‘Just getting to brighten their day up a little bit and even brighten our day up’
If anyone needs to be cheered up this time of year, or any time of year, it’s the patients at Cook Children’s Medical Center who will be spending Christmas in the hospital fighting disease or severe injury.
No child deserves to be going through what the ones who Texas Rangers players, executives, broadcasters and owners met with Monday in Fort Worth.
It’s an annual tradition for the Rangers to visit children in area hospitals. They will head to Dallas on Tuesday to do the same.
Give back, yes, but the purpose of the Rangers’ visit is to help the kids forget for a moment what they have on their plate.
“Just getting to see all the kids,” left fielder Joey Gallo said. “Just getting to brighten their day up a little bit and even brighten our day up. It means a lot for us and them. It’s special to be here today. That’s why I always and want as many of our teammates out here just to show our face.”
Gallo, center fielder Delino DeShields and right-hander Matt Bush were back Monday for the second straight year. They understand who they are, and that a lot of the patients they were there to see are either Rangers fans or want to grow up to be professional ballplayers.
Some just want to get out of their hospital rooms.
It doesn’t matter why they come down to meet the players. The players’ job, which included room visits for those children too sick to leave their rooms, was to make the children feel better.
“It’s just a feel-good thing,” DeShields said. “We get to show our face and have that personal interaction with these kids and the nurses who spend all their time here and might not be able to get home for Christmas.”
Bush’s experience is that the kids do get excited seeing him and other teammates. That’s what makes the hospital visits rewarding for them.
“Some are worse off than others, but they love having us here,” said Bush, who signed a minor-league deal with the Rangers. “It’s very exciting for us to be here.”
