“You learn this from the beginning,” said baseball commissioner Bud Selig as we talked at the Baseball Assistance Team dinner Tuesday night in New York, “that baseball is a family and we take care of each other when there is a need.”

There is no question that Major League Baseball is a big business, but Selig is right, that does not remove the sense of a family from the equation.

The BAT dinner is a yearly celebration of that family. More importantly, it is a major fundraising event for an association devoted to helping those in need from that family.

Over the 21 years of its existence, more than $20 million has been given, growing from an original $20,000 loan the first year. Those receiving help include former players, front office personnel, umpires, scouts, and family members of all of these.

BAT is an independent nonprofit organization founded by the likes of former player and broadcaster Joe Garagiola and former player Ralph Branca. The need was there, but there was nowhere to turn for members of the baseball family, thus, BAT.

The number of medical bills and funerals that have been covered by BAT is both amazing and heartbreaking. Not everyone, not remotely close to everyone, who has been involved with MLB has made millions of dollars.

It was more than a bit ironic that on last Monday evening, the night before the BAT dinner, HBO’s Real Sports ran a scathing story on the NFL and former players who are in need of extensive medical attention due to injuries from their football days. The players have nowhere to turn.

The NFL Player’s Association has turned a dark hand to their needs and the NFL fights against paying for their medical attention, according to the HBO report.

There is no other organization like BAT in any other pro sport. As a result, BAT is receiving more and more inquiries from players in other leagues about what it does and how it does it. That is a real tribute to the BAT effort.

Recently BAT officials met with MLB owners and the commissioner to seek more help from them, and the owners readily agreed to do so.

The current MLB players have been approached to become more involved and have been receptive to the idea, to the point where they now increasingly come to BAT with the names of those who are in need.

BAT seeks to render its assistance quietly and always to preserve the dignity of those being helped. That is why so much of what BAT has done never makes the headlines, and, in fact, is the reason that for 20 years even MLB owners and players have only a foggy awareness of what BAT is about.

That is changing with the outreach effort of BAT executives. The need is there for greater financial support and the owners and players certainly have the ability to do that.

Consistent with the baseball family concept, the reception in those quarters is immediately positive. Now comes the legwork of turning the desire to help into the real deal.

There seems little doubt that BAT will be the model other sports will follow to take care of the needs of those who helped the games grow but never made the money needed to cover major expenses later in life.

Most of us see only the super-rich of the games and never see the rest. BAT seeks out the rest and that is worthy of recognition.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and ABC sportscaster.