Jill Biden will attend Phillies game on Friday for first time as first lady

Jill Biden, who has never been shy about her passion for Philadelphia sports, will be at Citizens Bank Park on Friday night for her first Phillies game since moving into the White House.

The first lady will take part in the team’s sixth-annual Childhood Cancer Awareness Night as Biden will join Phillies and Nationals players on the field before the game for a ceremony to honor area children who are battling cancer.

Jill Biden has been an advocate for cancer patients since the early 1990s when four of her friends were diagnosed with breast cancer. Her stepson, Beau Biden, who she helped raise since he was 8, also died of brain cancer in 2015, aged 46.

Biden, 71, grew up in Willow Grove and fell in love with the Phillies as a young girl while watching with her dad on a black-and-white Philco TV. President Biden told the Dodgers last summer when they visited the White House that Jill Biden is “a Philly girl from her belt buckle to her shoe soles and if I root for anybody but the Phillies, I’ll be sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom alone.”

Jill Biden frequently posts on social media about Philadelphia sports and the Bidens had cardboard cutouts of their faces in the stands at Citizens Bank Park during the 2020 season. They were at the park nearly every October during the team’s five-year postseason run and were sitting behind home plate the night the dream ended in 2011.

Jill Biden was there in 2008 when the Phils won the World Series while Joe Biden campaigned for the presidential election that was five weeks away. Jimmy Rollins campaigned for the Obama-Biden ticket that fall and gave his red Phillies jacket to Jill Biden before a World Series game. The shortstop was her favorite player, causing then-Vice President Biden to give Rollins some grief during a news conference in 2012.

“Every night, when I go to bed, if Jill is awake, I lean in to kiss her good night, and as I turn my head, I look right into the bobblehead of Jimmy Rollins. That’s more than a man should have to take,” Biden said alongside Rollins at the White House.“ Jimmy gave her his warm-up jacket, and she’s always around the house with the jacket on.”

Players, managers, coaches, and umpires will wear gold ribbon decals on Friday night and wristbands during the game. The children taking part in the ceremony will wear a t-shirt designed by pitcher Zach Eflin, whose sister Ashley died from leukemia when she was seven years old.

Jill Biden’s visit to South Philly on Friday is not just a chance to see her beloved team but to raise awareness as by the end of this year, it is projected that more than 10,000 children younger than 15 will be diagnosed with cancer in the United States.

President Biden and the first lady reignited the Cancer Moonshot -- the initiative they started during Joe Biden’s vice presidency -- with the goal of reducing the death rate from cancer by at least 50% over the next 25 years and improving the experience of people and their families living with and surviving cancer.

In May, the first lady visited the National Children’s Hospital of Costa Rica to celebrate a partnership between the hospital and the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Through this research collaboration, Costa Rican child cancer patients will have access to a novel cancer immunotherapy treatment that was developed by Penn scientists.