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Roger Mooney

Roger Mooney covers the Tampa Bay Rays for The Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and News Channel 8. He has covered the Rays since their first season in 1998, including 11 years for the Bradenton Herald. Roger has also covered Florida, South Florida and Florida State football, the Bucs and the Lightning.

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CC, B.J., Price launch Dugout Club today

Posted Jun 23, 2010 by Roger Mooney

Updated Jun 23, 2010 at 02:35 PM

Carl Crawford, David Price and B.J. Upton have teamed up to form the Rays Dugout Club for children attending recreation centers in South St. Petersburg this summer.

The Rays Dugout Club is a key component of the Rays South St. Petersburg Initiative, an idea conceived by Rays employees who are residents of that community, partly in response to violence surrounding Paris Whitehead, an eight-year-old South St. Petersburg girl killed by gunfire in April 2009.

“I am very proud to be able to help this community that is so dear to me and my family, and I feel blessed to work for an organization that has enthusiastically rallied behind the ideas that my fellow employees presented,” said Rays Box Office Supervisor Karen Richardson, a St. Petersburg native and one of the Rays employees who spearheaded the project.

The program began with the team reaching out to local recreation centers.  Team mascot Raymond and the Rays Street Team have visited centers, brought the youngsters to Rays games and provided Rays backpacks and other items.  The team also has hosted Real Talk Teen Summits and socials in partnership with the Department of Juvenile Justice and Childs Park YMCA allowing kids to spend their free time together discussing relevant issues.

The Rays will also hold a celebration of African-American heritage during the Rays-Yankees series, July 30–August 1.  As part of the celebration, the Rays will award three students with scholarships from the Rays Baseball Foundation.  Sarasota’s Petra Greenidge, a student at Washington University in St. Louis, will receive the team’s Jackie Robinson Scholarship, an annual $10,000 grant for four years.  The Foundation will also recognize its Monte Irvin Scholarship award winners: one outstanding female minority student and one outstanding male minority student residing in Pinellas County.

Administered by the Pinellas Education Foundation, each student receives a $2,500 scholarship.  This year’s recipients are Mark Reid from St. Pete Collegiate High School and Rinsha Prophete from Gibbs High School.

As part of the Rays Dugout Club, Crawford, Price and Upton will each support two recreation centers in St. Petersburg this summer.

Crawford will sponsor “Carl’s Crew” at Lake Vista Recreation Center and Frank Pierce Recreation Center. 

Price will sponsor “Price’s Pals” at Campbell Park Recreation Center and Gladden Park Recreation Center. 

Upton will sponsor “B.J.’s Bunch” at Childs Park Recreation Center and Wildwood Recreation Center.

The program began today when the three players visited their recreation centers.  The players announced the program to the kids, handed out Dugout Club T-shirts featuring each player’s club name and presented each recreation center with an “angel fund” to be used to meet the needs of the children and families served by each recreation center.

On Thursday Crawford, Price and Upton will host the children from the Dugout Club for the Rays-Padres game.  Raymond will also visit each recreation center to host a lunch for the children, play games and remind the children to work hard over the summer.

Crawford, Price and Upton will return to the recreation centers later in the summer to motivate the children for the start of school.  They will present each child with a Dugout Club-themed back-to-school item and reinforce the importance of education.