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MLB WINTER MEETINGS

December 10, 2018

Las Vegas, Nevada

EMCEE: It is my pleasure to welcome you all to this year's announcement of the seventh annual Winter Meetings Charity Auction held each year during our industry's largest gathering.

This special auction initially began as an effort to support organizations leading the fight against cancer, which was in recognition of those in our baseball family affected by the disease.

Two years ago we built a youth field in memory of our late friend Shannon Forde in her hometown of Little Ferry, New Jersey.

Last year we remembered Katy Feeney with a memorial scholarship fund in her name. With us today is that fund's first recipient, attending this year's meetings is Elizabeth Stephens. She is in her first year of the Graduate Sports Management Program at the University of San Francisco. This summer she will intern in the Commissioner's office in New York.

In seven years this auction has raised approximately $1.15 million and has impacted countless lives.

Today the auction continues its evolution of supporting causes important to the baseball family, as this year's effort is committed to the Jackie Robinson Foundation and Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.

None of this is possible without the commitment and generosity by our clubs to provide fans the opportunity to live their greatest baseball dreams.

It's become a really nice annual tradition seeing those emails from Josh Rawitch, head of Communications for the Arizona Diamondbacks, encouraging his colleagues to rally around this effort. Josh has been instrumental to this auction's success, and we thank him for continuing to make this work.

Several months ago, it was first proposed to elevate our sport's support for the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which is one of MLB's pillar charitable partners. It was then Jason Zillo, head of PR for the New York Yankees, who suggested we also support the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, particularly in gratitude for the hospitality that Bob Kendrick and the Museum has shown to all teams while on the road in Kansas City.

Our first speaker today is somebody who has been heavily involved in organizing the past few auctions as well as leading the conversation on its beneficiaries.

To speak on behalf of MLB and the clubs, and talk a little bit more about these two incredible organizations and the auction, please welcome the Vice President of Social Responsibility of Major League Baseball, Melanie LeGrande.

MELANIE LeGRANDE: Good morning. On behalf of Major League Baseball and all of our 30 clubs, we are proud to announce the launch of this year's Winter Meetings auction. As Steve mentioned, over the past six years we've raised $1.15 million to support charities close to our heart. This year we've already launched the auction, and have wonderful results of 60-plus-thousand already, and we don't close until Thursday evening.

Just so proud to meet with Bob and with Sharon, as well, and to support two institutions that are so close to our game, the Jackie Robinson Foundation and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

We are proud for the second executive year to launch a scholarship. With the Jackie Robinson Foundation we are launching that scholarship in support of those who are pursuing a bachelor degree in sports management.

We have a wonderful existing relationship with Sharon and her family and the entire Jackie Robinson Foundation. We support 30 scholars each year, one for each of our clubs. We've also supported the Jackie Robinson Museum to the tune of $1 million, and that will be opening later on in the year.

A big shout-out to Bob and the work he's doing at the baseball museum. There was a vandalism to the museum earlier this year. And in 2017 supported and provided a joint $1 million charitable contribution. So when we saw that there was vandalism occurring, we supported to the tune of another couple hundred thousand dollars to support that project.

And so we are pleased to have this auction to close the gap so that Bob and his crew can do what they can to get everything up and running for the fans in Kansas City and across the globe.

Thank you again to each of the PR staff's, communication staffs at each of our 30 clubs. To Steve, Pat Courtney, to MLB Network. There are some tremendous experiences and items available on the auction. You get to meet with our League MVP's, you get to be a manager for a day. And again, as I mentioned before, we just launched late last evening, and we're already surpassing $60,000. I look forward to seeing that rise and rise through Thursday.

Again on behalf of our 30 clubs, thank you for your support. Thank you for your engagement. I look forward to seeing more engagement on our auction website. A special thank you to Sharon, Bob, and Jackie Robinson Foundation. We are very proud to support and honor and preserve the legacy of our sport through your work. Thank you so much.

Please share with us.

SHARON ROBINSON: Thank you, Melanie.

Good morning. Great to be here with Bob Kendrick, and also with Stephen Lynch of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, for this special Winter Meetings and auction.

On behalf of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, I'd like to express sincere gratitude to Major League Baseball and to all 30 clubs for their generosity. With my father's centennial birthday celebration next year, I continue to be moved by how the baseball community has embraced his legacy. The reference through the Jackie Robinson Day, but also substantive efforts in maintaining the importance of diversifying the game on and off the field, programs like Play Ball, RBI, Elite Development, Diverse Business Partners, and MLB Diversity Fellowship are making a difference.

I'm particularly proud of our marquee education program, breaking barriers in sports and life, which has allowed us to bridge my father's role as a pioneer and the values he displayed, with young people today who are facing their own barriers in their lives. The program has reached millions of children, bringing baseball into schools across the United States and Puerto Rico.

At Jackie Robinson Foundation, we foster young, diverse people across the country through our scholarship program. Since 1973, JRF has provided $85 million in scholarships, graduated over 1500 alum, and provided direct support and $1.4 million to graduate programs.

