Wounded Warriors softball team playing to raise money for kids

GO.

If you love your country, go.

If you believe children should be happy, then go.

The Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team plays at Patriots Park in Allentown at 5 p.m. Saturday. Proceeds benefit the WWAST kids camp, which hosts 20 amputee kids between 8-12 years old from all around the country. This year the camp is in California.

Simply put, the camp brings these kids joy. It makes some of them really happy for the first time in their short lives. The camp costs about $5,000 per kid. Each kid gets to bring one parent. Sixteen WWAST members serve as counselors; some will be playing Saturday against teams of the Men's and Women's National Softball Association.

It's $5 for adults and $1 for kids, but the experience is priceless. Every extra dollar and dime donated at Patriots Park benefits the cause.

So, go.

Don't think about all of the other things you could do Saturday. Just go.

Go, if this makes you angry: 

"Somebody called me a zombie before. That made me really, really sad." - Scotty Fura, 11, from Camillus, N.Y., who lost his right arm above the elbow in a tractor accident.

 Go, if this gives you a lump in your throat:

"When I went to camp I finally learned how to tie my shoes!" - Jen Castro, 10, from New Fairfield, Conn., without her left arm above the elbow since birth.

Go, if you ever felt singled out:

"I didn't know any other amputees. I used to not like it when everyone stared at me. But at the camp, they couldn't just stare at me. They had to stare at everyone." - Ethan Perez, 11, from Bakersfield, Calif., who lost his left leg above the knee to end a long, painful disease.

Go, if you have empathy for parents:

"This camp is the biggest blessing an amputee kid's parent could hope for." -Debbie Landry Perez, Ethan's mom.

The kids sometimes have never even talked to a fellow amputee. The parents have sometimes never talked to another amputee's parent. The kids sometimes show up with outdated prostheses; sometimes, with equipment camp director Susan Rodio called "barbaric." At the camp, the parents often can share knowledge and advice about the best and newest prostheses.

Allentown is not too far away. Not for this.

The game will be played by legless wonders and one-armed men, but, rest assured, it will be thrilling. Every one of these young heroes served his country and lost a limb but they are intensely competitive young men; strong as bears, fast as wolves, imbued with a killer instinct. Literally.

They used their "B'' team 10 days ago and still destroyed a team of Lower Moreland cops, firemen and paramedics, 26-6.

You might have seen the Warriors on TV. Formed in 2011, the team is not new news, but the camp is, relatively speaking. The first one, in 2013, was near Disney in Florida; the second, last year near Louisville, Ky., close to the home of Louisville Slugger, one of the Warriors' sponsors.

The camp serves as another end to the WWAST, which plays an exhilarating brand of ball by men desperate to feel whole again. They train like maniacs.

"I broke two [prosthetic] legs this past year. I just got back into lifting weights. I got up to squatting 850 pounds and leg-pressing 315," said former Marine machine gunner Matias Ferreira, 26, a burly fellow who in 2011 lost both legs to an Improvised Explosive Device.

The fit cannot be perfect, either. In Lower Moreland, Ferreira pounded a line drive to the base of the fence in centerfield and was thinking triple out of the box . . . until the last 60 feet.

"By the time I got to second," he said, "my leg was coming off."

The Warriors led by 20 in the final inning of the first game, a point at which every team on the planet takes its foot off the gas in the name of sportsmanship. However, this team made the last two outs of the game trying to stretch a double into a triple; then, a triple into a homer. The score did not matter.

"We're giving 100 percent, all the time," said second baseman Dan Lasko.

He lost his lower left leg to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2004. He then ran the Army 10-miler just 6 months after he got his prosthetic leg. He has since completed six marathons and a handful of triathlons.

"In a game, if we see we can make it to third base," Lasko said, "we're going to push our prosthetics to the limit."

Because, thank God, they can.

That's the message at camp:

Always take the extra base.

WWAST was born as an idea in 2010. David Van Sleet, an Army veteran, worked for nearly 30 years after Vietnam configuring eye prosthetics for the Department of Veterans Affairs. With the invasion of Iraq more casualties began to flood in, and Van Sleet spent the next decade became an administrator.

From his new perch he saw legions of amputee war veterans struggling to re-engage with society. Van Sleet, 59, played softball all his life. He watched, amazed, as these young men incorporated technologically advanced prostheses into increasingly demanding routines.

"I thought, 'Why not?' " he said.

By early 2011, Van Sleet had won a grant from the University of Arizona, overseen a few fundraisers, convinced Louisville Slugger to supply equipment and signed up prosthetics giant Ossur to make the specialty, high-performance limbs.

These guys might be disabled, but they're kind of bionic.

"We are wearing things unavailable to the general public," Van Sleet said.

Most players remove their high-activity prostheses after games. For instance, a few players, like Lasko, wear a familiar, regular "cheetah" leg, the upside-down question mark that supports fast, forward movement, then changes into a less mechanical prosthetic afterward.

