(Tuesday) Going To Bat For Brian

FirstEnergy Park will play host to a very special baseball doubleheader
Wednesday night and neither game will involve the BlueClaws, who are currently on the road. Fans from the shore area will get to see a host of high school seniors play their final high school game as well as some other players who used to shine return to the diamond. What’s most important about the doubleheader is all proceeds will benefit “Going to Bat for Brian” and the “Light Up Manchester Fund Drive.”

Brian Malast is a former star athlete at Manchester Township High School
who later played football at Virginia Military Institute. He was a rookie New Jersey State Trooper who was involved in an auto accident while working in September of 2005…that accident left him paralyzed. Just a year ago a baseball game at FirstEnergy Park raised thousands of dollars to help with his long-term recovery and care. The other beneficiary of the game is to complete the lighting project on the football field at Manchester, a grass-roots effort that started because of Craig Leppert, a soon-to-be junior. The Hawks linebacker has a very rare disease that makes it difficult and dangerous for him to be exposed to sunlight and with lights he’ll be able to enjoy mostly night games. The community has rallied behind the project and Manchester will play its first night game to open the season on September 7th against Wall.

Back to the baseball doubleheader. The Shore Baseball Coaches Association will play their annual Ocean versus Monmouth County game beginning at 5pm. This game features top seniors, including Pat Biserta (Point Boro), Joe Talerico (TR South), Keith Weinkofsky (Ocean) and Anthony Ranaudo (St. Rose)…all of whom are on the Jersey Shore team now competing in the Carpenter Cup at the University of Pennsylvania.
Wednesday’s second game (7:30) will match former shore players like Charlie Frazier, JM Gold, Marc Fink and Travis Musolf against a group of State Troopers.

Tickets cost $10, although kids 12 and under wearing a Little League shirt will be admitted free. This is certainly an event in which the final score will not be what’s shown on the scoreboard but rather the impact it has on the lives of others.