The San Francisco Giants invited Manny Pacquiao to throw the ceremonial first pitch for their annual Filipino Heritage Night. The atmosphere prior to the game was, in my opinion, eerily similar to fight night rather than a baseball game. The thousands that arrived prior to the game could be heard chanting “Manny, Manny, Manny…”
The reason this is appearing on the Manny Pacquiao Foundation website is simple, by having Manny show up to the to throw the first pitch, the Giants organization was able to sell 11,000 extra tickets and raise roughly $50,000 for charity. The charities that received the donations were the Manilatown Heritage Foundation and the ABS-CBN Foundation. Even though Manny’s personal foundation was not a recipient of donations from this event, it is always great to see Manny donate his time to help benefit the Philippines and the Filipino community. The photo below is one that we were able to take ourselves, being lucky enough to be behind homeplate for his pitch.
Manny Throwing the First Pitch
We were able to meet up with Manny prior to him throwing the first pitch so that we could give him one of the shirts we made to help promote his foundation. Hopefully you will see him wearing it during training before his May 2nd fight with Ricky Hatton.