When his wife passed away unexpectedly, Bob DeVries spent an entire baseball season traveling around the country visiting every major stadium. It would've stayed the story of a man who turned to baseball after his wife’s death, but a few months into his sports odyssey, DeVries got a call from the coroner in charge of his wife’s autopsy.

Shawn Marie appeared perfectly healthy when she died unexpectedly at the age of 35. The coroner’s report showed that the cause of her death was a condition called Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia - a condition they didn’t know she had.

After researching the condition, DeVries realized that his wife had presented some of the listed symptoms: dizziness, heart palpitations, fainting, and trouble sleeping. But they seemed so minor, things people manage in the course of everyday life.

When she fainted, they went to the emergency room. But it had been a hot day and the doctor assumed she was dehydrated. They didn’t check for a heart condition, they just hooked her up to an IV and then released her.

Every year, 400,000 Americans die suddenly and unexpectedly due to cardiac arrhythmias. One in 200,000 high school athletes in the United States will die suddenly, most without any prior symptoms.

On his summer baseball odyssey of 2009, DeVries went to Fenway park to see a game against the Yankees. His wife was a huge Yankees fan and, when local news affiliates learned what DeVries was doing, CBS and FOX covered the story. That’s how Bob landed on the SADS Foundation's radar. SADS (Sudden Arrythmia Death Syndrome) supports families and helps create awareness about the condition.

So DeVries agreed to visit all 30 ballparks again the following season, this time in partnership with SADS, raising awareness and money. Bob’s Baseball Odyssey Part Two raised close to $22,000 - and something much more important.

“It was more about the awareness,” DeVries explains. “Lots of people like me are living with a loved one who has this condition, but don’t know about it until it’s too late. We wanted to get the word out and save a few lives.”

Consider Your Awareness Raised

“First thing is to look for the warning signs,” he says.

Dizziness, fainting, heart palpitations, consistent or unusual chest pain, and trouble sleeping all could be indications of a heart arrythmia. So can shortness of breath during exercise.

It’s often genetic. If a loved one has died of a SADS condition, the rest of the family should be tested.

During his baseball tour, DeVries received an email from a woman who had lost her daughter to a heart condition. “I wrote back and asked if her grandchildren had been tested,” DeVries says. They hadn’t been.

“No one followed up with them to say, ‘Hey, this is genetic, you should get them checked out,’” DeVries says. When the coroner who did his wife’s autopsy called and suggested her family get tested, he went above and beyond.

Most cardiac arrhythmias and structural defects that can cause sudden death in kids are treatable. But the genetic testing necessary isn’t always provided by insurance companies, so SADS steps in to help families get tested.

“I’m just a regular guy,” DeVries says. “You always think this is something that could happen to someone else. Then all of a sudden, I became someone else. I’m a lot more invested now.”

Bob’s Baseball Odyssey is over, but he’s still tirelessly championing the cause, as are the folks at the SADS Foundation.

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