Celebrity Visits and Support Have a Long Legacy at Children's Mercy

As Children's Mercy Kansas City continues to celebrate the tremendous success of the Big Slick Celebrity Weekend, it’s fun to remember another baseball game benefit almost 100 years ago.

Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were the brightest stars of the 1927 world championship New York Yankees when they visited Children’s Mercy (then Mercy Hospital). They came through Kansas City after the Yankees-Pirates World Series of that year and played an exhibition game at Muehlebach Field as a benefit for the hospital. After the game, they stopped by to donate a refrigerator, bringing smiles to the faces of young patients and to nurse, Anna Anderson.

A few other remarkable visitors and supporters from the 1950s and 1960s were Clayton Moore, “The Lone Ranger”; comedienne Carol Burnett; Burt Ward, who played Robin, Batman’s sidekick; and William Boyd, who played “Hopalong Cassidy.”

This article includes direct excerpts from For All Children Everywhere: Children’s Mercy Kansas City - 1897-2017, by Thomas McCormally. Copyright © 2017, The Children's Mercy Hospital. All rights reserved.