29 Apr From Playing Baseball to Finding Missing Children: The Missing Child Project
By Sam Palmerine – Staff Writer – Mt. Lebanon High School Newsletter
Every 40 seconds a child in the United States goes missing, resulting in 800,000 missing children reported in the U.S alone every year. Former professional pitcher and now Mt. Lebanon baseball coach Dennis Bair, has owned an official charity of the minor league for the past nine years called The Missing Child Project. This non-profit organization specializes in helping find children who have gone missing.
Bair has an interesting, but effective way of helping find missing children. He has made efforts to put a sign of a missing person in as many professional sports venues as he can, primarily minor league baseball stadiums.
This idea did not come from nowhere, as he thought of the idea after watching a documentary about the parents of a missing child.
“They both lost their jobs,” Bair said. “They couldn’t pay so they lost their house. The mother said, ‘every time that phone rings my heart jumps because that might be my daughter saying come get me.’ It had registered with me somehow that when your child goes missing, that’s your whole life. Your whole has a new purpose.”
While watching this documentary, Bair noticed something else. He was a huge fan of Rocky Bleier, and he found an autographed photo of him and he thought of an idea that would spark his entire organization.
“It just clicked in my head that the missing child poster was a photo that people would throw away,” Bair said. “This autographed photo is a picture that people won’t ever throw away.”
Bair, using the advantages of being a professional baseball player, had the idea to put a picture of a missing child on the poster with all the player’s autographs.
“When we do autographs for our team posters, if we put a missing child picture in the corner, not only would it not be thrown away, but it would also be put on display,” Bair said. “All of a sudden, the kids that we were featuring on our posters were being safely located.”
The efforts would not end there as he began to put signs of missing children in different minor league stadiums that he played in. All of a sudden, Bair was able to have signs in almost every minor league stadium.
“The big key is that minor league baseball attracts over 30 million fans a year because there are so many minor league teams,” Bair said. “My life goal is to have a sign in every stadium in the country.”
Years ago, a missing child poster was featured in the Tampa Yankees stadium, which is the spring training field for the New York Yankees.
“A little kid came in and he walked up to the sign, and he pointed at one of the kids on the sign,” Bair said. “He said that he knew him. He said that that’s the new kid in my class.”
The child’s family then went up to an off-duty police officer and gave him this information. Using this information, the police officer was able to find out that this was a kid who was kidnapped, taken to Tampa, and enrolled in school.
In 1997, Bair was moving up the ladder fast in baseball. During spring training, the Cubs organization had told Bair that he would be called up to the major leagues by the All-Star break. This was not only great for his career but could also greatly increase the popularity of his organization.
“My last name is Bair, I pitch for the Cubs, and I will have name recognition and I will also have money,” Bair said. “Next year when I’m pitching in the big leagues, I’ll be able to write a check and have a sign in each major league stadium and people will do it because I’m a pitcher for the Cubs.”
Unfortunately, Bair was injured that season during spring training which resulted in four shoulder surgeries. After this, his goals would take a turn.
“I changed my goals from someone who is going to make a lot of money and now I’m not a pitcher anymore and I won’t have a chance to make all that money,” Bair said. “So that’s why I changed my goals from having a sign in each major league stadium to filling minor league baseball.
After his professional baseball career was over, Bair went back to college to get a degree in education. His next goal could be a huge step in the efforts to find missing children.
“My next goal is to have a sign in every high school in the country,” Bair said.
One example of the kind of signs baseball Deny Bair has hung up in minor league stadiums. The sign was used at Jackie Robinson Ballpark, home of the Daytona Tortugas.