"On the most hopeless days of his childhood, when chemotherapy sapped Billy Rivard's energy as he lay cooped up in his Orland Park home, he found strength dreaming of playing catch again with idol Robin Ventura.

Amazing how real the friendship between the boy and the former ballplayer remains 14 years later.

"Sitting in a room with nothing to do, thinking that Robin was out there and cared, it gave me a feeling, 'You know, there's an outside world you still can be a part of,' '' recalled Rivard, now a junior at Western Michigan University.

Their two worlds first intersected through the Make-A-Wish Foundation in 1998 when Billy was an 8-year-old suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and Ventura was a White Sox Gold Glove third baseman with a heart even softer than his hands."