Romo, Yankees Team Up for Good
Tony Romo escorts a 10-year-old boy battling leukemia to Yankees batting practice on Tuesday as a part of the Starlight Foundation.
By SCOTT M. CRISP
Updated 11:52 PM CST, Wed, Jul 1, 2009
Tony Romo, who is currently golfing alongside Tiger Woods for the AT&T National Pro-Am in Maryland, spent Tuesday afternoon in the Big Apple, fulfilling a 10-year-old boy’s dream of meeting the quarterback, along with some Yankees as well.
As a part of his work with the Starlight Foundation, Romo took Ben Grant, a 10-year-old suffering from leukemia to watch the Yankees take batting practice at the new Yankees Stadium before their game against the Mariners on Tuesday night.
Romo joked that he would play catch with Ben using a football, but not a baseball.
"Most of the time, I think I'm unimportant in a lot of ways, so when you feel like you can influence someone and allow them to be happier, that really hits home," said Romo. "I think that's one area that many of us, myself included, who are in a position in the public eye need to help out more."
The quarterback is in the early stages of setting up his own foundation.
ESPN made mention of the Starlight function on Wednesday morning’s SportsCenter but, ravenous pseudo-journalists they are, the story was soon transmogrified into a forum in which to discuss the conjured tension between Terrell Owens and Romo.
To his credit, Romo grinned and shucked a question from Ed Werder that roughly equated to, “Don’t you hate Terrell Owens?” opting instead to praise Owens for his abilities.
Indeed, ESPN seems to have abandoned any hope of legitimacy as a journalistic enterprise. Standing between two benign parties, the network has resigned itself to holding onto a semi-true story that is as old and irrelevant as the XFL tooth and nail.
Usually, this is vaguely annoying, nothing more and nothing less.
But using a heartwarming, positive situation to further their own catty agenda is a new low. In that vein, I will eliminate said network from my vocabulary for a while, in hopes that if I ignore the monster on my television, it might go away.
After all, incontrovertible positives are few and far between in the world of professional sports. Tuesday afternoon in the Bronx was just such an instance. Romo joked with the boy, along with Derek Jeter and other Yankees, and the smiles were ubiquitous until batting practice was cut short by rain.
Ben listed his favorite teams as the Yankees, the Cowboys and Dallas’s division rival, the New York Giants. Jokingly, Romo yelled, “No! Not the Giants!”
Romo even got the boy to promo a certain program on a certain sports news network, which Grant did with zeal.
Funny as it is, I can’t remember what that network was called.
Copyright NBC Local Media
First Published: Jul 1, 2009 3:36 PM CST
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