The 17th Annual Home Runs for the Homeless is in the books (aka HRs4Homeless) !! We raised well over $80,000 for Harford Family House when all the money finally rolls in and our expert crowd funders finish rallying their donors with post-event emails!! This establishes a new floor for the event as we are consistently over $70,000 now with the addition of crowd funding to our sponsor and team donations. At this pace we will eclipse the $1 million raised mark in two years!!
As the founders of the event, Brian Walker and I could not be more excited, and we would like to thank all those who participated on July 15th. A special thanks goes to Harford Mutual, our lead sponsor. Frank Kellner and his two teams arrived at the field following an event for President Steve Linkous’s 40th Anniversary at Harford Mutual! Congrats Steve! Also, our committee is consistently out-performing itself with new expectations each year so big thanks to our point person Heather Volk, all the Harford Family House staff and volunteers, Tom Noel (shagger extraordinaire), Chuck Leftridge (RAM Tough), Scorekeepers Brian Smith and Brent Slutzky, BJ Alaimo, Rob Yetter, and Rob’s son Michael Yetter who claimed the Rookie of the Year Volunteer Award for being a jack of all trades on the field, crowd funding and even recruiting slugger Cory Poulsen to help. Former HFH Board Member Matt Hurff also helped most of the day and entered a team of batters and kept his 13U Hampstead Heat on the field to shag and entertain the crowd. Our contact from the IronBirds, Gavin Locklear, went above and beyond to make this a terrific experience. We can’t thank him enough and he’s clearly a keeper who has customer service in his blood. And he has a hidden talent for making storms dissipate and disappear off radars which is really important the day of the event!!
We often say “the points don’t matter” but we also post them for the batters the next day and now during the event, so they must “matter a lot” in the spirit of fun!! We could not track all those points, compile all the team totals and post everything to our leader board without the help of John Kutcher’s team at Baseball 4 Causes!! Julie Violante, Shelly Yurechko, Harrison Swartz (who also hits in the event) and Myra Mian (our roving interviewer) all contribute to the logistics behind the fun…thank you, thank you, thank you!! We are proud to have Baseball 4 Causes (www.baseball4causes.org) as a partner powering our event!!
So…….here are the results:
DETERMINATION PREVAILS FOR CORPORATE CROWN: First Place in the Corporate Category, given to the team who enters all four batters from one firm, goes to HRs4Homeless veteran DiCorp, owned by John Kutcher. While the entire team of Harrison Swartz, Chris Baum, and John Kutcher posted consistent scores, it was Timmy Kutcher’s score of 725 with 4 home runs that catapulted them to victory with 1,640 Total Points! So even though Timmy is retired after a great career as a Johns Hopkins Blue Jay, he apparently can still go yard with ease in his old age of 28! In second place was Harford Financial with a score of 1,285 led by Adam Freeland, Bryce Harrison, John Kindley, and Austin O’Donnell. Adam always has this team ready for action and is an amazing baseball player who are proud to have involved every year! Harford County Parks and Rec, last year’s Corporate Award Winner, took third place with 1,210 points.
WE HAVE NEW HISTORY: The Overall Champion with 2,520 points was first-time winner Harford Community College. Captained by Ed Liesch and powered by Derek Poole, Jack
Fitzpatrick, Jaxon Kehoe, and Daniel Scullion, this team simply could not be stopped as they prevailed over past champions The MMM Team of Cross-Country Mortgage and Johns Hopkins Blue Jays Bomb Squad. Their victory wasn’t without intrigue as someone sabotaged the pitching machine mid-way through their batting round. A new, fresh pitching machine was brought in from the bullpen in relief to slow the HCC Fighting Owls down, but to no avail as they hammered 8 home runs overall and took the competition to school. HRs4Homeless Co-Founder Brian Walker, who also is Chairman of the HCC Board of Trustees, is driving the trophy around the County on a victory lap before presenting it to HCC President Dr. Theresa Felder at the ticker-tape parade scheduled on Churchville Road for this weekend. CONGRATS FIGHTING OWLS, HCC has always made this County proud!!
The battle for second place overall was intense and as is usually the case, the team hitting last gets a few extra points to overcome the earlier scores. In this case, Team Alaimo, led by HRs4Homeless heartthrob BJ Alaimo had taken an early and commanding lead with a score of 2,340 after the JHU Bomb Squad ran out of powder with a score of 2,300. While BJ and Derek Dixon put on their normal strong hitting displays, it was one of BJ’s students of the game, University of Maryland Terp Team Captain and former Seattle Mariner Randy Bednar who stole the show with 9 of their 10 home runs, many of which sailed onto and over the left field locker room building. Batting later at 12:40 pm, the Bel Air Police Department, captained by Dave Hughes, bested Coach BJ’s team with an overall score of 2,360. They were led by familiar names like Tim Heller and DJ Gargano, but it was Matt Wilson who hit 6 home runs and Edgewood High legend Ricky Lester who, while in his mid-50’s, batted like a young phenom with a score of 500 including several drives that almost cleared the fence! Father Time waits for nobody….except Ricky!
LAYING DOWN THE LAW: Our competition for the Officer’s Cup has intensified and this year all three competitors, Bel Air Police Department, Harford County Sheriff’s and Aberdeen Police Department sponsored by FOP Lodge 128 put on a real show with very similar scores. BAPD competed in the overall category and posted a score of 2,360 with Matt Wilson blasting 6 homers and 920 points! Meanwhile, The Harford County Sheriff’s led by Chris Toliver who is certainly a shoo-in for the HRs4Homeless Hall of Fame posted a score of 2230 with Chris’s 575 points, Matt Elliott ‘s 455 and Kyle Price’s 425. But the new sheriff in town was Michael Pralle with 775 points which led the Sheriffs to victory over Aberdeen Police Department with 1,580 points.
Every year we present The Mark Logsdon Award to the highest individual total in the Officer’s Cup competition in remembrance of long-time, loyal HRs4Homeless supporter Mark Logsdon who died in the line of duty defending Harford County. We miss seeing Mark every year at our event and we had to honor him and his family because they were with us from the start helping Harford Family House. This year, that race was down to the last pitch. Officer Will “The Thrill” Reiber of APD clobbered 3 home runs and received 725 points. However, Harford County Sheriff Michael Pralle jumped past Will and posted 775 points to claim The Mark Logsdon Award! Congratulations to first-time winner Michael Pralle and the Sheriffs!!
ALL STARS ONE AND ALL: We have individual awards for several individual feats of glory, and this year the stories were amazing:
Silver Slugger Award: Matt Wilson seems to be a quiet and humble guy, and he would never say this, but it was clear he had the hottest bat of the day and really put on a show!! Hitting cleanup for Dave Hughes’ Bel Air Police Department and knocking 6 homers for 920 points, Matt was our Silver Slugger, which is our award for the most impressive individual batting performance in terms of points. Matt participates regularly and it is terrific to see him get the credit due for his years of effort for Harford Family House. Way to go Matt!! It was fun just watching you on Tuesday while you were “in the zone”.
Georgia Peach Awards: Brittany Stein and Allison Pomroy of Harford Mutual Insurance Company are HRs4Homeless Legends!! We talk about them year in and year out. This year Allison prevailed with a 300 total score that almost doubled most of the female competition working to win the Georgia Peach Softball Award. Meanwhile, her co-worker, Brittany, shook off pitcher Frank Kellner and once again elected the baseball pitching machine while posting 285 points on the major league diamond to capture the Georgia Peach Baseball Award. While we love watching them hit, we would truly like to thank them for contributing to the event with their time and effort each and every year!! They are just peachy!!
Golden Arm Award: At some point in our long and illustrious history, those who struggle to stay above The Mendoza Line suggested we have an event for the defensively inclined, so Matt Hurff created the Golden Arm Award. Here, contestants aim and fire to place as many balls as possible into the target in the allotted time. This year, the sharpshooter award goes to Eddie Meredith of Harford Financial for his score of 19 made throws. Congratulations to Eddie, playing for Coach Adam Freeland is demanding and at least you have some bling to show him now!
I should also mention that Conor Reynolds of the JHU Bomb Squad also scored 19 made throws. However, as impressive as that may be for our mere mortals, Conor has won so many baseball awards over an illustrious career he has no room left for anymore. As a 2017 D3 Second Team All-American at Johns Hopkins University and Centennial Conference Player of the Year, Conor set every record around and is one of the best players in Hopkins’ history. He batted .363 over a four-year career at Hopkins and batted .302 in the minor leagues playing Indy Ball for Utica. Most importantly, he has shown up to raise money for Harford Family House almost every year and we are very, very appreciative of his support and effort after an incredible baseball career. You’re keeping good company, Eddie Meredith!!
Crowdfunding MVP: Our favorite award is given to the player who demonstrates and embodies the spirit of selflessness by raising money through crowdfunding for HRs4Homeless and Harford Family House. This batter must take the time to put themselves out there on social media and ask others to make a difference through donations. Heather Volk and HFH prepare our players to professionally fundraise, but it takes time and effort to “show me the money”.
This year, Will Reiber literally raised thousands of dollars in crowdfunding for our Home Runs event. This is impressive, considering he also serves on our HFH Board of Directors, attends and participates in other events and committees, and works full-time for the Aberdeen Police Department. Will began his career as a police officer in 1999 after growing up and playing baseball in Edgewood for the Rams, and he joined the Aberdeen Police in 2006. He is currently Captain and Patrol & Field Operations Commander. WE can’t thank him enough for the extra effort off the field. Meanwhile, on the field, he led his team with 725 total points and blasted 3 home runs. Not bad. One of those homers was almost caught by his son Brooks, who scaled the left field wall, reached over, and just had the ball glance off his glove! And everyone with a father would agree, while Will is MVP-Worthy, that was the best (and smartest) play Brooks never made!!
Scott Elliot