Mariners using Players' Weekend to give back

This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer’s Mariners Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

PITTSBURGH -- For the first time in five years, MLB Players’ Weekend is back, and with it, the Mariners wanted to utilize the platform to both showcase the team’s personality on and off the field while giving back to the community in the process.

So on the club’s most recent homestand, each group of Seattle’s players -- starting pitchers, relievers and hitters -- huddled on how to best do so, landing on a concept of donating to three separate charities in the Puget Sound region determined by each cohort, with performance-based escalators that would increase the final sum.

With guidance from the team’s community relations and marketing staffs, Logan Gilbert and Cal Raleigh led the charge, speaking up in team meetings about which causes the groups would like to help.

“This stuff is bigger than baseball,” Gilbert said. “At the end of the day, we just play a game and have fun. The fans mean so much, but there are real lives and people being affected out there. That's the stuff that matters.”

“I want to get more involved as [my career] goes on,” Raleigh said, “and start building foundations, camps, charities, that type of stuff, doing more things like that. Just because I know how more important it is to give back to the community. We can always do a better job.”

Players' Weekend runs from Friday through Sunday during Seattle’s three-game series in Pittsburgh, broken down by themes for each day:

• Fun (Friday): This will be a time to show off players' personalities, friendships and off-field interests.

• Causes (Saturday): The focus this day will be on players' favorite charity and community efforts.

• Appreciation (Sunday): Players will celebrate the people who helped them in their journey to the big leagues.

Saturday will highlight the Mariners’ team-wide efforts with their creative concept of making charitable contributions.

The gist: Mariners Care will donate an initial $15,000 ($5,000 to each of the three charities), then it will add an additional $1,000 for every hit recorded by a Seattle batter, every strikeout recorded by a pitcher and every run scored. When the final tally of those measures are collated, the sum will be divided evenly to each charity.

“What is special about Players’ Weekend is that our fans get to see our players in a new light,” said Nova Newcomer, Mariners director of community relations and the Mariners Care Foundation, “and learn about the causes that are close to their hearts.”

The three charities fall into the three pillars of Mariners Care -- baseball and softball access for all, advancing equity and justice and an effort to create a vibrant and healthy hometown.

STARTING PITCHERS: Southeast Youth & Family Services
Founded in 1974, SEYFS provides comprehensive early learning and mental health services for families, ensuring access to mental health services for communities who have historically lacked access, as more than half of the organization’s clients are people of color and 95% are low income.

“It's something that we focus on so much as baseball players,” Gilbert said, “and fortunately, we have access to those kind of services and people to help us out. But I feel like the way the world is going now, there's just so much anxiety out there, and people are just kind of hurting and need help with that kind of stuff.”

RELIEVERS: Hometown Nine
Founded by the Mariners in 2020 to establish a culture of inclusion in baseball and softball, H9 aims to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in youth baseball and softball by investing in the athletic, academic and social development of student-athletes, especially young people of color. Nine rising eighth graders from King, Pierce and Snohomish counties are selected to join the Hometown Nine each year and stay in the program through their senior year of high school.

HITTERS: Backpack Brigade
Founded in 2014 by a volunteer who saw a need for meals to be provided for youth who face hunger over the weekend, which includes over 40,000 children in Washington State within this criteria. Every Thursday, Backpack Brigade delivers weekend meal bags to 96 area K-12 schools. Mariners employees and players’ families have participated in packing weekend bags to provide meals to youth over the weekend. Just $7 provides a meal for the weekend for a child.

“When it comes to kids, that's definitely a very important group,” Raleigh said. “It's the most impactful age as well. It's right around that younger age when you start to realize what you like to do and kind of who the person you're going to become in the future.”

On an individual level, a handful of Mariners players work with various charities that they wanted to spotlight and “play for” this weekend.