John Spytek has a tattoo on his upper left chest. The Raiders first-year general manager sometimes finds himself tapping at it, for inspiration and peace.

The ink represents his late daughter Evelyn's laugh.

"I always loved her laugh, probably more than any sound that has ever existed on this Earth to me, and it was special," Spytek said. "It was impromptu. It was spontaneous. And you just never knew where it was going to come from. You'd see her have seizures and suffer through the worst things and two minutes later, she'd be laughing. And it was just such a pure laugh of joy, it was very healing for my wife [Kristen] and I. So after we lost her, one of the last videos we have of her is her laughing, and I took the sound waves and had them transferred over to a tattoo artist. So right over my heart is her laugh.

"And so in my deeper moments, if you ever see me [tapping my chest], it's kind of me talking to her and trying to hear her, hear her sound."

Sunday, with the NFL commemorating its My Cause My Cleats campaign and the Raiders playing host to the Browns, Spytek will be able to see Evelyn's face, peering back at him, painted on his custom-made shoes.

The shoes portray more than his daughter, who passed away at just 21 months old in 2014 after being born with cytomegalovirus, or congenital CMV; they represent the National CMV Foundation, co-founded by the Spyteks to raise awareness of the disease.

"They did not know, exactly, what was wrong with her when she was in utero," Spytek said, "but the doctor that delivered her figured it out pretty quickly, and they explained to us in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) that whatever we thought our dreams were, and our hopes were for a healthy child, that that's not what our journey was going to be. So my wife and I … sat there one night, and we said, 'Well, let's just be hopeful.'

"Hope Springs Eternal kind of became our little call signal for Evelyn and we would say [it] to each other, to try to pick each other up in the bad moments … like, Hey, we're going to keep fighting for our daughter, being positive in that."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CMV is the most common infectious cause of birth defects in the United States. It is a common virus found in people of all ages but when passed from a pregnant mother to her developing baby - about one in 200 babies is born with congenital CMV infection - one in five babies with congenital CMV infection with have birth defects or other long-term health problems.

And yet, Spytek said there is a relative lack of awareness.

"Less than 8% of people, specifically women, know about it," he said. "And it just doesn't seem like those two numbers [should be] at the opposite ends of the spectrum. The Pacific Ocean literally feels like it's in between the two of them - the most common and the least known. And so, we have a very significant awareness deficit that's existed since well before Evelyn was born and it persists today. We've attacked that space and we've closed the gap, but not nearly as much as we want.

"So very specifically, we want to make women of childbearing age understand and know that this is out there and that there are actually things that you can do to take steps to lessen your chances of getting it. The medical world would tell you there's nothing you can do, right? It's like getting a cold. And we would say, that's B.S., that there's actually things you can do. People practice general hygiene all the time in order to not get a cold."

Spytek said such tips are available on nationalcmv.org, as well as other goals of the foundation.

"To eradicate the virus, hopefully in our lifetimes," he said. "So that what Evelyn suffered through and what so many other families are suffering through and most importantly, the kids are suffering through.

"We're making traction. It's slow journeys. We were down the road, pretty far, with a pharmaceutical company on a vaccine, and unfortunately, that didn't come to fruition recently, so that was a setback for us. But our journey and the national CMV journey, and all the people that struggle through it, there's many setbacks [but] I'm always inspired by the confidence and the resiliency of our community. For every two steps we make, sometimes it feels like we get beat back three. But the women and the kids and the fathers and the families and supporters, they seem to rise and fight again. And then we're not going to be stopped."

Raiders offensive lineman Alex Cappa and Jordan Meredith will also wear cleats to raise awareness Sunday.

"Spy's always had a great relationship with players," Cappa said. "So it's a great opportunity for us to support him and his family. Obviously, it's a foundation that means a lot to them. They've been through a lot. So, I'm honored to wear them."

Before coming to Las Vegas, Spytek worked for the Buccaneers the previous nine years and members of the organization supported him by wearing footwear with the CMV logo on My Cause My Cleats games, including Cappa in Tampa Bay.

"It's, obviously, so personal to us and there's a vulnerability in putting it out there but also, not a lot gets accomplished in this world if you don't put yourself out there and you make yourself vulnerable," Spytek said.

"That's something my wife and I thought about when we started the foundation and we've said for over a decade now that there's people in life that see things like this and they do nothing. And there's people in life when they see opportunities like this, for lack of a better word, that do something about it. We're do-something people."

For more on the Raiders' My Cause My Cleats initiative, visit raiders.com/cleats.