Cubs Fan Reunites with White Sox Fan Kidney Donor for First Pitch at Wrigley Field

Bridgett Kolls throws the first pitch at Wrigley Field.
Credit: ABC 7 Chicago/Youtube

NEED TO KNOW

• A baseball fan threw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field after receiving a life-changing kidney donation from a stranger
• Chicago Cubs fan Bridgett Kolls was living with stage 5 kidney disease when White Sox fan Thomas Alessio stepped up to the plate
• “I think if you can help someone, you should,” he said

A Chicago Cubs fan threw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field six years after she received a kidney donation from a stranger who roots for the rival team across town.

“I never expected to be here,” Bridgett Kolls said while at Wrigley on Wednesday, May 6 in a video shared by ABC 7 Chicago. She was selected out of approximately 500 people who were nominated to throw out the first pitch.

“This is such a wonderful moment here with my donor. I never thought I’d be throwing the first pitch. I’m happy to be alive every day,” she continued.

Six years ago, White Sox fan Thomas Alessio changed her life by providing the then-23-year-old with a matching donor kidney even though the two had never met.

"If you have the ability to help someone I feel like you have a duty to do so," he told the local news station.

Alessio learned that Kolls was in need when she went viral for bringing a homemade sign that read "This lil Cubbie needs a kidney” to a Cubs game years ago.

“We came up with ‘this little Cubbie needs a kidney,.” Kolls told WAVY of how her message reached the masses. “They put me on the Jumbotron. They took photos of me … they put me on social media, Twitter, Instagram, any and all the social media, and my phone was blowing it up.”