Pink

I sat down Sunday afternoon to relax and watch a little TV. I was channel surfing and came across the NY Yankees baseball game, so I figured I'd watch it for awhile. All of a sudden I realized the batter was using a pink bat. A "pink" bat??? What was going on? Then I realized that all the players and the umpires had pink arm bands on. Comes the dawn! This is some type of awareness program about breast cancer. Now, I don't know if this was just a Yankee program, or if it encompassed all of Major League baseball. This reminded me of last winter when Kay Yow, the coach of the North Carolina State University women's basketball team passed away after a 20 year battle with breast cancer. I remember all the teams were wearing pink uniforms and sneakers. The male coaches were wearing pink ties, the female coaches were wearing pink dresses,etc. Now, I have absolutely nothing against these awareness programs because any cancer is a devastating disease, but it got me thinking. Wearing pink doesn't directly raise any money directly, although it may get some people to make donations. How about if Major League Baseball and the NCAA take the money that they spent on bats, arm bands, uniforms, etc. and donate that sum directly to breast cancer research instead of buying all the "pink" stuff for players to wear? Wouldn't that be a lot more "bang for the buck"? How about if they have a program at each game where they give away "something", like a baseball, ribbon, arm band, etc. for a $10 donation to cancer research? Something like that could raise millions of dollars for cancer research instead of just raising awareness of the problem.