50 MLB Players Teaming Up To Provide Over 4 Million Meals For Children

Through all that has changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing that has been consistent is the charitable giving of those who have the means. In baseball, that has ranged from team owners chipping in $1 million per team to provide for the hourly workers at their stadiums to individual players like Justin Verlander and Bryce Harper donating on their own.

On Thursday, it was announced via press release that a group of 50 players had teamed up to provide four million meals to help with childhood hunger during this time. The initiative, called the “Home Plate Project,” has raised almost $1 million to provide these meals.

“Major League Baseball commends our partners in the Home Plate Project,” MLB’s Vice President of Social Responsibility Melanie LeGrande said in the press release, “including the dozens of Players, who are generously supporting the most vulnerable members of our society. Childhood hunger is an often overlooked issue, and it is incredibly gratifying to see our baseball community once again rising to the occasion during this pandemic.”

The project is a partnership between Major League Baseball and country singer Garth Brooks’ Teammates for Kids Foundation and a foundation called Big League Impact originally started by Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright. Impact is now run by Wainwright and Rangers pitcher Kyle Gibson.

Originally, Home Plate Project was set to begin in the fall as students went back to school, but in light of the effects of the coronavirus, that date was moved ahead to get meals to children as quickly as possible.

“The pandemic the world faces during this time has called for us to act now,” Wainwright said. “Big leaguers from every MLB team felt compelled to jump in with us so we can help feed kids right now when they need it most in their cities. We are grateful for the opportunity to help fill their needs in this most crucial time with this great project […] We may be competitors on the field, but we are all one big family off of it.”

Thanks to players reaching out to friends and former teammates around the league, the project was able to get at least one player from all 30 teams to participate.

August would have marked the second year of the project, but plans were adjusted to not only involve more players but to get meals to students this spring. More than 20 million students in the United States and Canada depend on free and reduced-priced meals at school, and with schools closed all over the country, those students have lost that ability to get school-based meals.

“To be able to step in and help fill that void is an absolute privilege!” Gibson said. “We knew when we decided to launch this program four months early, it was going to present some challenges that we didn’t face last year. Players all across the league have stepped up to help us overcome them, and they are the reason we have been able to grow this program larger than last year — and at a time when kids need it most.”