Camp Sundown shines in the Bronx (Props to the Yankees for this one)

[trumad]

Pretty F'ing sad story---



The team facing Yankees ace A.J. Burnett a few weeks back at Yankee Stadium has to go down as the oddest in baseball history.

For one thing, it plays only at night. The players have no choice. Even one minute of sunshine can kill them.

They're from Camp Sundown, in Craryville, N.Y., and they live life on the other side of the sun. All of them have the rare disease known as XP -- xeroderma pigmentosum. If kids with XP catch the slightest UV ray, they can and do develop cancerous tumors. Even fluorescent lights fry their skin like boiling oil. Most of them don't live to be 20.

<snip>
There is no cure for XP. If you're born with it, you're one in a million. There are only 250 known cases in the U.S. Until Camp Sundown was founded 14 years ago by Caren and Dan Mahar, whose daughter Katie has the disease, few of these kids had met anyone else with XP. For most of them, Yankee Stadium was the first MLB ballpark they'd ever seen -- and probably it will be the last.

Getting here wasn't easy.

To make the seven-foot trip from the front door of Camp Sundown to the curtained bus with double-tinted windows that took them to Yankee Stadium, all the XPers had to wear hats, tinted eye shields, vats of sunblock, turtlenecks, long-sleeve shirts, long pants and gloves. Even with all that, they ran.

Because they couldn't leave until the sun was almost down, and because it was a three-hour drive, they knew they'd be able to see only the last couple of innings of the game. But then it rained, causing a more-than-two-hour rain delay. While the rest of the crowd cursed, the campers rejoiced. How lucky can you get? The bus arrived just before the first pitch. "It was almost like the game was waiting for them to show up," Yankees GM Brian Cashman said. "That kind of gave us goosebumps."
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=reilly_rick&id=4391631&sportCat=mlb

[Forkboy]

1. Damn.

:(

I hate the Yankees but, like with the Montreal Canadiens, it's never been over a lack of class. Hats off to them or doing this.

[Onceuponalife]

2. That's the saddest thing I've ever heard

Not being able to ever enjoy the sun's rays? Damn.

[madinmaryland]

3. Thanks for this story. I had never heard of such a disease.

Hat's off to the Yankees for doing this for these kids!

Kind of puts things into perspective.

Thanks, tru.