BairFind Helps Kids Find Their Way Home

Every minor leaguer across the country spends their time working toward getting the call.

- Josh Norris

Every swing in batting practice, every grounder fielded, every hour they spend on a cramped bus in the middle of the night is done in pursuit of the call that will make it all worth it.

For Dennis Bair, a lefthander taken by the Cubs out of Louisiana-Monroe in the eighth round of the 1995 draft, the call came under very different circumstances. 

It was 2001. He was out of affiliated baseball, four shoulder surgeries deep and playing for the Canton Crocodiles of the independent Frontier League, when his phone rang with the call that changed his life.

He wasn’t going to the major leagues, but what he heard on the other end of the phone was just as impactful.

A little girl who was missing in Ohio had been found, and his fledgling charity, BairFind, had played a big part in the effort.

“When I was in college, I threw a nohitter and I thought that was the best feeling I ever had,” Bair, 41, said from his office in Jacksonville, Fla. “And of course getting a phone call on draft day was a good feeling, but throwing that no-hitter was the best feeling that I’d had. When I found out that the girl that we’d featured had been safely located, that was a better than throwing a no-hitter in college. That’s how good of a feeling it was.”

Fifteen years later, Bair Find is one of just five official Minor League Baseball charities. It’s also one of just two designated as a “homegrown charity,” which means it was started by a former minor leaguers. Ed Randall’s “Fans For The Cure,” which helps raise awareness to fight prostate cancer, is the other.