Weekend Warrior: Baseball tragic ready, willing and able to hit MLB

Baseball fan Ian McDonald meets New York Yankees star Didi Gregorius during his visit to Auckland last year.

Auckland baseball tragic Ian McDonald is set for the trip of a lifetime in a couple of months when he heads off to the United States to do an internship at Major League Baseball and with the Arizona Diamondbacks franchise.

McDonald is the communications adviser for Baseball New Zealand and has been awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to travel to the US with his wife to research baseball communications in his line of work.

Not only is it an amazing opportunity for someone as passionate about the sport as he is, but another step McDonald has made to defy the odds.

McDonald is disabled. He suffers from a congenital condition called Arthrogryposis, which affects his left leg and right arm.

In December 2010 he had a full hip replacement in his right (good) leg and suffered femoral nerve damage during the operation, making his normally strong and only good leg paralysed. It took six months just to be able to stand up on his own and another year before he could walk a few steps without hanging on to a rail.

In the years since, McDonald has regained some strength in the leg, but can only walk short distances and now uses a power wheelchair.

"People have put up barriers in the past," McDonald said. "When I was working in radio I was told I wouldn't get far in the sports world because I could never climb up a gantry or anything like that and comments like that made me just work harder to succeed.

"That is why I have always wanted to work in the sports industry - to prove people wrong."

Having begun his working life in the IT world, McDonald made a major change when, at the encouragement of his wife Michelle, decided to go back to university in his 40s and study communications.

He has worked at Baseball New Zealand in a "dream role" for the sports-mad bloke.

Last year, Michelle found out about the Churchill Fellowship which assists New Zealanders to travel overseas and upskill themselves in their own vocation and suggested McDonald apply.

"I put in an application and it was quite a long application process - you had to give a lot of background on yourself and also about what you do and why you wanted to do what you were proposing to do.

"That happened in July last year and I had almost forgotten about it by the time I got a phone call in November to say I had been successful.

"It is to do your own research so in my case, working as communications adviser for Baseball New Zealand, I am going over to extend my knowledge on how communications work in the sport at the very top level so hopefully I can bring that knowledge back and put it to good use for baseball in this country and also pass that information on to others.

"I am jumping out of my skin," McDonald said. "It is unbelievable. To say you have worked at Major League Baseball is a dream.

"For any football fan it would be like going to work in the offices of the Premier League or with Liverpool or Manchester United or something like that."

McDonald will spend several weeks working with Major League Baseball out of their New York office and will then have a month with the Arizona Diamondbacks in Phoenix.

"I have utilised contacts I have made over my time working with Baseball New Zealand," McDonald explained. "For example, I am going to be working with a guy called John Blundell at Major League Baseball in New York. I met him when I was media manager for the New Zealand Diamondblacks at the World Baseball Classic qualifier in Sydney at the beginning of 2016 and I will have three weeks at MLB. We have a good relationship with the Arizona Diamondbacks and we have been in regular contact and all set up for me to go and spend four weeks there.

"I know at the Diamondbacks I will be working within their communications and media team researching and writing media releases, putting stories up on their website and working with their social media experts over promotions around games over that time period.

"All I have been told by John at MLB is that they have a couple of projects that they want me to work on so I guess I will find out properly on the first day on the job."

It is easy to see the enjoyment McDonald gets from working in the sports industry. It would have been easy to be held back by those restrictions he was told he would face but with a steely determination he has proven to himself and others that most barriers can be jumped.

"For someone who has a disability it hasn't held me back. I have just got on with life. It was the way I was brought up. My mother and father drilled into me that there wasn't such a word as can't.

"It [society's understanding and awareness] is definitely changing. Those things happened 10-20 years ago and that would never happen now. People are way more accepting that those with disabilities can do a hell of a lot more than first impressions would give you.

"I don't know if there are people out there that are surprised that a disabled person is running communications for a national sporting organisation.

"No one has ever said anything to me and I have never had that impression that they are surprised I'm doing what I'm doing with the disability that I have."