Enter this Buster Posey Fund contest to help UCSF’s Benioff Children’s Hospital

It would probably not surprise you to know that Buster Posey is considered to be the Giants’ most charitable player. Yesterday, Major League Baseball announced the 30 nominees (one for each club) for this year’s Roberto Clemente Award.

The Roberto Clemente Award is the annual recognition of a player who best represents the game of baseball through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions both on and off the field.

Buster Posey was the Giants’ nominee for the second year in a row. Major League Baseball promotes this award as “the most prominent individual award for Major League players”. MLB has celebrated Roberto Clemente Day since 2002. Previously, it was called the Commissioner’s Award, created in 1971. Willie Mays won the very first Commissioner’s Award, and no Giant has won it since.

It’s not about “winning” a charity award, of course, but here’s the case for Buster Posey: he and Kristen Posey established The Buster and Kristen Posey Fund, which provides grant money to research hospitals and organizations that tackle pediatric cancer.

Inspired by families’ spirit of hope and strength in the face of fear, heartache and grief, the Poseys created the Buster and Kristen Posey Fund in 2016 to support them. Donations from this campaign will be directed toward The Cancer and Blood Disease Program at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and their work changing the experience and outcomes for children with cancer.

Here are a couple of handsome publicity photos featuring a smiling Buster and Kristen Posey with pediatric cancer patients.

I’ve often joked that merely being in Buster Posey’s presence can heal wounds, but in reality, his mere presence does have the ability to draw attention to an important issue. I know families who have been affected by pediatric cancer and it’s a suffocating ordeal.

The world is chaos and losing a child to an untreatable tumor evokes an incomprehensible degree of despair. Charity outreach and active research is the distant, faint flicker of light in a near-impenetrable darkness.

Buster Posey will use his aura and celebrity to direct donations to a charity raffle that will help the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. It’s more important than ever to raise awareness and focus support on the matter.

More about the raffle from the press release:

As part of this initiative, one lucky winner will:

* Meet with Buster Posey on the field at AT&T® Park and be honored during a pre-game ceremony

* Score the keys to Buster’s 2018 Toyota® Tacoma® TRD Pro

* Watch the Giants take on the Dodgers® from VIP seats (with a friend!)

* Join Buster and Kristen Posey in supporting the fight against pediatric cancer

* Head to San Francisco (transportation provided!) and put up in a hotel

You can visit the initiative’s website here, or just go here directly to donate. $10 gives you 100 entries, $25 gets you 250, and so on. You can also donate (lots of money) to receive autographed gear and entries. You’re also given the opportunity to win something immediately after donating:

$10 for a chance to meet Buster Posey seems like a good gamble. If they had run this by me, I would’ve asked that another perk for the winner be a personalized Toyota Tacoma commercial with Buster Posey, Kristen Posey, Duane Kuiper, and Mike Krukow.

Would take very little effort to drop a green screen around the truck and shoot something, and it’d be way better than a personalized outgoing voice mail (which are also great, but can’t compare with a live action commercial).

Maybe they’ll do that next year after what will be a hugely successful 2018 campaign. The entry deadline is September 15th, so consider donating or helping to spread the word for this very good cause and fun raffle.

Read more about The Buster and Kristen Posey Fund at Buster Posey’s official website.