ALS Alert - Robert Packard Center for ALS Research

A Friend Indeed:
Orioles Hit Home Runs for ALS

Cal Ripken: his streak helped the Center.

With the Orioles and ALS research, the connection was serendipity. Everything just fell into place the summer of 1995, when Oriole great Cal Ripken was on the verge of breaking Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games-played record.

At first, the idea of having the Baltimore team support the search for a cure wasn’t obvious—despite Lou Gehrig’s death from ALS. But one evening, as the rest of the country followed Ripken’s every move, a group of men, including Orioles owner Peter Angelos, settled down to a quiet dinner and planning session in a Baltimore restaurant. When Angelos asked the men to consider a way to mark what was sure to be an historic, record-setting game for the Orioles, his friend Dick McCready leaned forward and suggested “support ALS research.”

McCready has a history of kindness toward medical causes—at Johns Hopkins, for example, he helped found the Grant-a-Wish Foundation to ease the lives of children with life-threatening diseases. He also had another tie: McCready hoped to spare others the experiences his mother had endured as a patient with ALS. She’d gotten good care at Hopkins, but McCready saw that the search for a cure greatly needed funding.

With no time to lose, Angelos set up the Cal Ripken Jr./Lou Gehrig Fund to support ALS research. At Ripken’s historic game in September 1995, the Orioles sold 260 special on-the-field seats, and Cal presented a $2 million check to Hopkins while the crowd cheered.

Center friends take over an
Oriole Park skybox.

Since then, Orioles’ donations have continued to swell and currently have far exceeded the $2 million. The ball club’s help, both in dollars and in services is making a real difference for the Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins.

Both Dick McCready, a food broker and successful Baltimore businessman, and Orioles’ Vice Chairman and COO Joe Foss are now on the Center’s board of directors.

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