One man’s decency

Despite the coverage of his on-field performance, Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings may still be one of the best-kept secrets in Minnesota sports in one area: pure decency.

Blake Cognata of Fairport, NY (near Rochester) is a very ill high school senior. The cancer he thought he had licked has spread through the rest of his body. He’s in the hospital and it doesn’t look good.

Peterson is Cognata’s favorite player, and one of his friends took to Twitter with the hashtag #APCallBlake, to try to get word to Peterson about young Blake.

It took only 90 minutes before Peterson was on the phone.

“It was on his heart and he just felt he had to do it,” Chris Brown, Peterson’s assistant, said in an interview with a local newspaper. “If a conversation can bring a little bit of joy, it’s the least Adrian can do.”

“He was awestruck,” his mother said. “We couldn’t get him to sleep until 1 a.m. He just kept saying, ‘I can’t believe it.'”