Duensing's T-shirt/Twitter campaign raises childhood-cancer awareness

MINNEAPOLIS -- Next to Brian Duensing's locker in the Minnesota Twins clubhouse sat a stack of boxes and padded envelopes, nearly 20 in all. As a professional athlete, Duensing is used to getting mail sent to him from fans, so the pile of packages didn't appear too out of the ordinary.

But this was no ordinary fan mail.

In late August, the Twins reliever took to his Twitter account (@BrianDuensing52) to ask his more than 19,000 followers for some help. Since September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, Duensing wanted to help raise awareness for the disease. He asked people to send him T-shirts from childhood cancer organizations or from families who have a child with cancer. The objective would be for Duensing to wear one T-shirt a day through September to help spread awareness for each organization, foundation or family, via social media.

"We just tried to do anything we could to help," Duensing said. "Cancer's affected our family in a couple ways. Fortunately for us, we're in a situation where we can maybe do some good and help, so we figured that would be the best thing to do."

Duensing credits his wife, Lisa, with the idea, and Duensing already had a few T-shirts supporting children with cancer. One of those is Lane Goodwin, a Kentucky boy who passed away at the age of 13 from cancer in 2012. His "Thumbs Up for Lane" T-shirt was the first one Duensing wore to start his month-long effort, and Duensing urged his followers to visit thumbsupforlane.org to learn more.

Another child with cancer who is near and dear to Duensing's heart is Jack Hoffman, whose story became national news when the University of Nebraska football team let him run for a touchdown during the Huskers' spring game. That moment eventually led to Hoffman meeting with President Obama, as well as winning an ESPY award.

As a Nebraska native and former Huskers pitcher, Duensing was particularly drawn to Hoffman's story.

Brian Duensing's locker is filled with boxes and envelopes of T-shirts.

"That's the University of Nebraska to a T right there, just good people helping out a kid the best way they could," Duensing said. "It's just a cool story. They didn't do it for the publicity or anything like that. They were just trying to be nice and help a kid out who's had tough times. No kid should have to go through that kind of stuff. That's why it's unfortunate about childhood cancer -- or any cancer, for that matter."

Since then, Duensing has met Hoffman a few times and helped out with a bowling tournament fundraiser for Hoffman, who suffers from brain cancer. Duensing hasn't worn a Jack Hoffman shirt yet, but there's a good chance it will be one of the 30 he sports during September.

On Day 2 of the 30-day campaign, Duensing joined the rest of Major League Baseball in wearing a 108 Stitches T-shirt, which comes from the Jason Motte Foundation. The gray shirt with the backwards K comes from Motte, the Cardinals reliever, whose aim is to "strike out cancer."

On Wednesday, Duensing tweeted a picture of himself wearing a shirt that paid tribute to Sydney Davies, who passed away from leukemia at the age of 13. Davies' motto was displayed on the shirt: "Awareness makes a cure possible." Along with the picture were instructions to search for Davies' story on the web.

As of earlier this week, Duensing didn't yet have enough T-shirts to wear a new one each day for the 30 days of September, but he's hoping that more people will send in shirts as he continues to help raise awareness.

"I'm excited to see what was sent and to help," Duensing said. "We're going to donate to every organization that sent a shirt, just to kind of try and do our part a little bit. Hopefully it kind of picks up and people notice and go to these websites and donate and help some people."

To send a T-shirt to Brian Duensing, mail it to: 1 Twins Way, ATTN: Brian Duensing, Minneapolis, MN, 55403.

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