Jamie Moyer was in his third year as a major league pitcher and was, by his own admission, still wide-eyed, watching everything going on around him and soaking it in. He paid particular attention to older teammates on his Chicago Cubs squad, hoping to emulate habits that had allowed those veterans to extend their careers.

Very early that season, he noticed his newest teammate, journeyman infielder Vance Law, made a beeline to the dugout after every at-bat, and grabbed a pencil and notepad. Law, who was then in the eighth year of an 11-year career, explained to Moyer that he made notes about each pitch he had just seen, the sequence in which it had been thrown and anything else he noticed that might give him a hint of what the pitcher might next be throwing. The attention to every detail allowed Law to prepare for his next plate appearance as well as the next time he faced that pitcher.

A light went on for Moyer. He decided then to track the habits of every batter he would face for the rest of his career. That was 20 years ago.

“I knew then that taking notes and preparing better for every batter in every game would be important,” says Moyer, now with the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies. “If you told me then that I’d still be taking notes and pitching in 2009, I’d have thought you were a little nuts.”

But as the 2009 baseball season heads toward the All-Star break, 46-year-old Moyer is the oldest active player in Major League Baseball. Last season, Moyer became the second-oldest pitcher in the history of baseball to record 16 wins. Asked the secret to his longevity, Moyer credits good health, great teammates, constant off-season workouts… and boxes of notebooks.

Moyer’s lengthy career has had other benefits, too. He has used baseball as a platform to do good for others. A father of seven, Moyer and wife Karen are among the most charitable couples in baseball, creating a foundation with a goal of positively impacting every community he has played in over his 23-year MLB career.

Moyer believes his life off the field also has contributed to longevity in the game. “I think all the other aspects of family and the foundation have helped keep baseball in perspective,” he says.

Make no mistake, though, about his love of the game. “I still have that fi re,” says the left-hander.

Peer into Moyer’s pale-green eyes, and you can see the competitor. But look back into those eyes and ask Moyer about Erin Metcalf, and you’ll see straight into the heart of Moyer the philanthropist. Erin was a 15-year-old cancer patient selected in 1998 by the Make-A-Wish Foundation to visit her favorite team, the Seattle Mariners, during spring training. Moyer, at the time a Mariners pitcher and a Seattle fan favorite, was asked to go to dinner with Erin and her parents.

Erin’s mother, Michele Metcalf, remembers that meeting: “Jamie and Karen had just had their fourth baby, Duffy, who was 6 months old at the time. And they brought Duffy to the dinner. Erin was just thrilled beyond belief. She got to hold the baby, and she loved children. Erin was over the moon. Not only did she get the opportunity to meet these players and have wonderful conversations where they showed interest in her and her family, but then the Moyers let her interact with the baby. It was a dream evening. And, at the end of the night, Karen asked for our contact information and said they were going to stay in touch. I was just so taken by the way she and Jamie extended themselves, but I fully anticipated that it would be a meet-and-greet—an obligation to do the Make-A-Wish thing and that would be the end.”

Instead, it was just the beginning. The Moyers made several visits to Erin’s home over the next two years, encouraging her and her family. And when Erin finally passed away in 2000, the Moyers decided to direct the efforts of their foundation toward building a network of camps aimed at helping bereaved families work through their loss.

“We had been involved with a bereavement camp in Indiana earlier in Jamie’s career,” Karen Moyer says. “For us, it was after my grandfather died. We were able to endow that camp, and then, when we moved to Seattle, we thought what a great thing to do. Let’s get involved in bereavement in Seattle, but we went there and nobody knew what it was.”

With the support of the Metcalfs, Jamie and Karen created Camp Erin just outside Seattle. The camp became a place where children who had lost a sibling, parent or loved one could receive counseling in an environment shared with others who had also suffered a loss. The counseling is integrated into traditional camp activities, such as swimming, fishing and art.

From the single camp outside Seattle, The Moyer Foundation has now funded 27 more Camp Erins in cities around the country. The goal, Jamie Moyer says, is to have one in every city where a Major League Baseball team plays. “We want to take full advantage of the platform baseball has given us,” Moyer explains. “We want this to be a national network that will make a difference.”

Karen Moyer says she’s still amazed by the transformation children make while at the camp. “In that short time together, we can normalize their experience and put them with kids with similar experiences and put them with counselors who can help them and say, ‘You know everything you’re feeling is exactly what you should be feeling, and this is a safe place to talk about it,’ ” she says. “What I love about Camp Erin is you always feel Erin’s presence.… You just know she’s there and just blessing these children, and there’s nothing more powerful than that.”

As Jamie Moyer starts describing one of his first visits to a camp, his eyes become moist. “I was just coming in for a quick visit because I had to get back to work,” Moyer recalls. “We got there and it was lunchtime. The kids were all eating in the cafeteria, and there was a big corkboard filled with pictures. Those were the pictures of all the family members who’ve been lost. This little boy came up and grabbed my hand and said, ‘I want to introduce you to somebody. I want you to meet my uncle.’ We went over to the board and he pointed to a picture, and he talked about his uncle. He said, ‘My uncle took me to my first Major League Baseball game.’ That was his correlation to me… pretty cool. He wasn’t crying. He was actually smiling, but it was very bold of him to be able to do that, and you kind of felt like he was healing.”

Moyer stops, and a tear streaks down his cheek. “Sometimes in life, you have these moments,” he says. “And they change your life forever. Baseball has given me many opportunities, many things I’ll always be thankful for. That moment was one of them.”