O'Hoppe carrying Players' Weekend message close to his heart

This story was excerpted from Rhett Bollinger's Angels Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ANAHEIM -- It started last season, when Angels catcher Logan O'Hoppe thought it would be fun to have patients from Miller Children's & Women's Hospital Long Beach sign his chest protector and wear it as part of MLB Players’ Weekend.

It went so well that O’Hoppe did it again, meeting with roughly a dozen patients on Aug. 5 and having nine of them draw pictures on his gray-colored chest protector. He’ll wear it when MLB again celebrates Players’ Weekend this weekend when the Angels play the Athletics.

“It was great,” O’Hoppe said. “It was similar to last year. I think it came out better. I think just going there more makes you know what to expect from a personal standpoint. But I thought the kids were more engaged compared to last year, so it was pretty cool.”

O’Hoppe had the children draw freehand or use stencils provided by the Angels. There’s a drawing of O’Hoppe in red batting at the plate as well as illustrations of butterflies, birds, flowers, an owl, a lion and a cat.

“It’s a bunch of different pictures and whatever they were feeling,” O’Hoppe said. “Some of the kids were saying, ‘I'm not a good drawer,’ but I didn't want it perfect. The messier, the better. So it worked out pretty good.”

Spending time with hospital patients is something that’s near and dear to O’Hoppe, as his father, Michael, was diagnosed with Stage 4 Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma (ALCL), a rare and aggressive form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma on Aug. 2, 2021.

But after receiving treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering under the care of Dr. Oscar Lahoud, Michael's cancer went into remission in 2022 after a stem-cell transplant.

The family celebrated the two-year anniversary of his cancer going into remission last year at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 7. O’Hoppe, a native of Long Island, N.Y., had more than 350 friends and family members at the game to commemorate the milestone.

It was great,” O’Hoppe said. “We enjoyed it a lot. It was a day we won’t forget obviously. And hopefully we don't have any more to celebrate, you know what I mean? But I’m happy we had that moment as a family.”

O’Hoppe is active with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society as a result and participated in the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) "Light The Night" walk in Westbury, N.Y., on Oct. 19.

O’Hoppe also dealt with the death of his close friend and former fellow Phillies Minor Leaguer Corey Phelan, who was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in 2022 and passed away just six months after his diagnosis on Oct. 13, 2022. O’Hoppe remains active with Corey’s Promise, which helps families affected by pediatric cancer.

“My buddy, Corey, I never got to see him in the hospital, so that's been something that’s stuck with me,” O’Hoppe said. “And that's a big reason why I go do [hospital visits]. I feel like I can pay just a little of it back. So it’s super important to me.”

O’Hoppe, 25, carries himself with both maturity and a sense of self-confidence that has made him a leader with the Angels despite his youth and inexperience. This season has been another learning experience for O’Hoppe, who has had his ups and downs both offensively and defensively.

But even when things go wrong on or off the field, O’Hoppe knows there are more pressing issues in the grand scheme of everything, which is why the hospital visits mean so much to him.

“Just bringing light to a dark time for those kids,” O’Hoppe said. “I don't know directly what they're going through, but obviously, the last couple of years with my family and friends, I understand what they’re going through to a certain extent. So it’s really good.”

O’Hoppe added that he’s pleased that MLB brought back Players' Weekend for a second consecutive year after it was also previously held from 2017-19. It allows players to highlight causes that are important to them while also showing off their personality. On a lighter side, O’Hoppe had a custom bat made based on the musical Wicked.

“It's a great outlet for us,” O’Hoppe said. “I'm really grateful we have it and happy the league has put that in place for us to utilize it and enjoy it, obviously, too. It’s a pretty cool thing the league has done, and I hope they keep doing it for a while.”