Pagnozzi's passion FORMER MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYER RETURNS TO COMMUNITY TO GIVE BACK
Posted on Sunday, October 12, 2008
BROOKE McNEELY Northwest Arkansas Times Fayetteville resident and former major league baseball player Tom Pagnozzi started Pagnozzi Charities in 1999 as a way to give underprivileged youth the opportunity to participate in sports. Here, he poses near the No. 9 green at Fayetteville Country Club, which will be the site of his annual golf tournament that begins Thursday.
MNorthwest Arkansas Times any would have brushed her off. Not Tom Pagnozzi. Out for dinner with his friend some years ago while in St. Louis, former Razorback baseball coach Norm DeBriyn watched a stranger walk up to Pagnozzi. With her was a family of 10 kids, and she asked the professional baseball player if he’d be willing to set up a birthday party for one of them.
“‘ Call me next week. I’ll see what I can do, ’” DeBriyn remembers Pagnozzi saying. He later arranged for the party.
“ He could have said something like, ‘ Sorry, but I’m a big league player, I don’t have the time, ’” DeBriyn said.
DeBriyn wasn’t surprised at Pagnozzi’s action, of course. DeBriyn, who coached at Arkansas for more than 30 years, had watched the Razorback ballplayer grow up on the diamond.
“ As a player, he was a definite leader. He wasn’t afraid to step forward and do what he thought was right, ” his former coach said.
After moving to Fayetteville in 2001, Pagnozzi has continued his charitable work as a member of this community, serving as the namesake and spokesman for a charity that gives local underprivileged youth the chance to participate in sports. Pagnozzi Charities, which formed in 1999, hosts several fundraisers for the cause each year, but none are larger in size and scope than the charity golf tournament and banquet that will take place beginning Thursday at the Fayetteville Country Club and culminate with a sports memorabilia auction and banquet Saturday night at the Fayetteville Town Center. All in the name of charity.
Little League, big dreams Pagnozzi grew up in Tucson, Ariz. Like many of those his charity organization helps today, he didn’t grow up with a lot of money. But he did have the chance to play Little League baseball. He remembers his teams vividly, especially his 12-year-old squad, a group led by coach Ron Cunningham. There were fun times, sure, and Pagnozzi remembers the days when the entire 11-person team would ride in Cunningham’s Fiat convertible. But he credits Cunningham for so much more than a summer in the sun. The coach preached three val- ues: character, courage and loyalty.
Pagnozzi didn’t know it at the time, but Cunningham had recently returned from the Vietnam War. It never showed on the diamond.
He helped Pagnozzi develop a plan, a dream really, about reaching the major leagues, something so few amateurs actually do.
Except Pagnozzi did. After a year as a Razorback catcher, he was drafted into the big leagues, playing 12 seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals, serving as an All Star during the 1992 season.
But he always remembered the path he’d taken to get there, the hard work and dedication that were required to be a big league athlete. And he recalled the gifts that Cunningham gave him that summer in Arizona. “ I remember how he gave back, and how he helped, ” Pagnozzi said from his charity’s office on Center Street in Fayetteville. “ He spent a summer taking care of us. ” Returning the favor
Stories about
Pagnozzi giving back
are not hard to find. Such as the time he gave several thousand dollars — newspaper estimates put the total at about $ 200, 000 — for the Baum Stadium construction effort. Or the time during the 1994 strikeshortened baseball season that he agreed, with a few other players, to pay for a charter flight to get stranded ballplayers back home to St. Louis before the Player’s Union offered to pay for the $ 27, 000 flight instead.
He has quite a time saying ‘ no, ’ Pagnozzi admits.
“ It’s probably my biggest fault, ” he said. “ But I know how fortunate I was to get to that [major league ] level. ”
There was also the time that a family approached him at random and asked him to provide sporting equipment so their children could play sports.
“ I paid for it, ” said Pagnozzi in his matter-of-fact, humble tone. But it also helped steer his fledgling nonprofit agency in a new direction. At the suggestion of DeBriyn, a nonprofit group was formed in 1999 to help channel the financial gifts that Pagnozzi was providing for the Razorback program. The money was originally intended for upgrades at Baum Stadium, DeBriyn explains. But when DeBriyn retired in 2002 and new coach Dave Van Horn took over the program, much of the upgrades to the facility were completed. Which left the new organization with a fantastic problem: lots of money, but nowhere to spend it.
In need That’s when the focus shifted to the area’s youth. Pagnozzi knew what sports had meant to him.
The area’s need was staggering, too, although Pagnozzi didn’t know it at the time. According to data supplied by the charity, more than 44 percent of elementary schoolaged children in Northwest Arkansas qualify for free or reduced lunch programs. What’s more, 38 percent of students in the same age group are considered obese.
The charity provides scholarships for students to help them participate in group sports activities. It’s not baseball-specific, either. Children participating in cheerleading, martial arts programs, basketball and other recreational sports are granted the chance to play. Pagnozzi Charities also funds registration fees to sports camps, equipment, uniforms and tickets to sporting events for groups and families.
The need has never been greater, explains Sarah Eldridge, the charity organization’s executive director. Children are deemed eligible if their parent’s income levels fall below Arkansas Department of Human Service-designated poverty levels. Under those guidelines, a family of five would have to make $ 36, 000 or less to qualify for assistance through the charity, which covers Washington and Benton counties and also assists children in Harrison. In 2006, 923 scholarships were given, said Eldridge. In 2007, the number climbed to 1, 563 and already in 2008, more than 1, 200 have been distributed.
Eldridge said the group is seeing lots of new families come for assistance, those who might have been able to pay for such things the past few years but are unable to this year in a slowing economy. The organization attempts to give the children equipment and supplies equal to what the other people on the team might have. The kids “ just want to be like the other kids on the team, just part of the group, ” Eldridge said. ‘ Giving them gold ’
Which is why
Pagnozzi
Charities hosts three events per year: an alumni weekend in the spring at a Razorback baseball game, a fundraising dinner at the Pagnozzis’ Fayetteville home and the Tom Pagnozzi Charity Golf Tournament, Banquet and Sports Memorabilia Auction. The golf portion is celebrating its 17 th year in 2008, about half of those years coming while the tournament was still operating under the blanket of the Razorback Foundation.
The golf tournament takes place Thursday and Friday at the Fayetteville Country Club. The event will culminate with a Saturday-night banquet at the Fayetteville Town Center. The event features a buffet dinner, a keynote address by former Razorback track star Mike Conley Sr. and a sports memorabilia auction that will feature 110 silent auction items such as autographed baseballs, a boxing robe signed by Joe Frazier, a Darren McFadden autographed photo and much more. Another 43 items will be awarded to the highest bidder via a live auction.
Last year’s event raised $ 150, 000 for the charity.
The events are a fun, but it’s in the office where Eldridge find’s her work’s true reward.
She never knows what she’s going to hear when she picks up the office phone. She remembers one call particularly well. A woman was having trouble with the forms, and it was rapidly approaching game day.
A few minutes later, Eldridge met the women and her two grandsons at Wal-Mart on Sixth Street in Fayetteville, sending them home with two baseball gloves and cleats that both boys insisted they wear out of the store.
Their excitement was easy to understand: neither had owned a glove or cleats before.
“ You’d think we’d given them gold, ” Eldridge said.
Major leagues, here they come.
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