PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – He could have easily walked away from the game. Instead Damar Hamlin continues to work to come back to play again and also advocate of how football can positively affect lives.
Hamlin starts a three-day weekend of events benefitting his Chasing M's foundation with a free football clinic for around 400 youth in the Pittsburgh area. The McKees Rocks native said his situation is obviously unique, but he learned through the game how create a foundation for life. How to go about business, how to be accountable, not just on a field, but off it.
"Football teaches you a lot of things about life, it really does," Hamlin said on the Fan Morning Show. "It teaches you structure. It teaches you planning. It holds you accountable to a schedule.
It teaches you how to work with people who are not from your environment."
"It gives you a way about going about life. I just want to instill a little of those principals early. They can understand 'yes, I will have fun' but you are also going to be getting drills and training as you do throughout the journey of football."
Hamlin said he's not just pushing football, rather to you can apply these guidelines to anything you want to do in life. How to create a plan and stick to it.
"I've always been coached and taught that there is a direct correlation how you go about your business off the field and the results you get on the field," Hamlin said to Adam Crowley and Dorin Dickerson on 93.7 The Fan. "I had to make those two work if I wanted to be successful. I had to clean up everything off the field."
It's not just from the fame gained since his recovery from cardiac arrest during a nationally televised game in January, Hamlin said he's tried to do the right thing from the beginning. He called it an obligation. He said he watched his father assist those in McKees Rocks by holding community days, cookouts, anything he could do to help kids forget about the problems they have in real life and give them something to dream about or look forward to.
So, skip ahead 15 years and here is Hamlin standing on the pitchers' mound at PNC Park late last month at PNC Park. The kid who grew up in Pittsburgh, went to Pitt and while continuing his professional career out of town, not forgetting his home. Hamlin wore the new City Connect jersey and threw out the first pitch before a Pirates game.
"It was electric," Hamlin said on the Fan Morning Show. "I think I actually took a couple of seconds before I threw it to soak it all in. I kinda started to get game-time energy because it got so loud. It really made me feel the hometown love."
"The love the city has for me and that I have for it, it's a mutual thing. That's what makes me want to have weekends like this and give back to the community."
Along with the youth camp on Friday, he will hold a charity softball game at Charles L. Cost Field at Pitt on Saturday, where he promises to improve on his first pitch from last month. Sunday, he partners with the American Heart Association to hold free CPR training at PNC Park from 11a-3p for youth sports groups and distributing free AEDs to a group of youth sports organizations.
