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TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY SURVIVOR GETS HELP FROM ‘HOMERS FOR HOPE’

DOYLESTOWN, Pennsylvania (WPVI) — For local baseball fans with big hearts, the pitch was simple: help pay the bills for families in need.

“About 11 years ago, a really good guy that we played baseball with, he died in a really untimely accident. He was roughly 30 years old,” said Homers for Hope co-founder John Durso. “So, we did a home run derby to help his wife pay some bills.”

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JAIRO MUÑOZ – HOPE ON THE DIAMOND – PART I

Children shuffled toward Jairo Muñoz. They knew nothing about him except what they saw: a 6-foot-5 pitcher, 24 years old, skinny as a snake and smiling at them shyly, his navy-blue-trimmed white uniform drooping off him like a limp flag from a pole. Each of them offered him a cap, or a baseball, or a sleeve of a shirt, and a pen. They said little. He said less.

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JAIRO MUÑOZ – HOPE ON THE DIAMOND – PART II

The scope of the project had exceeded John Durso’s wildest hopes long before he met Jairo Muñoz, and his cellphone hummed like a harmonica because of it.  A friend of Durso’s, a buddy he’d played baseball with since they were teenagers, had died in an accident in 2009, and to help the friend’s widow and son, Durso had organized a fund-raiser, a home run derby at a Little League field, in their old Roxborough neighborhood.

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JAIRO MUÑOZ – HOPE ON THE DIAMOND – PART III

To John Durso, nothing could better demonstrate his devotion to helping Jairo Muñoz than those freezing November nights in North Philadelphia.  Durso had welcomed Muñoz on to the Homers for Hope baseball team, and into his home. He and his wife, Katie, had taught Muñoz some rudimentary English. He had done all of this under the tyranny of the calendar.

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