you that you can make a contribution anytime by going to Sharon’s dedicated fundraising Web site here. If you can spare the price of a beer, that would be plenty.

We look forward to meeting you at McFadden’s on April 21 between 6 and 7 prior to that night’s Mets-Astros game. We look forward to talking Mets with you, talking Tug, talking running (ask Sharon about that part; I’m more of a sitter), talking Faith and Fear, talking whatever you’d like. We obviously seek your support for the Foundation, but we’d be happy to have you simply stop by and say hello.

And if you could buy Tug a beer, I’m guessing somewhere he’d really appreciate it.