We currently have 256 scholars and fellows from 30 states, and attending 114 colleges and universities. JRF is one of the pillar charitable partners of MLB.

Recently the League committee itself to financially support a 25,000 square foot Jackie Robinson museum that will commemorate the life of Jackie Robinson as an athlete, activist, and icon. Illuminating his impact across society.

Thanks to the funding from this amazing auction, MLB will add additional JRF scholar to our list. It's the first time we're going to actually have a scholarship to somebody studying sports. We're very excited about that. We've been trying to get more of our JRF alum in the MLB family and other sports. This is one way to kind of make that happen.

Once again, we are very honored and thankful to be selected along with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City to be a beneficiary of this auction.

Thank you all. Thank our clubs, Commissioner. Thank you.

EMCEE: So the auction is now live at MLB.com/WinterMeetingsAuction until Thursday, December 13th at 10 p.m. Eastern. It features more than 80 of these baseball items and experiences. We encourage everyone to visit today and bid often.

Our next and final speaker is someone who has committed his life to carrying on the legacy of all the great Negro League players, especially his friend Buck O'Neil. If you haven't had the chance to hear him tell you a story about Buck or Satchel Paige, do yourself a favor and make that happen.

Please welcome our friend, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Bob Kendrick.

BOB KENDRICK: Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Steven. Thank you Melanie. And thanks to Sharon Robinson.

It is a tremendous honor for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to be part of this wonderful opportunity to raise funds and to share this stage with Sharon. A big part of our story in Kansas City is centered around her father and his impact and importance and of course the great work they are doing to extend his legacy. Obviously the work we do is to extend the legacy of those who preceded Jackie Robinson.

So in 1990 we started the process of building this incredible museum in a little one-room office in Kansas City at 18th and Vine. And guys like Buck O'Neil and other leaders who were still with us at that time, took turns paying the monthly rent to keep that little office open, and it was in the hope of when they built the facility that would honor not just baseball history, but American history.

So as we've evolved this museum into a magnificent place, and we're so excited each and every year when many Major League Baseball clubs come by to experience this. It is so meaningful. And the one thing that I shared with them when they make that visit to the museum is that they share a bond of love for the game. When you walk into the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, you'll never see a greater example of the love of the game.

And that is what this story is all about. In 1920, the Negro Leagues were formed in the YMCA. That is the home of the Buck O'Neil Education Resource Center. We started the work to save that once-abandoned building that had not been occupied since the 1970s, had started the process of restoring it before Buck O'Neil passed away in 2006. We made great progress in the restoration of that building.

In late June of this year, someone vandalized the building. They went into the building, cut a mainline water pipe, flooded the building, causing about a half million dollars in damages. As you can well imagine, that knocked the wind out of all of us. And it was very difficult, very challenging for us at that period of time.

But I was reminded of something that Buck O'Neil would so oftentimes say: That people will do bad things. Good people will go fix them. And the good people stepped up to the plate. And we've got kids from Little League, $5, $10, $20, just to help renew the spirit for us. And even as much as the resources that they generated through this wonderful auction, and the support of Major League Baseball and the Players' Association, what it did was it renewed the spirit in people.

Because I'll be honest, when that happened in June, I was ready to wave the white flag, people, this is a wrap. And we were reminded if you are going to be a steward, you can't walk away. They went out and did something about it. And so at that point we realized that to dust ourselves off, get back in the battle and do what the business is at hand, and that is to make sure that the Buck O'Neil Education and Resource Center will absolutely come to fruition. That Buck's dream of building this facility would not be derailed. And in the final equation, you don't want the haters to win.

So we thank Major League Baseball, we thank all of the 30 clubs for their generosity, and we thank all of the baseball fans around this nation who have kept us in their thoughts and prayers, and who have generously given the packages that are available for auction over the next several days, knowing that those proceeds will come back to support both the Jackie Robinson Foundation, this beautiful Jackie Robinson museum, and the Negro League Baseball Museum and the Buck O'Neil Education and Resource Center.

So on behalf of the entire team at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, my friends from the Kansas City Royals, and of course Pat from MLB, Tony Clark from the Players' Association, thank you for your commitment to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and for again helping renew my belief in mankind, which certainly had suffered there a little bit. You know you can't give up, but at that moment I wanted to give up on people.

But we are looking forward to completing the restoration of the area that was damaged and moving forward with the idea and hope that by this time next year that facility will become completely operable and will expand the work that we're already doing to help enlighten people about the history of the Negro Leagues and the impact that is still very much still alive today.

Thank you all very much.

EMCEE: One final takeaway. To all of us, our game's history is not just stories that you read about, hear or see on TV. It's a part of who we are and why we dedicate ourselves to honoring the legacy through efforts like this to support the Jackie Robinson Foundation and Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, which we hope will inspire tomorrow's leaders to make the future of our society and our game a little brighter.

This concludes today's press conference.

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