http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/sports/baseball/yankees-manager-joe-girardi-charities.html 2016-09-30 21:54:17 Over a Long, Arduous Season, Joe Girardi Wore His Humanity Well The Yankees manager’s ritual of highlighting a different charity before each home game invited people to see him in a different light — and the charities welcomed the exposure. === The public image of He will rarely concede, be it a hopelessly lost ballgame or a pointed question. He might stamp out of an interview with reporters or blame umpires rather than his own players — as he did recently as the This season, though, there has been a window into another side of Girardi, one that has rarely been on view in his nine years as Yankees manager. It is where Girardi might be seen as something he is not in the dugout: sensitive, poignant and exceedingly human. At almost every home game this season, Girardi has worn a T-shirt representing a different charity for his pregame news conference, which is broadcast on the team’s YES Network. Before taking questions from reporters, he gives a brief, but detailed, description of the charity’s mission. This routine is not by rote. Girardi brings notes on each charity with him, but they are usually placed on the table in front of him, unused. He speaks extemporaneously and from the heart, as if he has a deep connection to each cause. On a few occasions, like Tuesday, when he promoted a charity that aids the fight against ovarian cancer, the disease from which his mother died, he has choked up, his eyes welling with tears. “A lot of it is personal experiences I’ve dealt with in my life,” Girardi said, when asked in an interview why he was so emotional when promoting the charities. His mother died when he was 19, six years after she was given three to six months to live. His father died after a lengthy affliction with Alzheimer’s disease. He lost a sister-in-law to cancer. “I saw the fight in my mom,” Girardi added. “I think people can’t live without food and water, but people can’t live without love and hope, and my mother always had hope that she would get better, and I think it carried her through.” The suggestion to wear the T-shirts was given to Girardi in spring training by Jason Zillo, the team’s director of communications. Several years ago, Zillo had noticed that Joe Maddon, then the manager for the Tampa Bay Rays, had developed a similar ritual, wearing a T-shirt promoting a charity in his postgame interviews with reporters. Zillo was intrigued, except he recognized one thing: Girardi wound up agitated after some losses. “I knew that wasn’t going to work,” Zillo said. So he asked Girardi about wearing the T-shirts before the game. Girardi liked the idea, so Zillo proceeded, lining up aid organizations. The team’s public-relations staff prepares notes for Girardi on that day’s charity, which he reviews. He then does any additional reading on his own. “It takes about five minutes of my day to research the charity and understand what it is, that’s all,” Girardi said. “Some of the things I’ve never heard of, so obviously I’ll research them. I want to make sure I know what I’m talking about.” The charities Girardi promotes are diverse. They find their way to him in different ways. Some are causes dear to Yankees employees or their friends and family. Some charities solicited the Yankees once the pregame ritual gathered momentum. A handful came from Girardi himself. Don Czerniewski, who founded Stella’s Wish Foundation, which grants wishes to adults with life-threatening diseases, found his way to Girardi serendipitously. His boss at an appliance parts distributor in St. Louis bought a trip at a charity auction to see the Yankees and passed Czerniewski’s business card on to Girardi when they met. When Girardi highlighted Backpacks for Life, which seeks to provide homeless veterans with backpacks filled with daily essentials and resources for aid, he explained how it began: Army Sgt. Brett D’Alessandro returned home from a tour of Afghanistan and saw a man holding a sign that said he was a homeless Vietnam vet. So he returned to his hotel and filled his military backpack with clothes and gave it to the man. Girardi noted the high suicide rates for veterans. “He did a really good job of getting our point across,” said Alexa Modera, who runs Backpacks for Life with D’Alessandro, her boyfriend. She said Girardi “would pause a lot in a way that was powerful.’’ “It’s an emotional topic,’’ she added. “People don’t want to hear about veterans struggling with homelessness.” When Girardi wore a T-shirt Tuesday promoting Know Pelvic Mass, which promotes awareness for ovarian cancer testing, he was particularly emotional. He had at his side the racecar driver Martin Truex Jr. and his partner, Sherry Pollex, who learned she had ovarian cancer two years ago. As Girardi began to weave the loss of his mother into a plea for women not to ignore abdominal pain, he had to pause to regain his composure. “I wasn’t ready for that,” Pollex said. “But I think it shows how passionate he is about bringing awareness about getting tested.” Girard’s interest in promoting charitable organizations stems from his upbringing, he said. After he graduated from Northwestern and embarked on a professional baseball career, he began to appreciate what his parents had done for him, his four siblings and others in their Peoria, Ill., neighborhood. His mother, a child psychologist, used to test children who could not afford it, and the Girardi home was a center for wayward cats and dogs. His father worked three jobs — as a salesman during the week, a bartender at night and a bricklayer on weekends — to help make ends meet. He also cooked pregame meals for his boys’ high school football teams. “We weren’t blessed financially as a family,” Girardi said. “But I had every opportunity to be successful in life, and I think every child deserves that, whether you come from a background where there are financial issues, a single-parent home or you’ve had to deal with sickness. We should do everything to give people a chance to be successful because I think that’s what gives people hope.” Many of the charities Girardi promotes are small operations, without much name recognition or financial heft. Several said that while they may not have gotten a bump in donations from Girardi’s touts, they appreciated the exposure. “It means everything,” said Matt Hinton, who with his wife runs Brady’s Smile, which assists families in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units. “We are the very definition of a mom-and-pop charity. We don’t have a marketing machine behind us. We don’t have fancy social media strategy. We rely on word of mouth and things like this.” The Yankees photograph Girardi in the T-shirts, which he autographs so they can be sent back to the charity to be used as a fund-raiser. He does not often meet the people behind the charities, but he has left a mark that stands in contrast to the intense, hardened character that many see in the dugout. “My impression of Joe is he’s the consummate pro who walks the hard line,” said Dino Verrelli, whose Project Purple organization raises awareness and funds in the effort to cure pancreatic cancer. “So it’s kind of cool to see him take a stand on something that is so impactful and speak from the heart. The guy’s tough as nails, but I think you see the humanity of who he is.”