Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Wake Forest coach donates a kidney to player

The story is here, it was published yesterday, and I saw it only after yesterday's blog post of organ donation stories.

"When a coach says he would do anything for his players, it sounds like a cliché.

"Then there is Wake Forest baseball coach Tom Walter.

"On Monday, Walter donated one of his healthy kidneys to Kevin Jordan, a Wake Forest freshman outfielder talented enough to be drafted in the 19th round by the New York Yankees last year but sick enough to wonder if he would ever play again.

"Surviving became Jordan's challenge.

"Today, Walter and Jordan are recuperating together at Emory University in Atlanta, each with one healthy kidney and baseball in their futures.

"I wanted to help this young man," Walter, 42, said on a conference call last week. "When we recruit our guys, we talk about family and making sacrifices for one another. It's something we take very seriously."

"When no one in Jordan's family could give him what he needed, the baseball coach - for whom Jordan has never played a game - did."

Note that there's even an unraveling aspect to the story: the young man was drafted by the Yankees as a high school student.

HT: Thayer Morrill

2 comments:

Uncle Big Steve said...

Why do I see the NCAA stepping in and saying he won't be able to play baseball for Wake Forest for receiving unauthorized payments?

dWj said...

That's not unravel"ing" example; high school kids have been drafted regularly in baseball pretty much continuously since before college was common.