Someone had to take a stand.

Or in this particular case, make a stand, supply it and provide a steady stream of customers.

That’s what good friends and neighbours do.

Seven-year-old Madison Vanden Dungen set up a lemonade stand on the front lawn of her Saskatoon home in the hopes of saving money to start her own business. After two teen boys robbed the stand of juice, money and candy, her mother Jade Floata reported the incident and police apprehended the culprits on Monday, July 22nd.

The story struck a nerve across Saskatchewan, Canada and North America, with numerous people wanting to help out. 

That’s when the Saskatoon Berries of the Western Canadian Baseball League (WCBL) offered to pitch in and lend a hand to Maddy and her entrepreneurial endeavours.

“We just started kind of talking, ‘What can we do?’” Tyler Wawryk, vice president of business operations for the Berries told CBC News.

“We thought, why not have her out and she can sell lemonade at a baseball game?”

Maddy and her family did just that at the Berries home game against the Swift Current 57’s on Thursday, July 25th at NexGen Patch at Cairns Field.

The Saskatoon Berries supplied the lemonade and the stand, not to mention the customers, who included a long line of players from the WCBL team.

“We wanted to make it really easy for Maddy and her family … we wanted to make sure that we had everything for them,” said Wawryk.

Maddy also got to throw out the ceremonial first pitch and she put her own spin on that pre-game event by substituting a baseball for a lemon.

By the end of the night, she and her sister, Briella, had raised $2,988 through lemonade sales.

“The amount of gratitude is overwhelming … I’m so thankful that she can have a safe space to do this right now,” Floata told CBC reporter Dan Zakreski.

“She wants to invest it, she wants to start new businesses, she wants a lemonade truck or something.”

For their part, the expansion Berries won the game by a 9-3 score and clinched their first WCBL playoff berth in their inaugural season.

Looks like both Maddy and the Berries have all the bases covered.