The 50-Walk Challenge Is Complete!

Matt Kemp drew his 50th walk of the season today, which is a new career high for him. That gives the Dodgers eight hitters with 50 or more walks.

How rare is that? In the history of baseball, only two National League teams have ever had eight players with 50+ walks, the most recent being the 2000 Giants. There have been six American League teams to accomplish the feat before the designated hitter, as well as the amazing 1939 Yankees, the only team ever with nine 50-walk players.

There are four two teams that don't even have one player with 50 walks: Giants, and Pirates, Rangers, and Royals (I wrote this a few days ago, and since then Ian Kinsler of the Rangers and Billy Butler of the Royals each picked up their 50th walk. Butler got three walks Friday night to get to 50).

More importantly, this is the culmination of a challenge I issued back in my very first post at True Blue LA, back in December of 2008. This was before Manny re-signed (although I certainly expected him to return), and before Orlando Hudson was even on the radar. In February, I gave the challenge a little more meaning, pledging to give $100 to Think Cure, the official charity of the Dodgers, once the Dodgers achieved this lofty goal.

Now, the goal has been reached! Since then, Phil and I have combined to pledge a total of $400 to Think Cure, and thanks to the generosity of you readers, we are poised to give much more:

If you are missing from this list, please let me know!

Sarah Gallagher from Think Cure logged on to give us more information about Think Cure:

Hi all,
We’re so excited and appreciative that you all are taking this challenge.

I can confirm that office expenses, salaries, admin costs are covered by the initial endowment (and interest on) of the McCourt Family million dollar donation.
http://www.thinkcure.org/site/PageServer?pagename=news_pr_thinkcure_launch

If you’d like more info on the latest round of grants, check out the recipient info here:
http://www.thinkcure.org/site/PageNavigator/research/research_grant_recipients

We don't have a way of pooling our donations into one, so I will ask you to please click here to donate to Think Cure and send your donation individually. You can also call (323) 224-1360. We would love to hear from you if you do donate, so we can have an idea just how powerful a group we Dodger fans are.

Click here to donate!

Thanks to everyone at True Blue LA for support, and thanks to the Dodgers for walking all the way to the bank!