I want to tell you a story.

A man told it to me today.

I want to tell it to you.

He organizes baseball games for children with mental and physical disabilities.

Himself a man with a limp and a deformed arm from birth, he knows what he’s doing.

After a baseball game, after being told he could not participate in sports long ago because of his own disabilities, a mother came to him with tears in her eyes and told him on the way home from a game her son spoke the first word of his life. Her five year old son had never spoken a word before.

This man had been told as a child he could never play sports, so he determined to make it possible for others to play and he participates, because the impairments of his life never overcame his life. He wouldn’t let them. So the mother came up to him and told him on the way home from one of the games her son spoke for the first time in his life. Her five year old son.

“Baseball.”

The boy said baseball.

The man who told the story told it without taking any credit for what he had done. He looks upon the child’s response as a miracle. The mother thinks so too.

Out of the misery, disabilities and handicaps of every life there is a word which breaks the spell, sets the soul at liberty and makes the spirit glad.

Play the game.

Take a swing.

Say the word.

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