TCU baseball fan’s tweet becomes #MashForMicah campaign overnight

In the middle of a meeting, Houston attorney Joe Gagnon thought about baseball and TCU and Micah Ahern.

He composed a tweet and hit send.

Before he was home Thursday night, his post was viral. His personal pledge — to donate $10 for every Horned Frogs home run in 2017 to the scholarship fund named for the 7-year-old boy who died after a struggle with cancer — caught on with TCU fans on the eve of the new season.

“He’s gone, but he meant so much to so many people,” Gagnon said. “I knew this scholarship had been established, so I thought, ‘I’m going to do this.’ I use Twitter a lot for TCU sports. It’s just one of those fun outlet things for me. I posted this one tweet. I had no idea it would really catch on.”

Micah Ahern was an honorary member of the TCU baseball team for three seasons, introduced to the team by Team IMPACT, a Massachusetts organization that matches children suffering from chronic illnesses with college teams. The Arlington boy died July 28.

“I have a son who’s Micah’s age,” said Gagnon, a 1990 TCU graduate who lives in Houston with his wife and two children. “We all followed Micah and his journey. We all felt for him. He was a teammate. We saw how bravely he struggled through neuroblastoma. This is such a small thing that somebody can do for someone who meant so much to so many people, and not just the team, but the fans, too.”

The TCU SB Nation fan site FrogsOWar.com retweeted Gagnon’s original tweet, giving it widespread notice, and added the #MashForMicah hashtag. The accounted tweeted late Thursday night that 75 pledges amounted to $268 per home run promised to the scholarship fund. TCU, which opens as the nation’s top-ranked team Friday night against Penn State, hit 55 home runs last season.

Gagnon said he was “blown away” by the response to his tweet.

“I was driving back from Austin to Houston; you’re stopped at all those lights as you leave Austin, and each time I would check, there were more people tweeting, ‘Look, I can do a dollar,’ ‘If Luken Baker hits a grand slam to win the College World Series, I can do X amount,’ “ Gagnon said. “Everybody had a hand in it. This has just been an incredible day to watch this happening.”

In 2015, TCU students and fans raised thousands for the family of Abby Faber, an Iowa girl who was greeted in her wheelchair by Horned Frogs quarterback Trevone Boykin before the coin toss of a football game at Iowa State. The Star-Telegram photograph by Paul Moseley gained national attention after Boykin posted it on his Instagram account.

Gagnon praised the spirit that leads to Internet moments like that.

“Everybody can unite behind something like this,” he said. “We all have more in common than not, and it’s great when we can find ways to do something together.”

This story was originally published February 16, 2017 at 11:22 PM with the headline "TCU baseball fan’s tweet becomes #MashForMicah campaign overnight."