The nonprofit Teamwork Unlimited Foundation, which runs the Autism Awareness Baseball Challenge, featuring 40 high school teams from New Jersey, made a remarkably generous donation to The Marisa Tufaro Foundation on behalf of players who hit home runs during the three-day event.
Representatives of the Teamwork Unlimited Foundation presented Greg and Cyndi Tufaro with a check to The Marisa Tufaro Foundation on June 11 during another baseball event in East Brunswick.
Each player who homered during any of the 20 Autism Awareness Baseball Challenge games signed his name inside one of the 23 oversized baseballs that adorned a huge purple banner with the words “Make a Memory for Marisa” emblazoned across the top. The phrase was extracted from a tribute column Marisa’s father wrote shortly after she passed in which he implored parents to spend quality time with their own children in honor of Marisa.
Teams from as far north as Sussex County and from as far south as Atlantic County competed in the 10th annual Autism Awareness Baseball Challenge. Most of the competing schools were from Middlesex County.
Colorado Rockies scout Mike Garlatti, an Edison resident who starred at Highland Park and served as an assistant baseball coach at Rutgers University, founded the Autism Awareness Baseball Challenge.
The event began as a grassroots effort a decade ago with Garlatti, who has a son on the autism spectrum, and a couple of volunteers walking up to spectators at games to deliver pamphlets containing information about the nation’s fastest growing developmental disorder.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the identified prevalence of autism spectrum disorders nationally has increased from 1 in 110 to 1 in 68 since Garlatti began the baseball challenge event a decade ago. One in 45 children in New Jersey – 62 percent of whom are boys – are on the autism spectrum.
Autism is a lifelong neurological disorder that impairs a person’s ability to communicate and relate to others. It’s broad spectrum of characteristics range from severe detached and isolated behavior to extreme verbal and hypersensitive behavior.
Mike Garlatti addresses players and coaches at a 2016 Autism Awareness Baseball Challenge reception in Edison
The baseball challenge has forever been designed to heighten awareness about autism, but now also serves as a fundraiser for the nonprofit Teamwork Unlimited Foundation, which Garlatti established three years ago to benefit those in need.
This year’s Autism Awareness Baseball Challenge was held April 21-23 at North Brunswick’s Community Park.
You can read more about the Autism Awareness Baseball challenge here.