AL East Round Up: Ice Bucket Challenge Edition

Casey Janssen takes the Ice Bucket Challenge. Imagevia Janssen’s Twitter account

This week, I’d like to take a break from the feverish sprint toward the promised land that is playoff baseball. Besides, as a Blue Jays fan, talk of the playoffs only brings a rancid gurgling sensation from the pit of my stomach. Instead, I’d like to talk about something that gives me a much more warm, hopeful feeling.

Over the past couple of weeks, there is a phenomenon sweeping social media: The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. According to SportzEdge.com, this is the creation of former Boston College baseball star Pete Frieties, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2012, and his friend, Pat Quinn, who is also an ALS patient. ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) which is more commonly known as Lou Gehrig‘s Disease, is neurodegenerative disease with various causes. Patients living with ALS may experience muscle spasticity, rapidly progressive weakness due to muscle atrophy, difficulty in speaking, swallowing, and breathing.* 

The idea of this challenge is simple. Once you’ve been challenged, you dump a bucket of icy water on your head and/or donate to the ALS Association. Here is their link to info on the Ice Bucket Challenge. once you’ve done the challenge, it is your turn to challenge others to complete the task. They then have 24 hours to complete it and challenge others and so on.

For this week’s AL East Round Up, I thought it would be a great idea to take a look around the division and see how each team is responding to this challenge. I’m not even going to show you the standings this week. I’ll spare Blue Jays fans the agony. Let’s get right into it, shall we?

After watching these, I challenge you to complete the Ice Bucket Challenge, challenge others and make a donation to help find a way to end ALS. Here at Jays Journal, we’re compiling a post that will showcase our writers taking the challenge and encouraging others form the FanSided Family. Stay Tuned for that!

To donate: Go to ALS Canada   OR   ALS Association in USA

*Definition of ALS via Wikipedia.org

Toronto Blue Jays

Closer Casey Janssen did his Ice Bucket Challenge whilst reading the newspaper. Awesome.

  The man, Brett Lawrie took to calling out Jose Bautista, Adam Lind and former team mate Mark Derosa:

I’d like to see if Jose Bautista accepts the challenge. I’ve not seen him back down from one yet.

New York Yankees

Apparently, Phillies GM, Ruben Amaro Jr. has extended the challenge to Yankees GM Brian Cashman. He’ll probably do it, but it’ll be chilled Perrier. You know, ’cause it’s the Yankees. Everything costs more.

Pitcher, Shawn Kelly gets in on the action too. He accepted the challenge on behalf of the Yankees. He lost his grandfather to ALS. Watch how much fun

had dumping that water on him. Kelly threw down the challenge to some pretty big studs:

,

and

.

Tampa Bay Rays

According to Mark Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times, Joe Maddon has been challenged by Padres manager, Bud Black. Stay Tuned.

Starting things off for the Rays is someone who is leading by example. Raymond, the mascot of the Rays took the challenge on with gusto and throws down the gauntlet:

The uber intense reliever,

took the challenge:

Boston Red Sox

To start with, we have former Red Sox player,

on Intentional Talk challenging

and Chris Rose:

I can’t believe it, but John Ferrel actually gets in on the action. In all seriousness, he and

joined a current ALS patient, Pete Frates, in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Take a look. Do yourself a favour and stop watching at the 50 sec mark. The commentators go on too long.

was challenged by

and he called out

and

: