Judge Among MLB Stars To Lend Voices To Campaign To Stop Bullying

Thirty-one All-Star Appearances, Three League MVP Awards, Three World Series Rings, Three Rookie of the Year Awards, One Cy Young Award, One World Series MVP and One LCS MVP. These on-field achievements are credited to some of Baseball’s biggest stars who have accepted a new role in a bullying prevention public service announcement (PSA) campaign in support of MLB and ESPN’s ongoing Shred Hate initiative. (www.MLB.com/ShredHate).

17065069LLU_MLB_v1a_CLR_POSNolan Arenado (Colorado Rockies), Javier Báez (Chicago Cubs), Mookie Betts (Boston Red Sox), Sean Doolittle (Washington Nationals), Aaron Judge (New York Yankees), Francisco Lindor (Cleveland Indians),George Springer (Houston Astros), Mike Trout (Los Angeles Angels) and Justin Verlander (Houston Astros) have all lent their considerable voices in this Shred Hate PSA effort as Baseball observes October as “National Bullying Prevention Month.” Shred Hate is an innovative joint program between ESPN, MLB & X Games striving to put an end to bullying in schools by encouraging youth to choose kindness.

The “All-Star” list of players (Arenado, Báez, Betts, Doolittle, Judge, Lindor, Trout & Verlander) all taped their PSA – titled “Join Our Team” – at Nationals Park prior to the MLB All-Star Game presented by Mastercard (Tuesday, July 17th). The concept was created by ESPN Creative Works to have a diverse collection of baseball’s biggest names as well as feature Clubs who are officially partners in the Shred Hateinitiative (e.g., Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Angels and Washington Nationals). This PSA will debut on-air on ESPN on Friday, September 28thduring the network’s afternoon and evening MLB Broadcasts. The :30 second spot also will air during ESPN’s broadcast of the National League Wild Card Game presented by Hankook on Tuesday, October 2nd. It will continue to appear on ESPN throughout October. The PSA, which will also air on MLB Network and appear on @MLB social media, MLB.com & Club sites, and PlayBall.org, can be viewed here.

Judge said: “I don’t want to be defined only as a baseball player. There are a lot of things off the field that make me who I am. I want to be someone that helps spread the message that every kid should feel respected and understood. That’s the kind of mark I want to leave. I want to be a positive influence and a role model for kids.”