I tell people all the time that the best perks of working in baseball are the places I get to visit and the relationships I build with the people I meet along the way. Both held true during the past week, which I spent in Las Vegas, Nevada for the 2018 Baseball Winter Meetings. Experiencing 'Sin City' for the first time was cool, hanging out with my 'baseball family' was even better. You see, when I refer to my 'baseball family,' I’m talking about the friends and colleagues that I’ve been fortunate enough to meet through this game. Thanks to my mom, Angela, and the incredible power of social media, I had the pleasure of meeting (most of) the Dawson family. Some of you might know of them from eight-year-old Hailey Dawson’s 'Journey to 30' throwing out the first pitch with her robotic right hand at every Major League stadium. Hailey, her mother, Yong, and brother, Zach, stopped by the Mandalay Bay hotel for a chat with me last Wednesday afternoon, and I quickly realized there’s something special about them. “Baseball is our family,” Yong told me. The Dawsons, who live in a suburb of Las Vegas, embarked on their 'Journey to 30' with the purpose of informing the world about Poland Syndrome while spreading hope and inspiration through baseball. And they succeeded. “Almost 100% of the people I’ve spoken to about Poland Syndrome when they asked what [Hailey] had, they didn’t know what it was. A lot of people know what it is now. “She’s kind of been like the poster child for Poland Syndrome. There’s not really an organization nationally out there (for it). There are some Facebook support groups, and on those Facebook support groups they all know that she’s the one out there talking about it, getting it on national news that this is what she has, this is what people out there have,” Yong says. Their journey wasn’t about seeing ballparks or meeting athletes and celebrities; It was about using a national platform to help people… to make a difference while accepting people’s differences. A mission this large couldn’t be done alone, so the Dawsons took on the challenge as a group. “From a family perspective, as a mom, it was something for us to get to do together as a family, and along the way we got to talk about Poland Syndrome, which is what [Hailey] was born with, and we got to talk about her robotic hand,” Yong says. “So the school, UNLV, who makes her hand, has already made other kids’ hands because of Hailey, because they saw Hailey. A couple kids locally and nationally, we’ve been in contact with some families who want the hand, so we’ve been able to direct them to go to schools where they’re near to get hands from those schools.” Hailey used her robotic hand to throw her very first, first pitch at a Major League Stadium in August 2015 when she was five years old. Three years later, a ton of people involved in baseball know who she is. But most people don’t know much else about her and her family. Hailey likes to draw, swim, dance, play T-ball, and watch her brother play baseball. She likes Taylor Swift and the Backstreet Boys. She's a big Vegas Golden Knights hockey fan. And she can 'dab' and 'floss' as good as any eight-year-old I’ve seen. When I told Yong that I liked their family's Twitter profile picture of Hailey dabbing after throwing out a first pitch for the Royals, Hailey excitedly told me, “I dabbed because I threw a strike.” And how did it feel to have the crowd cheering for you? "Amazing," she said. The Dawsons are Orioles fans thanks to Hailey and Zach’s father Greg’s mid-Atlantic roots, and Oriole Park at Camden Yards is where Hailey’s 'Journey to 30' began. When I asked Hailey who her favorite baseball player is, she responded, “Manny Machado,” without hesitation. Her other favorite players are Las Vegas natives Kris Bryant and Bryce Harper, Anthony Rizzo, Jose Altuve, and Nate Schmidt, a defenseman from the NHL's Golden Knights. She has a denim jacket with all their numbers and team logos. Hailey will also want you to know that if she can do something, then you can too. “For her, it’s just all that self confidence and that boost of who she is,” Yong says. “She’s never really hid her hand from when she was born, but I don’t think she ever will.” “Never!,” Hailey responds. That vote of confidence is the backbone of Hailey and her family’s whirlwind journey across the Major Leagues. “I want her to keep inspiring people. She doesn’t realize the impact of it (yet). I do as a mom. Someone like her, she can really inspire people. She may not get it right now, but she will eventually,” says Yong, before Hailey chimes in with “I do!,” getting a chuckle out of her mom. Other kids have robotic hands because of her and people know about Poland Syndrome. Whether she gets it now or later, Hailey is undoubtedly making an impact. Her rise into the national spotlight has been so important because it’s happened for the right reasons. _____ When I asked Hailey what was her favorite part about her 'Journey to 30,' her answer was simple. “I get to meet a lot of people,” she said. Hailey has made a direct impact on a countless number of people she’s met, especially kids living with Poland Syndrome, so I asked which interactions stood out the most. Yong thought of one right away. “The first actual person [Hailey] ever met with Poland Syndrome was at the [Texas] Rangers game. His name is Austin, he’s 12. We had communicated on Facebook, his mom and me, and she said she was going to come down to the game. We had two extra tickets, so they were able to come on the field with us and he was able to meet some ball players too. He had just gotten his robotic hand, and he got his because his mom saw [Hailey’s] story the year before. I told her to reach out to Oklahoma University engineering and she did, and they ended up building him a hand,” Yong said. How about interactions with players? Hailey mentioned Bryant, as well as his Cubs’ teammate, Rizzo, whom she adores. “We didn’t get to see Rizzo at the Cubs game. We saw Rizzo when she was pitching for the Brewers and they were playing the Cubs, and he came over during batting practice,” Yong said. “At the World Series last year he got the Roberto Clemente Award, so he was at an event that we were at and spent a few hours with Hailey just hanging out and playing ball and stuff with the Play Ball event, so we saw him at the World Series last year and then when she pitched for the Brewers, [the Cubs] were having batting practice and he came over and he asked her, ‘Hi Hailey, do you remember me?’” Yong later told me that for Hailey, seeing Rizzo at Miller Park after meeting him at the World Series “meant the world to her.” How many eight year olds have Major League All-Stars asking if they remember them? It shows how fast Hailey has captured the hearts of so many… and counting. After we finished our interview I brought the Dawsons through the Mandalay Bay hotel to check out the MLB Network set, which Zach and Hailey really wanted to see. Right before the on-air crew was preparing to go live, Mark DeRosa and Ken Rosenthal stopped by to chat. “DeRo” was happy to take a picture with Hailey, but he wanted to know if she wanted to take one with him. That’s how it goes when you’re an eight-year-old celebrity. Then it was Ken’s turn. “I would be honored to take a picture with you,” Rosenthal said. But we weren’t done, and I was loving every minute of it. On the way out, Yong spotted a friend: Brewers minor-league infielder, Jake Hager, another Las Vegas native. “We gotta get a picture!,” he said after a hug. Then as we were ready to part ways, Jake added, “Can I have another hug?” Wow, that was awesome. And it all happened within the span of about 20 minutes. I asked Zach what it’s like to see his sister put smiles on so many faces. “It’s really cool,” he said, just like any big brother would. _____ Whether people personally know Hailey and the rest of the Dawson family, or they just know of them, their story has spread across social media, mainly through their family’s Instagram account @haileys_hand, which took the country by storm during the 'Journey to 30' tour and currently has almost 11,000 followers. Yong doesn’t know too much about social media, but she knows simply getting their story out there means something. “I don’t know who sees it, but if it inspires one person, that’s enough for me,” she says. And keeping their story going is a priority, literally. “We’re talking about writing a kids’ book with Hailey’s best friend and her first-grade teacher, who is her best friend’s mom. She likes art, so something to do with that. We want to be able to touch other kids so they can be inspired and they can learn to accept diversity and difference. “There’s about 700 kids that go to her school and nobody says anything to her. If they do, she has a group of friends that all kind of defend her and tell people, ‘this is what she has, it is what it is, she was born with it.’ They’ve all kind of accepted it. Now as she gets older, it’s going to be different because kids can be cruel as they get older. I think as she gets older, that confidence will keep building, that she can deal with this stuff and know how to deal with it,” Yong says. The purpose of the book is clear, but what will its theme and plot be? Yong has some ideas. “It’s going to be about a kid that has different hands, and each hand will have a different thing that it can do. If someone is being bullied she can put on her red hand and that’s the red hand that deals with bullying, and the green hand will do something else,” Yong says. “That’s what I envision so that kids can read this book and [know] that Hailey’s out there with this hand and she can help solve problems at her age, and be a kid who can inspire others to look at it this way.” You never know what someone is going through on a daily basis or what challenges they live with. Hailey and her family are passing along that message on a national landscape. At eight years old, Hailey is showing the world there’s no age restriction on inspiring someone, spreading hope, and making a difference. The Dawsons have inspired people on a daily basis for quite some time now, and they’re just getting started… you can bet on that. “What we’re trying to do is learn to accept,” Yong says. “I want people to look at her and go, ‘hey, if she can do that, there’s hope for the rest of us.’” Story by Michael Marcantonini Special thank you to the Dawson family for taking the time to do this interview! Photo credits to Yong Dawson, check out her website here
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March 2020
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