NO MEANS YES: NYC Marathon, here I come

As crushing as it was to see "NO" when I entered my name at noon today for the 2007 ING New York City Marathon entrant database, I decided that I am undaunted by the lottery result and will be running the event anyway on behalf of Team for Kids! Thank you to everyone who left me good-luck comments, I really appreciate that!

6/8/07 at Cocoa Beach

No, my name was not accepted out of the 98,000 applications from around the world, all vying for about 37,000 spots in the world's biggest marathon. Yes, first reaction was disbelief. But it's all good! You can still run it for charity if you're registered (I registered in February), and I had a lot of supportive MLB colleagues around me here at the offices to pick me up and reinforce that I will have no problem raising the required $2,500 in pledges by the Nov. 4 event. I will go directly from the World Series in some unknown city once I have washed the champagne out of my hair (I always get soaked in the clubhouse!) to a Sunday morning start on Staten Island and then run over the bridge to Brooklyn to Queens to The Bronx to Central Park and practically my front door at Tavern on the Green.

I LOVE RUNNING!

I ALSO LOVE KIDS!

This is perfect for me, and like I said, colleagues here at our MLB offices told me I definitely should do this so I did. And how cool that I just submitted my Team for Kids membership form on the week of Father's Day. It will be an even more fun way to share my first 26.2-mile journey with my three awesome boys, whose Dad will be wearing that bright green singlet within the same year as he quit smoking mainly for them.

So here's the deal, and there will be more details to follow with my fundraising form. Team for Kids raises critical funds for New York Road Runners Foundation youth programs. Team members are adult runners who pledge to raise funds for NYRRF as they train for and compete in premier NYRR races, including the ING New York City Marathon and the NYC Half-Marathon Presented by NIKE (which I am also going to be running on August 5!). Since 2002, Team for Kids members have raised more than $5 million for NYRRF and the children they serve.

Supported by the powerful outreach of Team for Kids members, more than 25,000 children a week in more than 150 schools and community centers now participate in NYRRF programs, where they learn critical skills to improve their physical health, emotional well-being, and capacity for personal achievement.

Last week, I received a letter from my Aunt Marti. Her brother, my father, passed away last year. I really miss my Dad. He had the heart of a lion. He would do anything for anyone. In the last year of his life while battling multiple myeloma, he volunteered to drive cancer patients to their chemo treatments. When he passed away, I had to stay around at the hospice to meet the University of Louisville people who had driven two hours to pick up my Dad, who donated his body to medical science there. He donated supplies constantly to a home of nuns in Eastern Kentucky, and all I ever remember most is his desire to make a difference. So that letter from my Aunt Marti read: "Your father's spirit of honesty and giving now lives in you." That felt like a lot to live up to. It was instilled by his mother, my grandmother, who would take me to the State Hospital as a boy just to be around mentally retarded children, and she would always say, "Mark, always remember other people." If I can be half the man my Dad was, I will die pretty happy one day. I have a ton of living to do first, and to live the right way.

Distance running is such an individual sport, with such a focus on ME such as my physique, my mileage, my nutrition, my course, my music while I run...it may be the most individual of athletic endeavors that there is. It is generally solitude, you and your thoughts. I have thought for these last six months about that, and I have been pleased that there are so many NYRR events that benefit worthy causes. In that small way, it feels like you are making a little difference. But I know there has to be much, much more. I never feel like I am doing nearly enough, and I suppose that is how one should feel. I am going to be very happy to start the Team for Kids fundraising.

Now I have something at stake in this that is not just me and my training. It feels like something more, even though I know I wanted to see a YES on that lottery acceptance form that everyone was checking today on the NYC Marathon site. Next year this is a moot point, because just a few weeks ago I qualified for the 2008 NYC Marathon by virtue of running the minimum nine NYRR scored qualifying races in 2007. I just know that within an hour of getting the lottery news, I went from "crushed" to "excited." Yes, everyone will be hearing from me. I won't mean to be a pest. But I now have a marathon to run and another reason to run it. It feels good to know it's all set finally.

This feels like a good time to post a photo I just found of my Dad, and I'm guessing it was sometime in the late '70s. There's also a shot of me and my own sons who I can't wait to spend time with this Father's Day weekend. I am going to be dedicating my first marathon to them, and running it for KIDS everywhere!

Just remember: NO MEANS YES!

Mark