This story was excerpted from Keegan Matheson’s Blue Jays Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
The Blue Jays are going bowling.
This evening, following their finale against the Royals, members of the team will be joining the George Springer Bowling Benefit, presented by TD in support of SAY (The Stuttering Association for the Young) and Jays Care.
Springer, who stutters, has worked for years with kids experiencing the same thing, hoping to show them they can both live and thrive with a stutter. That’s led to his partnership with SAY, which provides camps and programs to encourage kids who stutter, helping them to develop confidence and communication skills.
This past spring, you might have read this story about the impact Springer has had on Mateo Sanchez, the son of MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez. If you haven’t read the story or watched the video featured alongside it, this is your cue to carve out 15 minutes.
Recently, George Springer’s MVP Camp SAY hosted kids from the Toronto area who stutter and their families. The larger Camp SAY is a two-week camp for kids, ages 8-18, that combines the traditional sleep-away camp experience with specialized programming to promote confidence, socialization and communication skills.
To learn more about stuttering, which impacts more than 80 million people around the world and over 400,000 Canadians, you can visit SAY.org.
Here’s what Springer had to say about Sunday’s event:
Are you a good bowler?
“I can be, but I probably won’t bowl very well.”
So you’re not beating Mookie Betts?
“No, not like Mookie. He doesn’t count. He’s a cheat code.”
Who’s the best bowler in the clubhouse?
“Probably [Chris] Bassitt? I don’t know why, I just feel like Bassitt will be a good bowler. Either Bassitt or Whit Merrifield, because Whit’s really good at pretty much everything.”
Who will talk the biggest game?
“Probably Whit, as well. He could talk a lot of smack and then potentially not be good at it … or think he’s really good at it.”
What motivates your work with kids and SAY?
“It’s to benefit the kids and to give them a chance to go to a camp where they get to be around kids like themselves. They can feel like they can go do whatever they want, be whoever they want to be without the potential for someone to make fun of them or anything like that. For them and for guys like myself, it’s awesome for them to have a spot for them to go and be themselves and understand that they’re not the only one out there.”
Why is it important for you to be visible to these kids?
“I like to try to humanize myself. I want them to see that I’m just a normal guy. Yeah, I may play baseball and all of that good stuff, but at the end of the day, I’m just like them. I’m a normal person. I don’t like certain things. I get scared by certain stuff. It’s important.
“I can’t spread a message, and I can’t tell somebody else to go do something if I’m not willing to do it myself. If I go and speak in public, hopefully it gives them a little bit of insight into, ‘Hey, if he can do it, I can do it.’”
How has your appreciation for this changed as you’ve gotten older?
“They say the older you get, the smarter you’re supposed to get. I just think that for me, the older I’ve gotten and the experiences I’ve had working with kids and having my own children, I just understand what these kids are going through and what they’re going to go through. I’ve been there. I know what it’s like. I know how it is. To be involved with them is just awesome. It’s an extreme honor for me. I just want to help and I’m glad that I can.”