Sharon Chapman of West Windsor will run the New York City Half Marathon this Sunday, March 21, in preparation for the full marathon in November and as part of her fundraising efforts for the Tug McGraw Foundation, an organization devoted to helping those with brain cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder, and trauma brain injury. McGraw, a New York Mets pitcher from 1965 to 1974, died in 2004 from brain cancer.
Chapman, a longtime Mets fan who had the opportunity to interview and meet McGraw in 2003, was raised on Long Island. A graduate of Barnard College and Boston University School of Law, she received a master’s degree in library science) from Rutgers in 2007. “After the kids are out of the house, I would love to be a law librarian,” she says.
Her husband, Kevin, is a labor law attorney at Dow Jones for close to 15 years. “We moved to West Windsor from Manhattan in 1995 because of the schools,” she says. Their daughter Samantha, 20, is a junior at NYU majoring in medieval and Renaissance studies while interning for Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. Connor, 17, is a junior at High School North; and Ross, 13, is an eighth grader at Community Middle School.
Chapman, who began running three times a week in 1999, joined Weight Watchers in 2008 and began running daily to exchange activity points for food. She began to compare herself to actress Valerie Bertinelli, the Jenny Craig spokesperson at the time, who wanted to lose 40 pounds and not become “ultra-skinny.”
Chapman entered a 10K race in Bermuda, but was not prepared for the steep hills, and did not complete the race. A year later when Chapman felt ready for the 10K she heard that Bertinelli had just run a half marathon. She had a new goal and ran her half marathon in Jersey City. “At first, I thought that would be it,” she says. “But then the idea of running the New York Marathon started hitting me. When Kevin and I were in law school in Boston, I would watch the New York Marathon on television just to watch shots of New York because I was homesick.”
“To go from wistfully watching the marathon on television to actually running it is something I never imagined, and I realized that it’s something that I need to try,” she says. Chapman knew that may not get in through the lottery or by a qualifying time so she joined Team McGraw, a group of runners who participate to raise money for the Tug McGraw Foundation.
Chapman runs on behalf of Connor McKean, a 12-year-old boy who is also a Mets fan. He was diagnosed with a rare form of brain tumor in 2007. “As the parents of two teenage boys and a girl in college, Connor McKean’s situation makes us really appreciate our own kids’ health all the more,” she says. Visit https://www.active.com/donate/teammcgrawnyc2010/tmnycm10SChapma to make a donation.
Chapman, who did run a 10K in Bermuda, also successfully ran a half marathon there. “Bermuda is, truly, my favorite place in the world,” she says. “I’ve been there 10 times. I’ve told Kevin that, after retirement, I want to find a temporary job so we can live there for six months at some point in our lives. I’m too much of an American to ever want to leave the country, but I’d love the experience of living in Bermuda not as a tourist at some point.”
About that meeting with McGraw: As a columnist for a New York Mets fan magazine, Inside Pitch, Chapman interviewed McGraw by phone in early 2003. “It was a great experience, and an instructive one,” she says. “I was a novice and Tug teased me about things like not recording the conversation. He was also very personable, entertaining, and witty. The interview was basically everything one would ever expect from the man who coined the phrase ‘Ya Gotta Believe’”.
“The postscript to this story,” she says, “is that my husband and I attended a Mets-Phillies game in the Phillies suite at Veterans Stadium in September of that year because we were involved in a local Cub Scouts group outing that season,” she says. “I remember sitting down in my seat, looking over to the next section, and seeing a kid who looked like Tug McGraw’s son Matthew. At second glance, I noticed that it was indeed Matthew, and that Tug was sitting next to him. I went over and introduced myself in person to Tug, who remembered me and was very excited to meet me in person. That was one of the biggest thrills in my life.”
