I LOVE stories like this.  They talked about it during tonights game and I looked it up online for more detail.  Pretty cool...

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COVINGTONThe World Series ring adorning Rich Donnellys right ring finger seemed as big as a ballpark peanut last week as he spoke at St. John the Baptist Church. He earned it as the third base coach with the 1997 world champion Florida Marlins.

But it was the small slip of paper he held in that same hand that meant the world to him. It was one of those While You Were Out phone messages, and it came from his teenage daughter, Amy, who at the time was dying of a brain tumor.

I carry it with me wherever I go, Donnelly told an audience of some 400 people Jan. 9. Sometimes when Im feeling bador lose a couple of games, on my way home Ill just take it out and look at it.

The phone memo read: Dear Dad, Chicken runs at midnight. Love, Amy.

Donnelly, 58, and now the third base coach for the Milwaukee Brewers, was the featured speaker at the parishs annual A Night of Inspiration, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus and Life Teen. His one-hour talk followed the Sunday evening Life Teen Mass, which, of course, drew plenty of young people a group Donnelly strives to reach with his message: Dont worry about what others think; be as good a Catholic as you can be, and live life with a passion for your faith.

It was a lesson Donnelly said he learned the hard way. An extremely devout Catholic while growing up in Steubenville, Ohio, he fell away from his faith after becoming a professional ball player.

I wanted to be a man. And all of the guys I saw in professional ball, they were men they didnt go to church, he said. So I got away from it.

He stayed away for more than a decade. He was beginning the journey back to the church when he received the phone call from his then 16-year-old daughter informing him of her tumor.

It was spring training 1992, and Donnelly, as the third base coach for the promising Pittsburgh Pirates, had been on top of the world until that phone call.

It was like somebody took a two-by-four and hit me right in the stomach, he told his audience last week. And he said it reinforced the old saw that there are two kinds of people in this world: Those who are humbled and those who are about to be.

A father of eight, he was to later write of his experience with his daughters death in his story, Chicken Runs at Midnight, which was published in the book, Amazing Grace for the Catholic Heart.

Amy had been his number one fan, he wrote. And Baseball meant a lot to her because it meant a lot to me.

So when the Pirates won their division that year and faced the Atlanta Braves to determine whod go on to the World Series, Amy, though weakened from the chemotherapy, flew in for game five and cheered enthusiastically, because she knew her fathers dream since childhood had been to compete in the World Series.

Following the win, as they were driving, his daughter asked him about his role as the third base coach. Dad, when theres a man at second and you get down in your stance and cup your hands, what are you telling him? Chicken runs at midnight?, Donnelly wrote later. I laughed so hard I almost drove off the roadIt was total nonsense, but it was totally Amy.

Amy flew back to Texas to continue her treatment. And two games later, Pittsburgh lost the series in a heartbreaking Game Seven when Atlanta rallied for three runs in the bottom of the ninth to win it 3-2. Earlier in the day, when Donnelly had arrived at the stadium, he received the blue slip of a phone message that he carries with him today in his address book.

The chicken runs at midnight soon became the Donnelly family motto. Even the Pittsburgh players took to shouting it out.

For the family, those five silly words came to represent the love, the bond, the sense of humor and the baseball we all shared, Donnelly wrote later. They also represented Amy, and we were losing her fast.

A few months after the playoff loss, the girl who dreamed of becoming a teacher died at age 17. Last week, Donnelly recalled tearfully her last days in that childrens hospital in Dallas. She was ready to die, he said. And she requested that her savings be used to purchase 15 more wagons for the children in the terminal illness ward so that all 17 would have one.
She died on Jan. 28, 1993. Her headstone reads, Amy Elizabeth DonnellyChicken runs at midnight.

Four years later, Donnelly finally made it to the World Series with the Marlins. In one of the most exciting  seventh games  ever, Florida tied the score against Cleveland in the bottom of the ninth when rookie Craig Counsell, whom Donnellys kids had nicknamed Chicken Wing because he held his elbow so high while batting, hit a sacrifice fly. The score was still tied in the bottom of the 11th when Counsell reached first on an error and eventually made it to third.

Then, with two outs, he raced home to score the winning run on Edgar Renterias single, and the 67,000 hometown fans went nuts, Donnelly wrote.

Donnellys son Tim, who had worked the series as a batboy, ran up to his father pointing at the stadium clock.

Dad, look, he screamed. Chicken ran at midnight, Donnelly wrote.

The large stadium clock read twelve midnight.

Donnelly grabbed his two sons who had served as batboys for the game, and the three hugged and cried.

I wanted to call Amy, he wrote. She knew how much the World Series meant to me. But I knew she was there.

The Marlins and their fans celebrated for several hours, then Donnelly walked to the locker room, opened his briefcase and took out the phone message his daughter had left four year earlier.

We did it Ames, I cried softly. And you were with me, he wrote.