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Former Mets Catcher Ed Hearn's Battle Is the Stuff of Heroes by WAYNE COFFEY DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

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Former Mets Catcher Ed Hearn's Battle Is the Stuff of Heroes by WAYNE COFFEY DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER SUNDAY, October 11, 2009 NEW YORK Former Mets catcher Ed Hearn's battle is the stuff of heroes BY WAYNE COFFEY DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER Maybe you remember Ed Hearn. He played in 49 games and hit .265 as a bespectacled, backup catcher on the last Met team to win a World Series. The man in front of him, Gary Carter, would go on to Cooperstown. Maybe you remember Ed Hearn. He played Hearn would go on to Kansas City, where he would wreck his shoulder, get blamed for the worst trade in Royals history (David Cone went to the Mets), and then spend two decades living with a horrific kidney disease, enduring pain and hardship that PETA people wouldn't wish on Michael Vick. As the baseball postseason unfolds this month, heroes will be anointed, and star players feted. Nobody will say a word about Hearn, who isn't the best ballplayer to play in this city, but may be the most courageous, and the most selfless. At 49, Hearn has been through three kidney transplants, 25 surgeries, three dozen carcinomas and courses of radiation. He takes 20 medications a day, running his lifetime pill total to about 140,000. When he was first diagnosed in the early 1990s, he was so distraught that he went down to the basement with a loaded gun, and wrote a suicide note to his wife, Trish. Now he says it is his love for Trish, and their son, Cody, and his faith, that keeps him going. If you are waiting for him to complain, pull up a chair and prepare to wait. "What I've been through has given me a purpose that is far beyond being a professional athlete," Hearn says. That purpose is to raise awareness, offer encouragement, show Former catcher coaching players at Mets Fantasy Camp strength. Michael Levine is a Long Island father whose son, Matthew, suffers from Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), the same Hearn has no idea how long he has to live, and no plans to stop heeding pernicious kidney disease that Hearn has, along with as many as the words on his office wall: "Keep swinging for life's fences." Apart from 100,000 other Americans. FSGS, he also suffers from an immune-deficiency disorder that saps his "It is an unbelievable inspiration, the way he is still smiling and fighting energy and compromises his heart function. Hearn often feels as if he and speaking about his battle, giving parents like myself and my wife were 70 years old. He pushes on. He's excited about his visit to Citi Field hope for our son," Levine says. on Nov. 12, when he and Dwight Gooden will host NephCure's Hearn is a passionate spokesperson for The NephCure Foundation Countdown To A Cure, a fundraiser that is open to the public. (www.nephcure.org), an organization committed to finding a cure for Hearn will share his whole story, and think about his late teammate, Dan kidney diseases, and an acclaimed motivational speaker, as well. He Quisenberry, who was a month from death when Hearn asked him what also coaches Cody in youth baseball, winning a Kansas state title last he had learned at the end of his life. year, imparting lessons far beyond the nuances of a good cutoff play. "We all need each other," Quisenberry said. If you play for Hearn, you spend time playing alongside special-needs You want an October hero? He wore No. 49 for the '86 Mets and hit four children. You go to the home of a cancer-stricken assistant coach, and lifetime home runs. you stain his deck. You give and give some more. "I haven't been a material success, but I've tried to do something "When Michael looks back, I know he's going to say that the one person significant," Ed Hearn says. who changed his life was Ed Hearn," says Sheila Seck, of her son who has played for Hearn the last two summers. .
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