CLEVELAND, Tenn. -- When Bradley Sunrise Rotary Club president Keith Munford began looking for a speaker for the club's annual fundraising gala this past weekend, it didn't take him long to settle on Tom Glavine.
"We didn't just want somebody who was a great athlete," Munford said of the Hall of Fame pitcher and former Atlanta Braves star. "We wanted somebody who cares about others, and Tom and his wife are active in helping other people."
The list of those helped by Bradley Sunrise Rotary over the years, especially the six years it has staged the gala, is both long and generously supported, beginning with Habitat for Humanity, whose houses have been both funded and built by the group.
The club raised more than $75,000 for 18 Bradley County charities and organizations a year ago, and judging from both the crowd and auction items at Cleveland Country Club on Saturday, that number may be topped this time around.
Whether the club -- which has previously welcomed such big names as Vince and Barbara Dooley, their son Derek during his University of Tennessee coaching days, ageless "Newlywed Game" host Bob Eubanks and Steve Spurrier -- can top Glavine a year from now is another matter.
"It's a big night for them," the 2014 first-ballot Hall of Famer said of the event as he signed 60 baseballs for the club and a few other items. "It's a big fund-raiser for all the charity work they do to serve others."
It was a big coup for the club to get Glavine, who admits he often regrets committing to such events far in advance because, "I hate it when the day rolls around and I realize I'm missing my kid's baseball game."
But Munford's club wisely offered more than one possible date.
"It couldn't have worked out better," Glavine said. "I just hope we can raise a lot of money."
Glavine was actually raised to play both baseball and hockey during his childhood years in Massachusetts.
And despite making the Hall of Fame in baseball, he sometimes wonders what might have happened if he'd shunned baselines for blue lines, especially since he was drafted by the Los Angeles Kings ahead of future Hall of Famers Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille.
"I don't regret what I chose for a second," he said. "But you can't help but wonder. However, I would be hard-pressed to believe it would have worked out any better than baseball did."
Almost anyone would be hard-pressed to find a life that's worked out better than No. 47's. Glavine and his wife Christine are raising five children in the northern Atlanta suburb of Johns Creek. He has helped raise money for everything from equipping more than 10,000 homeless school children with backpacks full of school supplies to numerous fund-raisers for childhood cancer, including a charity wine dubbed "Cabernet Glavingnon," though he sipped white wine Saturday evening.
Beyond that, Glavine has helped raise more than $4 million through the Georgia Transplant Foundation to aid transplant candidates, recipients and their families since 1992.
But because his outrageous success in baseball made all of this possible, he couldn't steer clear of discussing the Braves or his close friend John Smoltz -- last week's Times Free Press Best of Preps banquet speaker -- upon arriving at the Gala.
"Record-wise, it's what I expected," Glavine said of his former team, which is 27-29 this season after Sunday's 3-0 home loss to Pittsburgh. "But I thought it would be the pitching that carried them. Instead it's been the hitting. Their offense has been unbelievable. Fortunately for them, nobody's taking control of their division right now."
Naturally, as if on cue, Atlanta won Saturday night's game over the Pirates on a ninth-inning, walk-off home run by rookie catcher Christian Bethancourt -- his first homer in the big leagues -- after another bullpen blowup allowed the Bucs to tie it.
Yet Glavine also cautioned Braves Nation not to give up on its relievers just yet.
"I know Roger will get the bullpen right," he said of pitching coach Roger McDowell.
He also knows that no one in this year's Hall of Fame class deserves entry more than Smoltz.
"I'm glad he went in on the first ballot," Glavine said. "He deserved it. If there was a big game to be pitched and I couldn't pitch it, I wanted him out there because he was really good in big games."
What might surprise those who closely followed the Hall of Fame careers of Greg Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz is that Glavine apparently more than held his own on the golf course against Smoltzie, who many believe has a shot at the Champions Tour when he turns 50 in two years.
"Smoltzie was the best golfer," Glavine said with a grin. "But that doesn't mean he won the most money. That's the beauty of a handicap.
"We got criticized sometimes for all the time we spent on the golf course. But 90 percent of our conversations while we were out there were about pitching."
Now 90 percent of his waking hours seem to be about family and charity, which is another reason why Glavine, Maddux and Smoltz are Hall of Fame people far beyond the city limits of Cooperstown, N.Y.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.