RETROBEAST: HINES WARD, #19 WIDE RECEIVER (1994-1997)

"Ward is one of the top receivers in the NFL and is the longest-tenured wide receiver with the same team in the league...is a four-time Pro Bowl selection (2002-05)...is the team’s all-time leader in receptions (800), receiving yards (9,780) and receiving touchdowns (72)...is the only Steeler to have at least 800 career catches and over 9,000 career receiving yards...became the only receiver in Steelers’ history to surpass 1,000 receiving yards for four straight seasons (2001-04)...has team records for receptions in a season (112), which he set in 2002...posted 12 TD receptions in 2003 to tie Louis Lipps (1985) and Buddy Dial’s (1961) team record...drafted by Pittsburgh in the third round (92nd overall) of the 1998 NFL Draft...named Associated Press All-Pro second team in both 2003 and 2004...was named the Steelers’ co-MVP in 2005 (along with Casey Hampton) and 2002 (with Joey Porter), and outright in 2003... earned Super Bowl XL MVP honors after finishing with a game-high 123 receiving yards on five receptions with one touchdown...has led the Steelers in receptions the past 10 years (tied with Troy Edwards in 1999)...has a pass in a team-record 162 games entering the 2009 season...was named to the Steelers’ 75th Season All-Time Team during the 2007 season...named the Steelers’ 2008 Walter Payton Man of the Year...signed a five-year contract in 2001...signed a four-year extension during the 2005 training camp...restructured his contract during the 2009 offseason and signed an extension to keep him with the team through 2013."

"Ward's mother, Kim Young-hee is Korean and his father, Hines Ward, Sr., is African-American. In 2006, Ward became the first Korean-American to win the Super Bowl MVP award. This achievement threw him into the media spotlight in South Korea.
From April 3 through May 30, 2006, Ward returned to his birthplace of Seoul for the first time since his parents moved to the United States when he was one year old. Ward used his celebrity status to arrange "hope-sharing" meetings with multiracial Korean children and to encourage social and political reform. At one hope-sharing meeting, he told a group of children, "If the country can accept me for who I am and accept me for being a Korean, I'm pretty sure that this country can change and accept you for who you are." On his final day in Korea, he donated $1 million USD to create the Hines Ward Helping Hands Foundation, which the AP called "a foundation to help mixed-race children like himself in South Korea, where they have suffered discrimination.""