When Washington Nationals first baseman Ryan Zimmerman and his wife, Heather, announced their Pros for Heroes COVID-19 Relief Fund last Monday, they set the goal at $250,000. By Tuesday night, the fund to benefit health-care workers at Inova Health facilities across Northern Virginia had eclipsed $200,000, thanks in part to a five-figure donation from Capitals forward Nicklas Backstrom and smaller contributions from fans who tuned in to the Nationals’ World Series reunion Zoom call on Facebook.
The Zimmermans doubled their goal, but it might be time to raise the bar again.
“If we have another week this week like we did last week, and all of a sudden we approach or we pass that $500,000 [goal] … then you start to contemplate whether you want to try to get some of my good friends that play on other teams in other markets to use the platform and put it in their market to help out their local hometown health-care heroes,” Zimmerman said during a video conference with local reporters Monday. “I can’t thank everybody enough of how they’ve supported this.”
Zimmerman said Wizards point guard John Wall made a $20,000 donation last week. As of Monday afternoon, more than 1,400 donors had contributed over $310,000 to help cover the cost of hot meals, personal protective equipment and child-care services for local health-care professionals, many of whom have been working overtime during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The Zimmermans contributed an initial $100,000 donation and have since made regular video calls to personally thank nurses and doctors at hospitals across Northern Virginia. Backstrom and Redskins linebacker Ryan Kerrigan joined one of the calls Sunday night.
“It’s super emotional for both of us,” Heather Zimmerman said of the video calls with health-care workers, who occasionally use signs to express their thanks while donning masks. “Ryan has actually gotten choked up during most of them.”
“It’s so cool to see the nurses’ and the doctors’ faces,” he said. “They obviously appreciate the meal, but honestly I think they appreciate the support and just talking to someone on the outside more. They’re working overnight shifts. They’re working two shifts in a row. They’re really the true heroes in all of this.”
Zimmerman said he was overwhelmed by the reaction to last week’s virtual reunion, during which more than a dozen Nationals players joined a joke-filled Zoom call to coincide with MASN’s re-airing of Game 7 of the World Series and streamed it live for fans to enjoy.
“Honestly, I don’t think anyone will ever be able to re-create what we did that night,” Zimmerman said.
The 35-year-old said he got a kick out of watching Max Scherzer tune out the conversation to focus on his individual performance, “sitting there quietly crushing beers watching himself pitch Game 7 of the World Series.” But the best part of the experience, Zimmerman said, was giving fans a window into the interplay of the personalities on the team.
“That’s what it’s literally like for us every day, minus the six or seven bourbons that I had,” said Zimmerman, who was sipping coffee Monday. “That group of guys, that’s how we acted and that’s how we treated each other in the clubhouse every single day, every plane trip, every dinner that we went out to, every game. … I think people realized how genuine it was as it got going, but all that stuff was kind of organic. The dancing, the [Gerardo] Parra and the [Aníbal] Sánchez sunglasses stuff. Them kind of always messing with Stephen [Strasburg]. … Obviously, we were a very talented group, and that’s the main reason that we won the World Series, but I think there’s really no other team or no other group of guys that could have did what we did last year and come back from how we started and win all those games in the playoffs when we’re trailing after the seventh inning.”
Asked about the possibility of starting this season in empty stadiums, which is among the plans being considered by Major League Baseball, Zimmerman said “it would be brutal” but hardly a dealbreaker.
“At the end of the day, it’s got to be safe for everybody,” he said. “People forget that we have families. People forget that we’re actually human beings and not just robots that go out and play sports to entertain people. I know it’s easy to forget that sometimes. There’s a lot of different moving parts that have to be put together. We’ll see what happens. … My best advice is we have to defer to the experts.”
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