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Source: St.迷你倉 Louis Post-DispatchSept. 21--After one of the many hospital visits Cardinals closer Jason Motte made this summer to see a young friend battling cancer, his wife noticed how little he talked as he strapped their baby daughter into her car seat, how he hesitated when starting the car, how he moved with a different gravity, like he was carrying something new.A purpose can be heavy."When something is weighing on Jason, something inside, he doesn't say too much," said Caitlin Motte, recalling that moment. "He gets real quiet. His body language gives it away. It wasn't a great visit. You could see it weighing on him."It was like something changed in Jason."Motte and his family had spent time that day with Brandt Ballenger, an 8-year-old patient and fast friend who called Jason "Hobo." Brandt had little energy that day and fewer smiles as the cancer or the treatment to attack the cancer had exhausted him. His father, Jeff, said there were times like this, "when things had gone in a direction we didn't want them to go."The phrase itself is part of the coping, referring to cancer treatment like it's a map. As if wrong turns happen and only a little nudge from the GPS is needed to steer back on course and away from the destination no one discusses. Motte sat in the car about to leave the Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center parking lot and decided on the direction he had to go.His wife remembers how Jason didn't say much until he said something."I've got to do more."After several months of planning and prodding -- "He heard a lot of 'nos' before he got a 'yes,'" Caitlin said -- the launch of Motte's more arrives Monday with "Strikeout Childhood Cancer" at Busch Stadium. The Cardinals are selling discounted $10 pavilion tickets, $3 of which will go to the Jason Motte Foundation and then directly to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital to support pediatric cancer research.A total of 5,000 tickets have been held aside at the price; more will be offered if they sell out, an official said. At least 1,000 additional tickets will be given away to children currently in the hospital or recently discharged and their families. For the patients who cannot leave their hospitals, Motte plans to lead several teammates Monday morning on visits to, in his words, "take the game to them."Cardinals community relations director Mark Taylor called the pediatric cancer awareness day at the ballpark "our beta for what this day really could be."This is how a pitcher who cannot pitch spent his summer.Motte, who led the National League with 42 saves in 2012, will not throw an inning for the club this season. A ligament in his right elbow split during spring training, reconstructive surgery followed, and his year was over before it began. Only recently did rehab begin to include lightly tossing an actual baseball. That zeal he had to attack the ninth inning and fire fastballs at 100 mph has been rechanneled.Through chance meetings and social media, he befriended two young boys, Lane Goodwin and Brandt, and became part of their fights against cancer and campaigns for more awareness. The days he would have spent at some faraway ballpark with the Cardinals were instead spent with Brandt, playing Angry Birds, and throwing himself into phone calls and meetings and conversations to "help these families fighting for their children up in the hospital rooms know they're not alone," he said.At spring training, Motte chatted with several reporters about his frayed elbow and his lost season. He mentioned how his faith assured him the injury happened for a reason.He had no idea how right he was."The injury closed one door, but it opened so many others," Motte said. "This has had such a lasting effect on me. I had to make the most of this time. It makes it even more obvious I'm supposed to be doing something else. If you were to say to me, 'Hey, you don't need surgery, you could have 40 saves, do all this stuff and not meet Brandt, not know his family, not learn what I have' -- I would have the surgery all over again."STRIKING OUT CANCERBefore Motte met Brandt, something started with an iPod.Back in 2010, the year before Motte closed out the Cardinals' World Series championship, Jason and Caitlin loaded up an iPod with Mozart and Pachebel's Canon and other classical music for her grandfather, Lynn Doyle. "D," as everyone called him, had been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. The iPod was meant to be a companion during treatment -- that is, when Jason wasn't.With Doyle one day at the West Clinic in Memphis, Tenn., Motte saw a request for blankets. Blankets? He could donate blankets. But it wasn't that simple. The hospital couldn't accept actual blankets but sought charitable donations to purchase blankets. Motte asked around about organizing a drive. Caitlin recalled Doyle's advice: "Don't halfway throw a fundraiser."Within a year, the Mottes hosted a "Strike Out Cancer" auction. It took some time to organize -- Motte collected items during the 2012 season -- but in November 2012 they raised $37,000, all of it for the Wings Cancer Foundation."We got it started, and it led to other things," Motte said.One connection, one event led to several more. During the 2011 World Series, Motte flipped a ball from the bullpen to a boy he didn't know. Motte later found out the Cardinals fan from Kentucky was Lane, and he was battling an aggressive cancer. Motte signed the ball "Thumbs Up," a nod to the "Thumbs Up for Lane Goodwin" campaign on social media.The baseball-themed T-shirt company 108 Stitches had a red shirt printed with a backward "K," the universal symbol for a called strikeout. Motte asked about putting the word "cancer" underneath, and the shirt has spread through clubhouses. On Thursday, at least four Cardinals, including Matt Holliday and Chris Carpenter, wore their "K Cancer" shirts during pregame warm-ups. A portion of the sales from the T-shirt benefit the Jason Motte Foundation, itself an outgrowth of these connections Motte has made.There was no going halfway.DEALING WITH LOSSESBut along the way, there were losses. Doyle died Dec. 26, 2011, 11 months before the fundraiser he inspired happened. While Motte pitched two scoreless innings for a save in Game 3 of the 2012 National League championship series, his friend Lane died. Lane was 13. Through him, Motte had become more involved in the social media movement for