From NWAHomepage.com...

"On Monday, January 18th, The Kansas City Royals Winter Caravan is going through northwest Arkansas.  This year, current Royal Firstbaseman, Billy Butler, highlights a group of current and former players in the caravan.  Tickets are still available and include a lunch buffet and an opportunity to meet the players.  For more information call 927-4900."

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“You can teach a lot about life out on a baseball field, if you coach it right,” said Peggy McCall, executive director of the Miracle League. Referring to an organization she started in the fall of 2006 that allows kids and adults with disabilities to play baseball at a modified ballpark. The idea actually came about two years prior to when the first game was held. McCall approached the mayor of Little Rock and asked for Ray Winder field, but was told the local rotary club would be a better place to go to get plans moving. She told Club 99, “I’m going to do this, why don’t we team up and we will make this thing happen together.”

The rotary club raised the money and after nine months of construction, the field, located off of Cantrell by Cajun’s Warf, was completed. “We started our first little season in the fall of 2006. We had 41 players. Then we added 40 more in the spring,” McCall said. “Our range of disability is huge, from really high functioning to the highly involved.” She explained that, to the general public, the high functioning kids don’t really demonstrate any disability. Highly involved kids can be blind, deaf or perhaps in a wheelchair. “We have everything. We have some kids who have a one in a million diagnosis,” McCall said. But she stressed that the diagnosis is not even a thought on the field. “My theory is that, the less you know sometimes, the more normal you treat people,” she said. McCall credits the simple theory to the success of the organization. “They are kids first and they happen to have a disability. There is no pity,” she explained. “They are rotten, ornery kids and that’s how we treat them!”

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