A baseball league for children with special needs is looking to expand its roster of 16 teams to include more Ohio kids.
The Miracle League, an international organization that offers America’s favorite sport to children with mental and physical disabilities, serves about 200 kids in the Dublin area, but would like to reach more kids in central Ohio.
The field where Miracle Leaguers play is specially outfitted for access with a hard rubber playing surface that makes wheeling and walker-pushing easy and includes other features to allow players with all sorts of special needs to play ball.
Each child is paired with a “buddy” – middle- and high-school aged volunteers who help each player stay in the game. Everybody gets to bat, so even though games are just two innings long, they can last a while. There are no outs, and the last player to bat each inning always scores a home run. True to the league’s name, each game “miraculously” ends in a tie.
The league offers kids with issues ranging from brain injury to autism to a range of physical and mental needs a chance to feel “normal” away from the stares and taunts of so-called “typical” kids, according to league coaches and parents.
The Miracle League has more than 240 affiliates across the U.S., Australia and Canada, giving thousands of kids a means to play America’s pastime in the fresh air and sunshine and to dream of the big leagues like generations before them.
As the league’s motto says, every child deserves a chance to play baseball.
One Ohio birth injury lawyer says that this is a great opportunity to help children with special needs, in particular, those that suffer from their conditions as a result of medical malpractice.