San Francisco
– Clad in a bright orange Junior Giants t-shirt and a black
Giants baseball cap, young Priscilla Chavez wandered through the
concourse of a San Francisco Marriott banquet room crowded with
Giants fans and clearly stated her mission.
San Francisco – Clad in a bright orange Junior Giants t-shirt and a black Giants baseball cap, young Priscilla Chavez wandered through the concourse of a San Francisco Marriott banquet room crowded with Giants fans and clearly stated her mission.
“I want to see Barry,” said the petite girl from Gilroy, her eyes intently scanning the room.
Under normal circumstances, Priscilla’s request to meet Barry Bonds would have been considered wishful thinking. But at the Play Ball Lunch, a fundraiser for the Junior Giants baseball program held Friday at the Marriott, it was merely a matter of chance.
Bonds doesn’t always attend team functions such as the Play Ball Lunch. He doesn’t always react positively to people trying to get to know him.
Most people aren’t cute-as-a-button 9-year-olds who share Bonds’ love of decorative earwear. And Bonds, perhaps more inclined to put on a positive public face than in days past, was at the banquet, where he got a standing ovation from attendees.
Priscilla and her brother Keith “K.C.” Chavez were two of several lucky players from five different Junior Giants programs invited to attend the event and eat lunch with a Giants player. The Junior Giants program, which has 500 teams and 13,000 participants, sponsors summer baseball leagues in low-income areas in central and northern California, Oregon and Nevada. The Play Ball Lunch, which was attended by Giants players, coaches and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, is held annually and is the Giants Community Fund’s largest fundraising event.
Priscilla plays for the Gilroy Junior Giants, which brings baseball free of charge to 100 Gilroy-area children ages 8 to11 in the months of June and July. The Junior Giants provides the six Gilroy teams with the equipment it needs to have a league.
“The program is about bringing baseball to a community where parents don’t have the money to pay for it and to bring a little fun to the youngsters,” said Gabriel Dueñas, the Gilroy league commissioner and assistant director of the Mexican-American Community Services Agency (MACSA), the organization that runs the Gilroy league.
The thought of meeting a professional baseball player didn’t make Priscilla nervous. It was the speech she was invited to make in front of a record 1,100 luncheon attendees that had her worried.
“She’s pretty fearless,” said Dueñas. “But she’s a little nervous. She said she wants to impress the team.”
Last August, Priscilla was invited to be a junior announcer at SBC Park for a Giants-Cubs game. She did such a good job that the Giants wanted her to speak at the luncheon, said Giants Community Fund executive director Sue Petersen.
“We were so impressed with her sparkling personality and energy,” Petersen said. “We thought that she would be a great representative of the Junior Giants.”
Though nerves almost got the better of her, Priscilla felt ready to speak after she got some good advice from her ballplayer escort for the day, second-year pitcher Noah Lowry.
“He told me to just look at the back of the room and imagine nobody’s there,” Priscilla said.
Finally, after Priscilla and Lowry shared a candy bar and a meal of chicken fingers and french fries while the rest of the luncheon attendees ate salad and stuffed chicken breasts, it was time for Priscilla to take the podium. After opening with an energetic “How’s everybody doing!” to the crowd, she made sure to let the team’s superstar know she’s a fan.
“My favorite player is Barry Bonds. He’s the best,” Priscilla said about Bonds, who was sitting at a table not far from the stage. “I like his earring, too.”
As Priscilla hoped, Bonds was impressed. In the end, it was he who was asking to meet her.
“He really wanted to meet me,” Priscilla said later. “Everybody was trying to get my attention to go over there.”
Priscilla was brought over to Bonds’ table, where the slugger signed her shirt and gave her a hug.
As she left the table, Priscilla started to cry. She headed back to her own table to tell Dueñas and Lowry about her meeting.
How did she describe the moment?
“Exciting!”
