World Series is showcase event for MLB
CLEVELAND -- The 112th World Series will be one of Major League Baseball's largest platforms to showcase its many year-round community initiatives, creating opportunities to spread goodwill messages ranging from youth sports participation to cancer awareness to public service to social justice to environmental responsibility. Here are upcoming highlights:
Game 1: Commissioner Rob Manfred will visit the Boys and Girls Clubs at Luis Mu241;oz Marin School, part of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, where MLB and the Indians will host a fun indoor baseball event. This effort seeks to highlight the game's ongoing commitment to youth, particularly through the Play Ball initiative, and to celebrate Baseball's partnership with Boys and Girls Clubs of America.
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Game 2: Former Indians Carlos Baerga and Barker will attend as MLB and the Indians donate a Starlight Fun Center mobile entertainment unit to kids at Cleveland Clinic Children's. The Starlight Fun Center unit is equipped with the latest gaming system that rolls bedside in hospitals to provide distractive entertainment and healing power of play to pediatric patients. Additionally at the event, members of the umpiring crew working the 2016 World Series will offer Build-A-Bear Workshop stuffed animals to patients and families at the hospital via UMPS CARE Charities.
MLB and the Indians will host a young fan from the Make-A-Wish Foundation whose wish is to attend the World Series. Jonah Martinez, 13, from Troy, Texas, will a be a VIP guest, meet with the players during batting practice and also get to spend time with Commissioner Manfred.
Zaylianny Mojica Mendez, 18, a member of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Cleveland, will deliver the official game ball with Charboneau. Mojica Mendez is a senior at Lincoln West High School.
Game 3: After another Starlight Fun Center donation for kids at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, the Roberto Clemente Award will be presented in a pregame news conference at Wrigley Field. Commissioner Manfred and Vera Clemente, MLB Goodwill Ambassador and wife of the late Hall of Famer, will attend.
Vermont teen Sadie Chamberlain will be recognized in an on-field ceremony with Sharon Robinson as one of the two Grand Prize winners of the 2016 Breaking Barriers: In Sports, In Life Essay Contest, which garnered more than 17,000 essays from students around the U.S. and Canada. Chamberlain's essay was about her determination to overcome cystic fibrosis. Robinson, daughter of Jackie Robinson, is MLB Educational Programming Consultant, author and founder of the Breaking Barriers program.
Game 4: MLB and the Cubs will host hundreds of kids at a special Play Ball event at Kerry Wood Field in Chicago. Commissioner Manfred and the 2016 Roberto Clemente Award winner, along with several other special guests are expected to attend. Several special groups of youth baseball and softball players will be recognized on the field prior to the game.
For the eighth consecutive year, MLB and Stand Up To Cancer will conduct a special World Series in-game moment with players, umpires, coaches and fans, as they all hold up placards with the names of loved ones affected by the disease. This tradition began at the 2009 World Series in Philadelphia and is now a fixture in the Fall Classic and All-Star Game.
MLB and the Cubs will host two young fans from the Make-A-Wish Foundation whose wish was to attend the World Series. Alec "AJ" Smallwood, 17, from Flowery Branch, Ga., and Ted Shapiro, 19, from Northbrook, Ill., who are both battling life-threatening illnesses, will stand on the field with players during the in-game SU2C moment.
MLB will incorporate the World Series Green Team initiative during each game. The group features volunteers collecting refuse between innings to supplement existing recycling programs and raise environmental awareness among fans who attend the World Series.
Visit MLBcommunity.org for more information on MLB's community programs.
Mark Newman is enterprise editor of MLB.com. Read and join other baseball fans on his MLB.com community blog. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.