A Boston Red Sox fan recovering from a freak accident last Friday at Fenway Park received flowers this week, and the gesture has gone viral.
 A baseball player’s floral gift to the woman injured by his bat has exploded on the Internet, spreading the message that it’s good to send flowers and promoting an SAF member’s business at the same time. |
Tonya Carpenter was struck in the head by a splintered bat that broke when Oakland A’s player, Brett Lawrie, hit a groundout to second base. She was carried off on a stretcher with life-threatening injuries and remained in serious condition over the weekend.
On Tuesday, Lawrie sent her an arrangement of hydrangeas, roses and gerberas with a card message that read: “Sending My Thoughts and Prayers.” Lawrie’s gift, hailed as a “classy gesture,” has gone viral, appearing in dozens of news stories from sites such as ESPN, Sports Illustrated, CNN, ABC News, US News and The Boston Globe, as well as in hundreds of Twitter and Facebook posts.
Accompanying the story: a shot of the flowers and a close up of the card, revealing the name of Exotic Flowers, the 2008 winner of Floral Management’s Marketer of the Year Award for becoming “the florist of the Boston Red Sox.”
Dozens of friends, clients and colleagues have called to congratulate Rick Canale, director of business development for the Boston, Mass., shop. “Consumer impressions are already in the millions,” he said. “It’s exploding as a feel good story with the message of sending flowers center stage.”
“I think is good for the whole industry,” Canale said. “The best part of the story, though, is that she is recovering.”
Read some of the coverage here.