{"id":17066,"date":"2025-10-23T06:49:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T06:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/17066\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T06:49:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T06:49:12","slug":"flour-bluff-coach-giving-friend-a-life-saving-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/17066\/","title":{"rendered":"Flour Bluff coach giving friend a life-saving gift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nick Alvarado says helping his friend and former MLB scout Rudy Vasquez by donating a kidney &#8220;was meant to be.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Rudy Vasquez and Nick Alvarado have known each other for about 20 years going back to a baseball academy that the two were instructors at in San Antonio.<\/p>\n<p>Vasquez then had a lengthy career as a scout for the Los Angeles Angels while Alvarado went on to coaching with Coastal Bend stops at Alice and Flour Bluff before going into the Hornets&#8217; administration. When Vasquez told his friend earlier this year that he was suffering from stage five kidney failure, Alvarado&#8217;s response was immediate.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The minute I told him, he just didn&#8217;t hesitate,&#8221; Vasquez said. &#8220;He said, &#8216;I&#8217;ll give you a kidney.&#8217; And I said, &#8216;You know, Nick, that&#8217;s a really, really wonderful, beautiful gesture, but catch your breath and really think about what you&#8217;re saying here.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;God was, speaking to me and said, &#8216;This is what&#8217;s supposed to happen,'&#8221; Alvarado said.&#8221; That was what filled my heart with assurance that it was going to happen and everything is going to be alright.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The two have helped hundreds of baseball players reach the collegiate and professional levels in the San Antonio and Coastal Bend areas respectively. And Alvarado says that Vasquez taking a chance on hiring him as a young instructor all those years ago and helping set him on the life path he&#8217;s on today made that instant life-saving decision a no doubter.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;(It was) a time when I was trying to raise a young family, finish school and pay bills. He doesn&#8217;t realize what he did for me in order for me to be in the situation and to see the things that I have.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Vasquez says he&#8217;s lead a great life. And while he&#8217;s thankful for the chance for that life to continue, he does worry for his friend.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;God has blessed me beyond imagination. I just don&#8217;t want anything to happen to him. That&#8217;s my biggest prayer.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The procedure is supposed to take place later this year in San Antonio.<\/p>\n<p>It was also a return to familiar territory of sorts for Vasquez because prior to his baseball life, he worked in production at Kiii-TV in the mid 70&#8217;s with the likes of Domingo Pena and Charlie St. John.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Alvarado says helping his friend and former MLB scout Rudy Vasquez by donating a kidney &#8220;was meant&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-17066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}