Delwyn Young opened Elijah Mendez’s hospital room door carefully. “Is Elijah here? Hi, I’m Delwyn,” he said.
The young boy smiled shyly as Young, a second baseman and outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and his teammate Matt Kemp sat down beside him.
Young and Kemp, along with pitcher James McDonald and Dodgers Legend Kenny Landreaux, were visiting City of Hope Helford Clinical Research Hospital to cheer on patients and their families. The Dec. 4 visit was part of the Dodgers’ commitment to ThinkCure, the organization’s official charity benefiting cancer research at City of Hope and Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. Kemp picked up one of Mendez’s toy monsters. “What is this thing?” he asked, looking at the action figure’s sharp claws as the boy laughed. “If you saw one of these things around, would you run? I would!” quipped Kemp.
After some photographs with Mendez’s family, the players left his room. The boy took off his Dodgers cap and looked at its brim, now fresh with autographs. He set it aside and smiled, the mix of awe and delight apparent on his face.
Throughout their tour, the players handed patients bags filled with Dodgers blankets, magazines, caps, rally towels, stuffed bears and other gifts. They chatted with patients young and old, as well as patients’ families.
Twenty-year-old Jorge Godinez rested comfortably against his pillow. Kemp, McDonald, Landreaux and Young filed into his room with a gift bag, only to find Godinez was a Padres fan. “I do go to the games with a couple of guys who are Dodgers fans,” Godinez assured them.
A plastic bag filled with a reddish-pink liquid hung on a pole above Godinez’s left shoulder. Anne Bourque, R.N., clinical nursing director of hematology/hematopoietic cell transplantation, motioned toward it. “You know, he’s getting his stem cell transplant right now,” she said.
“Right now?” Young asked.
“Right now,” Bourque nodded.
“Wow. I thought it was a more involved process than that,” Young said, looking at his team mates with wonder as they left the room. “It just looks like an IV bag.”
The visit was the second in 2008 by Dodgers players to City of Hope as part of ThinkCure. The Blue Crew came in February, too.
Launched in July 2007 by the Dodgers, the McCourt family (owners of the Dodgers), City of Hope and Childrens Hospital, ThinkCure is dedicated to raising funds for critical cancer research and ultimately finding a cure for cancer.
