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Ty Godfrey - inspiration to Monmouth baseball team

The following is a clip of an article from NJ.com:

by Colin Stephenson/The Star-Ledger

Ty Godfrey would seem to live a relatively normal 13-year-old boy's life. He's a seventh-grader at Howell North Middle School who ran cross country in the fall and tried out for the baseball team this spring.

It's actually hard to imagine that Godfrey, in the past five-plus years, has had the maximum amount of radiation that a human being can safely have in a lifetime. Or that he had to learn how to walk again after suffering slight paralysis on the right side of his body. Or that he also needed to take growth hormones -- and might be on them the rest of his life -- because he didn't grow for three years.

Godfrey was 7 1/2 years old when he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

"Everything changed," his mother Theresa Godfrey said. "The doctors told us he could be a vegetable, he could be fine, or it could be something in between."

There were days during the first six months following the operation to remove the tumor that the pain was too much. Ty Godfrey was so miserable, he didn't think he could take it.

"All he kept saying was, 'Mom, I just want to die and give my parts to the other kids,'" his mother recalled.

But after all the chemotherapy, radiation and rehabilitation, Godfrey has spent the spring providing inspiration for the Monmouth University baseball team.

Godfrey became the batboy for the Hawks through "Friends of Jaclyn," a program that seeks to improve the lives of children who have had pediatric brain tumors by having them "adopted" by local college sports teams.

"It was just like an immediate connection that we made," Monmouth coach Dean Ehehalt said. "And he came on our first road trip that he was able to come to -- his parents brought him to Navy. He stayed in our hotel and ate breakfast with our team, so he's kind of like a freshman, you know?"

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