Phillies welcome Make-A-Wish recipients to kick off All-Star Week festivities 

PHILADELPHIA -- Five Make-A-Wish recipients were welcomed to the Diamond Club at Citizens Bank Park on Friday, through MLB's longtime partnership with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Phillies Charities Inc., the charitable arm of the Phillies organization.

The welcome event brought the families together for dinner before they received personalized gifts, including All-Star jerseys featuring their favorite team's logo on the front and their last name on the back, custom red-and-white Marucci bats engraved with their names and bags of memorabilia.

Over the next several days, the Make-A-Wish recipients – Aidan Munoz, Brandon Aguilar, Braxton Hamm, Jason Lebron and Maxim Harris – will attend the MLB Draft, the Futures Game and MLBx, enjoy a shopping spree at Mitchell & Ness through Fanatics and head onto the field before Monday's Home Run Derby for a chance to meet players.

“[They] choose us and that makes us feel so special in our sport,” said April Brown, senior vice president of social responsibility for MLB. “Our favorite part is when we see [them] getting to know one another, going off during the games … and just having a blast.”

The partnership between Phillies Charities and Make-A-Wish has created moments like these for 25 years.

“We have amazing things to offer here in [Philadelphia], and that, combined with the experience that MLB is going to give [them] over the next few days, is going to be something that [they] will remember for the rest of [their] lives,” said Bonnie Clark, vice president of communications and community initiatives for the Phillies. “We have given families an opportunity to walk away and feel something really special about their experience here at our ballpark.”

For Kevin Moss, MLB's director of community affairs, one of the greatest privileges is giving those families a chance to step away from their daily challenges.

“They've been through some struggles with their health -- not just them, their families being there with them through that,” Moss said. “So just being able to bring kind of that brighter side and take them away from what they've had to deal with for a few days. Just have fun and be with each other, watch baseball, have a great time and hopefully get a chance to meet their heroes.”

Harris, among the five recipients, had played baseball since he was 5. The 14-year-old New Yorker eventually had to give up the game, but his love for baseball remained. He turned his time away from the field into an unexpected business venture.

More than four years after being diagnosed with cancer, he spent the first several years of chemotherapy pitching whenever he could. About a year and a half ago, when doctors told him he could no longer play, he came up with an idea that has kept him busy.

That idea grew into a business: RagePADs.

“I like to play a lot of video games,” Harris said. “The point of [the pads] is when you get angry at a video game, you put it on your desk or something, and you can just punch it and it won’t really hurt.”

The product also served a personal purpose.

“He’s in chemotherapy so every time he hits something, he bruises. So [when we] heard him [hitting something] we were like ‘the doctor is going to yell at us,’” Harris’ father, Scott, said with a chuckle. “Truthfully, [his idea] was a godsend because he spends a lot of time at home, [he] doesn’t always get to go to school. So this came along and it gave him something else to do.”

Maxim now spends much of his free time refining the product, packing orders and shipping them himself. He has sold more than 1,000 RagePADs across 44 states and nine countries.

A lifelong Red Sox fan because of his father's Boston roots, Harris' wish led to a connection with his favorite player, David Ortiz, who sent him a video inviting him to find him during All-Star Week. Harris plans to return the gesture by giving Ortiz a custom RagePAD featuring the Hall of Famer.

At the top of Harris' itinerary is also Monday's Home Run Derby.

“Usually, I’ll invite a bunch of friends over to watch it at home. So it’s going to be a lot of fun to be in the stadium,” Harris said. “I’ve just loved baseball since I was 5 years old.”

Friday's personalized Marucci bat will soon join Harris' growing collection of baseball memorabilia, hanging alongside signed baseballs from trips to the Red Sox's Spring Training facility, trophies from his playing days and posters of his favorite superheroes.

“Hopefully, I get a lot of signatures,” he said.