Longtime Mariners fan from Kennewick wins special role with team

When Eric Haffner nominated his mom, Betsy, for the Going to Bat Against Breast Cancer program through Major League Baseball, he was just trying to honor his mom.

He never thought she would win.

But Betsy Haffner of Kennewick and her family will be at Safeco Field in Seattle on May 15 as she throws out the ceremonial first pitch and serves as honorary bat girl for the day for the Mariners.

“This will be a special day,” she said. “Just to see how excited my grandkids and family are is neat. All five of our kids (Stacy, Eric, Jamie, Lisa and Michelle) will be there, and we will have extended family, friends and co-workers going as well. It will be fun.”

Eric Haffner, who lives in New York, said he saw the promotion for the event on social media, and after reading a few stories that had already been posted, he knew he needed to nominate his mom, who is fighting metastatic breast cancer.

“I worked with my sister Lisa, and once I had written it and posted it to the site, I sent it to her. We posted it on Facebook and it spread like wildfire. We had a lot of people voting for her. I didn’t know if she would win, I just wanted her to feel some love and support.

“The first time she went through this 20 years ago, I was like 15 and emotionally I think I turned off and wasn’t as supportive as I could have been.”

Major League Baseball introduced the Going to Bat Against Breast Cancer initiative in 2009. Teams that played at home on Mother’s Day, honored their winners then. The remaining teams, like the Mariners, picked alternate dates.

Nominees earned votes on social media, then a panel of people at MLB took the top ones and whittled them down to three per team. From there, each team got to pick the winner.

Rebecca Hale, the Mariners director of public information, said pitcher Taijuan Walker, whose mom, Nellie Garcia, battled breast cancer in 2012, had a say in the final decision.

Betsy, a longtime Mariners fan, will take part in pregame activities, will be honored in an on-field ceremony, and will receive pink MLB merchandise. She already has received a pink baseball bat.

“My mom is pretty humble,” Eric said. “Her first comments were about the other women who didn’t win. She has a love and concern for all of the women involved. I can tell you, I wish she wasn’t part of this at all.”

Cancer’s return

Betsy, 60, was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1994 at age 39. She was cancer-free after a mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and five years of hormone treatments.

“Our youngest was in kindergarten and our oldest was in high school,” Betsy said. “That was a rough couple of years, but we got through it.”

The third-grade teacher was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer three days before school started last fall. She taught at Badger Mountain Elementary School in Richland until March, when fatigue and nausea forced her to step aside.

“My sisters and I can all say that was hard to her to make that call to quit,” Eric said. “She loved those kids.”

But she knew she needed to take care of herself first.

“It was hard to leave, come back and leave and come back,” Betsy said. “It was time to concentrate on taking care of my health. It was a hard decision.”

Betsy recalled last summer when doctors were trying to figure out why she had fluid around her her lungs.

“After the third test, they found it,” she said. “It was three days before school started. At that point, I’d just had shortness of breath. Before, it was one tumor in one breast. I had chemo, a mastectomy and radiation. This time, it is in my bones, lungs and abdomen.”

Betsy was prescribed targeted therapy. The medication is taken orally and she also is on hormone therapy.

“Each round is six months,” she said. “I’m on the second round of the treatment. When you find something that works, you keep with it. You keep taking it until the cancer is smarter than the medicine, then you find something else.”

Love affair with Mariners

Betsy and her husband Mark were married in 1977, the same year the Mariners were founded.

Early in their marriage, they lived in Kent and took in a handful of games every year for the 13 years they lived there.

“The Kingdome was like sacred ground,” Betsy said. “I knew every street around it and I knew where the free parking was.”

Her favorite player?

“Ken Griffey Jr.,” she said. “He was fun to watch and my son looked up to him. Eric lives about two hours from Cooperstown and he and my husband are going to go watch Griffey get get inducted into the Hall of Fame (in July).”

Eric wouldn’t miss it.

“April 10, 1989, we were at the Kingdome when (Griffey) hit his first home run,” Eric recalled, as if it were yesterday. “We lived in California for a while when I was growing up and we would drive up to Seattle for a game or two. We would go to Oakland or San Diego when the Mariners were in town. We have a lot of Mariners memories.”

With one more to come.

“It will be another Mariners memory, but it will be more of a family memory,” Eric said.

This story was originally published May 13, 2016 at 4:29 PM with the headline "Longtime Mariners fan from Kennewick wins special role with team."