Cory Lidle
Hosts $1200 Buy-In Celebrity Tournament at the Palms Las Vegas
His Baseball Buds, Including Jermaine Dye (Chicago White Sox), Jason Giambi (New York Yankees), David Wells (Boston Red Sox), Eric Chavez (Oakland Athletics), Adam Dunn (Cincinnati Reds), Mike Lieberthal (Phillies), Jimmy Rollins (Phillies), Randy Wolf (Phillies) and Bret Saberhagen (two-time Cy Young Award winner) were there.
The 2nd annual Cory Lidle Celebrity Poker Tournament began Saturday, Jan 
14th, 2006. Poker professional Thomas "Thunder" Keller was there along with the above named famous baseball players, who according to Lidle, are mostly bad poker players. The $1200 buy-in included a reception at Ghost Bar.
Here are excerpts from an article about the event by Ben Platt from mlb.com...
LAS VEGAS -- For the second year in a row, Philadelphia hurler Cory Lidle organized a poker tournament and invited his baseball buddies to play with some top-flight poker players to raise funds for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
One of the big draws at the event, besides the poker, is the list teammates and friends from the baseball world that Lidle brings in to play.
"I was pretty stoked that Cory asked me to come here," said Boston Red Sox pitcher David Wells. "It gives me a chance to get out of San Diego and come here and hang out for a day or two. It's all about the charities. I've been doing charity fundraisers for a long time, so when you can give back it's a good thing."
"Cory is a great guy," said Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi, who was a teammate of Lidle's at South Hills High School in Southern California. "He's had a great baseball career. I've known him since high school. It's fun to see all these guys come in and be a part of this. I've lived here [in Las Vegas] for the last seven years, and it's a lot of fun for everyone to come into my town and hang out."
"I'm just here to help out Cory and support his event," said Lidle's Phillies teammate Jimmy Rollins. "The Make-A-Wish Foundation comes through in so many ways for those kids, and it's great that Cory is associating himself with them. That's the type of person Cory is. He makes you want to go do things for him; just like when you are on the field, you want to play hard for him because he's giving you everything."
Ballplayers are competitive in everything they do and it's no different to them whether it's a baseball field or a poker table.
Lidle, who hopes tournament keeps growing in popularity every year, feels that offseason events like his help to show fans and members of the media that ballplayers really do care about helping those in need.
"Something like this tournament helps change people's minds about what professional athletes are all about," Lidle said. "I think people get misperception what professional athletes stand for. Basically, when they go to a baseball game or a football game, they want to get autographs and sometimes we are not available to sign, and its because we are working. And in that scenario, people begin to believe that, that guy's cocky and he should give back by signing autographs.
"But when we do something like this event, it turns the light the other way and shows people what we athletes are really about."