cancer awareness, and it was on Twitter that he received a request.The 儲存倉ardinals closer was asked to make a "Team Brandt" poster to show support for a young Swansea boy who had been diagnosed with Wilms' tumor, Stage 4. Brandt was too small and the tumor too big for it to be removed when first diagnosed.Motte made the sign, but he also made it a point to keep tabs on Brandt.In early 2013, while Motte was in spring training, he saw on the Team Brandt Facebook page that Brandt's "Make-A-Wish" trip to Orlando, Fla., had been pushed up. No one needed to explain why. Motte reached out to the family and arranged to meet Brandt at a hotel in Orlando, on an off day for Cardinals' workouts. The families clicked.Brandt filched Caitlin's phone and started taking selfies, which Motte still has on his phone. Brandt tugged on Motte's beard. Motte learned all about Brandt's duel with cancer. Halfway through his first rounds of treatment, Brandt's family learned the tumor had an increased resistance to chemotherapy. Instead of "being six months from being done, we started over and had 18 months to go," Jeff Ballenger said. During spring, new nodules had formed in his lungs."The cancer," Jeff said, recalling that day, "was back."Motte heard all about the day they first learned Brandt had cancer -- Oct. 29, 2011. Motte knew it well. It was the day after the Cardinals won the World Series."After the World Series, you're thinking, 'I am the man. I am on top of the world. I friggin' won the World Series, and this is the greatest thing ever,'" Motte said. "A day later, up the street five minutes, there is someone finding out that their child has cancer. This is happening on a daily basis. On a daily basis families are finding out the worst news they ever could get about their 8-year-old son."That's when it hits you."ONE LIFE IMPACTING ANOTHERWhen Motte met with Brandt, there was usually an iPad.Brandt went through several of them during his treatment, filling one tablet up and needing one with more memory until he had the largest available. He loved dinosaurs and had "Jurassic Park" movies loaded on his iPad. Swiping his way through page after page of Brandt's apps, Motte laughed one day when he pointed out that 250 needed updating. The iPad was more than a pastime, it was a hint to Brandt's comfort: If it sat ignored, his parents knew he was having a rough day.Motte visited Brandt in the hospital or at home or after rehab sessions. He brought Brandt on the truck ride around Busch Stadium on opening day, and Brandt counted the signs for him and noticed none for Motte. They don't make posters for injured pitchers, Motte told him.Brandt, quick to remind people "don't forget the 'D'" in his name, was shy when meeting new people, but precocious around ones he knew. He called Motte "Hobo" because of how scruffy and disheveled the pitcher's drivers license looked."Brandt had this huge impact on my life," Motte said. "It wasn't just, 'Hey, go see the kid in the hospital.' It's not, hand over a teddy bear, OK, sweet man, shake hands, smile, and then go to the park and, 'OK, let's get some outs!' This was a friendship that followed me. It's something that just stuck with me. I think of him now on a daily basis."At one point during his treatment, Brandt entered clinical trials but, as his father said, there weren't many to choose from for children. Dr. William Ferguson, medical director at the Bob Costas Cancer Center, explained in an email that children have "many fewer cases of cancer, fewer clinical trials, less funding, but (a) higher rate of access and participation" than adults. The less funding for research struck Motte.Major League Baseball has breast cancer awareness on Mother's Day with pink ribbons and pink bats at the ballpark. On Father's Day, teams wear light blue ribbons and use blue bats for prostate cancer awareness. Motte approached baseball about a day for gold ribbons, the symbol of childhood cancer awareness. The process was slow. He understood "every day would have a ribbon" if baseball responded to every player's cause. The Cardinals responded to his. Starting around the All-Star break, Motte pushed for Monday's event.Nothing halfway.SAYING GOODBYEWhile he organized awareness day at Busch, Motte also planned a June birthday party for Brandt. Listening to the two talk about it, Brandt's parents weren't sure he would make it as his health worsened, "but we never told Jason," Jeff said. The 9th birthday party happened, at Dave & Buster's. Brandt rallied. The iPad was back in his grasp. But within a month he would play it less and less. On July 23, Motte was parking at Busch Stadium, on time for another rehab workout, when he received a text messages from the Ballengers.It said if he wanted to remember Brandt the way he was a few days before, they understood. If he wanted to say his goodbyes, he should come to the hospital.Motte walked away from his rehab and drove straight to Brandt.His friend died 30 minutes after their last visit.Back in their car, driving home from Brandt's funeral, Motte and his wife talked about how they filled their time without baseball this summer, how his elbow giving out allowed him to give of his heart. He told a coach recently that he's eager to see what happens when he's ready to pitch because he has a deeper sense "of the kid out there who hangs on every strike and how this is who you play for."This weekend he'll volunteer at a fundraiser for Lane's foundation and on Sunday night sign autographs at Fizzy's Soda Fountain in Webster Groves to benefit Friends of Kids with Cancer. Only in the past couple weeks did he contract the Goodwins and Ballengers and invite them to Monday's game -- the first of what he hopes are many to honor their sons.It has turned into a memorial.It will remain a mission."If he had never gotten hurt, he would have never met this little boy, never been touched by these boys' lives," Caitlin said. "He believed there was a reason it happened. God had a plan for him and started filling in the gaps. ... The word I keep coming back to is perspective. He's wanted to play baseball since he was 3 years old. Baseball has always been his path. But when it's time to put the ball down, there is another path out there for him. He didn't know it existed. He didn't know that he had it in him."This was put on his heart," his wife concludes. "This is the path."Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at .stltoday.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