It's all about The Miracle League
Publication: Visalia Times Delta
Published March 4, 2016
Link: https://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/life/inspire/2016/03/04/all-about-the-miracle-league/81209196/
Gary Geiger doesn’t have a dog in this fight, but that won't stop him from doing everything in his power to keep The Miracle League of Visalia playing ball.
And if you ask around town, the Visalia resident has a lot of power.
“We all have to give something,” said Geiger, who founded the league in 2003. “…it would be really easy for me to write a check and never show up there, but I show up every week unless I have business.”
In an eight-week season, Geiger can easily be found at the baseball complex for seven of them.
The Miracle League of Visalia, which features a custom-designed rubberized turf field and a grass field with standard Little League dimensions, removes the barriers that keep children and adults with mental and physical disabilities off the field.
As the league states, it “lets them experience the joy of America’s favorite pastime.”
“What’s amazing is that a lot of people have a dog in the fight, but Gary doesn’t have anybody,” said Miracle League parent and volunteer Charles Hidalgo of Orosi. “His children weren’t special need or handicap; he didn’t have immediate family that would motivate him to do it. [Gary and his wife] just did it because they saw what was going on and they saw it was great to work.”
If you ask Geiger why, it’s pretty simple to him.
“Why not? All you have to do is go out there and you’ll see,” Geiger said. “I can tell you stories about kids putting on their jerseys on Wednesday when they play Saturday. I can tell you stories of kids that won’t take a jersey off. You have no idea what an impact this makes.”
The HBO story and the start
In July 2001, Geiger was sitting in front of his TV one morning and couldn’t believe his eyes.
Geiger said Bradley thanked him and sent him on his way, still without the grant he wanted.
A few months later, The Miracle League of Visalia organized a fundraiser with MLB manager Dusty Baker and retired MLB pitcher Jim Abbott.
“The Monday before, my phone rings, it’s Cathy Bradley from the Baseball Tomorrow Fund, ‘I understand you’re having a fundraiser with Dusty Baker and Jim Abbott, I’d like to fly out and give you that check you asked me for.’ She flew out from New York City and gave me a check for $125,000,” Geiger said. “A lot of people ask for money, but they don’t show up. That separated me from most other grant recipients. You aren’t supposed to do that, but what did I have to lose. She already had rejected me.”
In September 2003, the field was officially unveiled to the league’s first 90 players, who ranged in age from 3 to 59 years old.
Keeping the league going
It’s been about five years since The Miracle League of Visalia has held a fundraiser, and that’s just fine with the Geigers. Behind the scenes, they fund the league, which they say loses money every year. But it’s just what they do, and they’re not stopping.
“It doesn’t cost much to run the thing, so when things went really bad in the Valley, we kind of shut the spigot off on fundraising because Jennifer and I looked at it and we’re doing OK. We have money to survive and we can write a check if needed,” Gary Geiger said. “If we suck money out of the community, things like Food Link of Tulare County get shorted. That’s people eating.”
Past fundraisers for The Miracle League of Visalia have featured prominent MLB figures like Pete Rose and Rex Hudler, National Football League athletes like Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, and Dan Marino and former Indy Racing League driver Sam Schmidt.
A 2008 fundraiser featured the USA Softball team heading to Beijing for the Summer Olympics just weeks later. Team USA, which was debuting the newly built grass field, played a game against a group of Central Valley all-stars and an inning against 18 members of The Miracle League of Visalia.
The fundraiser, which featured 5,200 people at the game, brought in $125,000 for the league.
Geiger said there was a seminal moment for his family the week of the fundraiser.
“The field was all dressed up and ready to go for the game. I turned on the lights, went to the left-center field bleachers all the way at the top and just sat there and watched. I said, look at what we did,” he recalls. “Make no mistake about it, that doesn’t happen without me. It just doesn’t, but that was the seminal moment when we thought, oh my God, a couple of middle-class people did this.”
Gary Geiger’s business card is two-sided, one featuring the Burger King logo and the other The Miracle League of Visalia logo. It’s what he does for money and what he does for his community.
“There are guys in this town that still have the first dollar they ever made. They have a death grip on it. There are guys like me, I look in the mirror every day and say, I’m lucky,” Geiger said. “[My wife is] 15 years younger than me and had a rich uncle I knew nothing about that gave me the opportunity. That’s what I do down there. I give opportunity. These are kids that have nothing. They would trade you in a heartbeat for your worse day ever. It’s not hard to do what I do if your mind is like mine.”
The Miracle League of Visalia Action
“It’s fun to watch how much they love it,” said treasurer Jennifer Geiger. “Once we started it, it was fun and exciting in the beginning, and now it’s more of a grind I’ll admit, but once you get out there on opening day, they’re so happy. It’s part of their life; they’re happy to be able to play baseball and to be out there.”
Each Miracle League player is accompanied with a “buddy” for the entire game. They’ll help and protect their player if needed.
“They have to be mature enough to accept the responsibility, and they have to be able to protect the kid,” Gary Geiger said. “If you don’t have time to make that commitment, just come out to see a game. We’re giving them a tiny slice of what you and I take for granted, an hour of normalcy. They have something to wake up for on Saturdays.”
Buddies should be at least 13 years old. Jennifer Geiger said The Miracle League is also looking for volunteers to buddy with the adults players.
“Our adult population is much more stable than our kid population. They show up every year. The kids come and go because the parents are trying different things with their kids, but the adults keep playing every season,” she said. “It’s hard to get volunteers that want to buddy with a 56-year-old woman that’s functioning at a 3-year-old level. People that want to volunteer with the adults are especially precious to us.”
Charles Hidalgo, whose 20-year-old daughter has been playing since the league was founded, has also been a coach with the league and will once again be out there this season as a volunteer.
The start of the season is weeks away, and his daughter is already anxiously waiting.
“Even if my daughter didn’t want to do it anymore, if Gary called me I’d be there in a heartbeat. Just because he’s that type of guy,” Hidalgo said. “Character is how you behave in life when no one is watching and how you handle things, he’s been in a giver all the way around, and it’s good to see stuff like that.”
Gary Geiger, who is more than happy to financially support numerous Tulare County nonprofits he and his wife believe in, says he has three things in his life, his family, Burger King and The Miracle League of Visalia.
If he can’t commit to something 100 percent, he doesn’t get near it. It tears him up.
“It’s all about the Miracle League; it’s not about me,” he said. “If you go to the facility, you will see our name on that place exactly once.”