Phillies beat writer Jim Salisbury needs our help

Back in July, around the All-Star break, I said to the good writers in the TGP Slack room “Gee, I wonder where Jim Salisbury is. He hasn’t tweeted in days.” He returned several weeks later, and I figured it had just been a long (and deserved) vacation.

It wasn’t a vacation. Earlier this week, we all found out what had been going on with Salisbury, thanks to a campaign on a crowdfunding site called YouCaring. Salisbury’s daughter, Mary, suffered a spinal stroke in mid-July, just a few months after graduating from Temple. She’s just 22. You can read more about it here, but in short: she had significant paralysis after the stroke, and spent three months in the hospital. She was discharged earlier this month.

What a wonderful way to put that. “The next chapter of our miracle.” It reminds me of something my father would say, and oh look, now I’m crying.

Even though Mary was discharged from the hospital, she faces a long road to recovery. And because of that, Jim Salisbury, a longtime Phillies beat writer for NBC Philadelphia (formerly CSN Philly), needs our help. His family, which includes his wife Ann and two more daughters, needs our help. We might be just a group of fans, but we’re also a community. And whether they know it or not (haha), beat writers are part of that community, too. Jim is perhaps more connected than any other Phillies writer. He’s my go-to when it comes to team news. I’ve depended on his tweets and articles for years. And I can’t ignore what’s happened to his daughter, and the help that his family needs. Here are a few poignant paragraphs that Leslie Gudel, who set up the campaign, wrote in her description.

In what should have been the best summer of Mary’s life, she instead spent three months at Jefferson Hospital and Magee Rehabilitation Hospital. She was discharged in October, but her journey is not over. She faces months, probably years, of physical rehabilitation and there are significant medical, travel and adaptive-living costs, and will be for years.

Mary is going to live the life she always dreamed. She is determined to. She is going to get back to work and be independent in the city she loves. She is going to hug her loving and completely devoted mother, as well as her sisters, Caroline and Grace, again. She is going to finish the Broad Street Run again. She just needs some help getting back on her feet.

Oh Lord, more crying.

We’re a community of fans, which is probably the most passionate kind of community you can have. And we’re Philly fans, which is a special kind of passionate. Let’s channel that passion into something good — into helping out a member of our community. If you can, please consider helping out Jim, Mary, and Ann Salisbury. — either with a donation of any size, or with thoughts and prayers. You can donate at this link.

If you really want to know what kind of community we are, just take a minute or two and look at some of the names of people who have donated. Brad Lidge. Jamie Moyer. Jerry Crasnick. Jayson Stark. Ryan Lawrence. Cody Asche. Ruben Amaro. Pete Mackanin. Rich Dubee. Scott Rolen. Howard Eskin. There are fellow broadcasters and beat writers, former players and coaches, as well as a number of fans who I’ve been friends with for years. And even Kyle Kendrick, the man himself (seriously, buy me a drink sometime and I’ll tell you quite the story about my interactions with him), is on that list.

Everyone at The Good Phight is with you and your family, Jim. If good thoughts can make a difference, you’ve got ‘em. But we hope our forthcoming donation will help as well.