Retired MLB Umpire Mike DiMuro (second from right) with fellow umpires Mark Carlson and Tripp Gibson during an early UMPS CARE Charities hospital visit in Boston.
UMPS CARE Charities is celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year. On the 20th of each month, we will share some stories and memories of the charity. This is the second installation in our series about the charity over the past two decades.
“Twenty years is just awesome. It obviously makes you appreciate all the things that you have and makes you think about somebody else.”
When Major League Baseball Umpires Dan Bellino, Mark Ripperger and Dan Merzel stopped by UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh this season, they handed a young patient a Build-A-Bear furry friend.
On its own, it was a simple act of kindness and provided joy to this sick child and his caregiver.
But in the scheme of UMPS CARE Charities, it marked a huge milestone. This child became the 25,000th patient to receive a Build-A-Bear furry friend because of the generosity of the Major League Baseball Umpires and their supporters.
Twenty years ago, UMPS CARE formalized itself as a charity and the few umpires who were a part of its beginnings had no idea that it would be the movement among umpires that it has become today.
“Wow,” said Mike DiMuro, one of the umpires who helped get the charity off the ground. “That’s so crazy. Twenty years?”
What started out as a small-scaled effort, with a few visits here and there, became a campaign that now includes 15 to 17 hospital visits annually. DiMuro, who worked as a Major League Baseball Umpire from 1999 until 2018, and Marvin Hudson were among the umpires who got the charity off the ground.
“Marvin and I never expected for this to become this big,” DiMuro said.
DiMuro said the hospital visits really hit home from the start.
“I did one in Phoenix by myself and I saw how sick these children really were,” he said. “And I saw what a small gesture of kindness could do. Years later, we did a visit in Boston, and the mascot came, and that was a game changer. I saw how much it lifted up the staff and the nurses, too.”
Umpires, like baseball players and managers, are often creatures of habit and like their routine. Being on the road as much as they are can make regularity a way to keep things in check. So for umpires to take time out for a hospital visit – especially on a game day, which is often pressure packed – can be asking a lot.
But from the start, the umpires began to embrace these visits. And it didn’t take long for them to recognize the good they could do in the communities they visited throughout the season.
“It was so sad to see how sick some of these children were,” said Bob Davidson, another retired MLB Umpire who was active in the charity from its early days. “The children that stick out in my mind were the ones who had cancer. I have been blessed to have two healthy kids and three healthy grandkids. These visits were pretty humbling.”
“When Marvin ever asked me if my crew wanted to go to a hospital he never had to ask twice.”
Today, UMPS CARE Charities is proud to say that the charity has had 100 percent engagement from all of 19 Major League Baseball Umpire crews. Minor League Baseball Umpires also participate in UMPS CARE events and have helped the charity grow to new levels.
To date, UMPS CARE has hosted 247 hospital visits nationwide and in Canada and has delivered 25,190 Build-A-Bear furry friends to sick children. In recent years, the charity has added to the visits, providing goodie bags with baseball-themed activity books, crayons, crafts and baseball-styled stress balls to kids. Some hospitals have in-house radio stations and umpires have been able to host trivia contests and bingo games with patients.
The number of visits keeps growing, and so has the impact.
And that is not lost on the program’s founders.
“Twenty years is just awesome,” DiMuro said. “It obviously makes you appreciate all the things that you have and makes you think about somebody else.”
Mike DiMuro is all smiles with a young patient during a hospital visit early in the charity’s history.
Bob Davidson, now retired, during an UMPS CARE Charities hospital visit in Oakland.