Ten-year-old Beckett Connolly of Beverly threw a ceremonial first pitch at Fenway Park before the Red Sox played the Kansas City Royals last Sunday. His twin sister, Ailish, and his parents, John Connolly and Lisa Damon, joined him on the field as he continues recovering from liver cancer.
A return to ordinary life
Beckett was diagnosed with aggressive liver cancer in late 2024. He received chemotherapy and underwent surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital, but doctors determined that he still needed a living-donor liver transplant. Amanda Neal, a Beverly resident, completed donor screening at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center and donated 40% of her liver, according to Boston 25 News.
Boston 25 News reported that Beckett returned to school and resumed soccer and bike riding after the transplant. Neal and Beckett’s father later ran the Boston Marathon in April 2026 to support transplant teams and raise awareness of living organ donation, and Beckett and Neal appeared together as grand marshals in a Beverly parade.
Recognition in the region
Living-donor transplant context
Nationally, living donors accounted for 87 of the 526 pediatric liver transplants performed in the United States in 2022, or 16.5%, according to the OPTN/SRTR 2022 Annual Data Report: Liver. The report provides a 2022 snapshot rather than a trend comparison, and it says pediatric recipients of living-donor livers had better five-year patient survival than those who received deceased-donor livers.
The City of Beverly and the Greater Beverly YMCA gave Beckett an Exemplary Youth Award in May 2025 for his courage during his cancer treatment. The Celtics later honored Neal as a “Hero Among Us” at halftime of a March 18, 2026, game at TD Garden. The team says its recognition program began in 1997 and honors people whose service has had an exceptional effect on others, according to the Celtics.
A memorable Fenway game
The first pitch came before a game in which Red Sox rookie left-hander Payton Tolle threw an immaculate inning in the first: three strikeouts on nine pitches. It was Boston’s eighth such inning and its first since Chris Sale’s in 2021. Tolle became the second Red Sox pitcher to open a game with an immaculate inning, after Pedro Martínez did so in 2002, according to Athlon Sports and the Associated Press account published by KSPress.
Following a rain delay of nearly two hours, Boston defeated Kansas City 4-1. Tolle worked six scoreless innings, and Adley Rutschman caught the game, according to Boston Sports Journal. For the Connolly family, the Fenway appearance added a public moment to Beckett’s continuing recovery.