But a few players wear a state-of-the-art, carbon-fiber cover shell over a regular "cheetah" leg, but with an added heel kit. The cover shell and heel let them quickly stop and turn.

Outfielder Josh Wege, a retired Marine who lost both legs below the knee to a 200-pound IED in Afghanistan, wears a pair of the shells all the time - including when he hit his inside-the-park home run at Lower Moreland.

This adaptable roster hovers around 29 players, who hail from all over the country. They have played in 35 states, including Hawaii. They aren't as pricey as the Phillies, but the operation is expensive.

Sponsorships have grown (Sargento Cheese, Under Armour, Margaritaville), providing money that, on any given weekend, pays for airfare for that week's team of 12 to play able-bodied teams, usually in Saturday doubleheaders. Once they arrive, the Warriors usually get the royal treatment. In Lower Moreland their food, drinks and entertainment - the Mayweather/Pacquiao - fight were donated.

So is the Warriors' time.

Most have moved on to other careers. Nine are in college. Three still serve, like Air Force Tech. Sgt. Leonard Anderson, perhaps the most famous of them.

While on patrol in Afghanistan in July 2012, Anderson and his K-9 comrade Azza had just detected a bomb during the taping of an Animal Planet special on dogs used in war. Just then, the bomb was remotely detonated. Azza was blown 200 feet away.

Anderson lost his left forearm, three of the fingers on his right hand and all of the skin on both of his legs. He underwent 20 surgeries.

"What humbles me most is, most people in his situation wouldn't leave the house," said Van Sleet, who lives in Florida. "This guy is working with very little."

He gets the job done.

To hit, Anderson uses a neoprene-capped extension of his left arm that he screws a bat onto. If he puts the ball in play, he runs with the bat. A batboy has to retrieve it when the play ends.

To pitch, Anderson uses a different neoprene sleeve; one with the head of a lacrosse stick at its end. He pitches with his thumb and middle finger, his only remaining digits.

He allowed two runs in the final three innings of the second game at Lower Moreland. He went 3-for-3. They won, 14-6.

Azza watched it all from the bleachers. She survived. Anderson adopted her. Loyalty, love and determination.

Any kid would benefit form a week with these guys.

Van Sleet has no children. His Warriors team always invites a local amputee child to serve as batboy or batgirl. Rodio, then a member of the WWAST board of directors, saw Van Sleet's eyes light up when he watched those kids interact with the players, and she sold him on the idea of the camp.

"When you're a kid and you're an amputee and in school," said Van Sleet, who has heard the zombie stories, and worse, "I mean, talk about a cruel society."

It was not only nice for the kids.

"I sometimes think it was life-changing for the players," Rodio said.

On many levels. Men who felt called to serve again had a worthy service.

"At first, this team was about you. Society views you as one thing, you view yourself as another, and you have an opportunity to live life again," Ferreira said.

"Then we were offered a chance to give back to children," Ferreira continued. "It gives us an opportunity to teach them what we had to learn: adapting to society. Adapting to those who are going to look at us differently. Those 20 kids come in as one person. When they leave, they're a completely different person. It's a beautiful transition."

"We go in one way," said Scotty Fura, "and we come out another."

Ethan Perez couldn't walk for 3 years before his amputation, which preceded his visit to camp by just three months. Now he's a wrestler. His idol is former Arizona State national champion Anthony Robles, who wrestled with one leg.

"I always liked him, and I like wrestling," Ethan said, "but after I went to camp I began to think I could actually do it."

Scotty Fura exited with the confidence of Curt Schilling and a swing like Mike Schmidt.

"Before, when I was pitching, people doubted me because I had one arm. It made me feel bad. It put pressure on me. Now, I just pitch," Fura said. "And before, I couldn't hit it out of the infield. My first game back home, I hit it to the outfield for the first time ever. To rightfield. I just loved it."

What about the zombie stuff?

"That will never stop," Scotty said. "Now, I just tell people that's mean, and they might hurt somebody's feelings."

Jen Castro returned from the 2013 camp and made the local travel softball team, which she did again this year.

Most of the campers leave with simpler revelations, exclamations that leave the amputee counselors validated and stun the able-bodied administrators.

"I've never worn shorts in my life! I'm going to go home and wear shorts!"

"I'm going to marry this girl. She's missing a leg, too!"

The world's most innocent victims are children; none more so than children who are made to feel different, and alone. These children go to this camp, where the other kids are like them, and so are the counselors . . . but not really.

The counselors are Superman.

The counselors know precisely what it is like to be stared at; to be whispered about; to be miserable. But the counselors know how to adapt, and how to overcome, and how to flourish.

Very quickly, the children realize that they can be Superman, too.

So, no excuses.

Just go.

(An earlier version of this story suggested that, as a part of the program, children could leave the camp with new prosthetic devices. That is not the case.)

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