Former Player Donates Kidney to Retired Baseball Coach
Joe Fonteneaux was always more than a baseball coach at Paul Quinn College in Waco in the late 1970s. He was a father figure.
“We really became a family, a really close family,” Fonteneaux told CBS affiliate KWTX.
In fact, Fonteneaux and his players have gotten together every summer for the past 28 years.
“We are his family,” Kenneth Lee told the station.
Lee, the team’s shortstop, said that Fonteneaux “saved” him from incarceration three decades ago, pulling him away from trouble and convincing him to go to college.
So when Fonteneaux, who has diabetes, told his players at a reunion a few years ago that he needed a new kidney, he didn’t have to get on a years-long waiting list to find a donor. He had volunteers ready to come to bat.
“When the opportunity came and I knew what he needed, ok, put me in coach,” Lee told KWTX. “I found out that God had set that thing up that it didn’t matter what coach’s blood type was, I’m a universal donor.”
It wasn’t just Lee. The right fielder donated Lee’s flight to Waco, the catcher paid for housing and other players donated money.
The surgery was last week.
“It means the all the world to me now that just to know that they cared that much for what we did together,” Fonteneaux said.
“We thought this was just about baseball,” Lee said. “This was about life.”
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