The visitor’s clubhouse at Target Field looked more like Christmas morning on Thursday, as dozens of high school baseball and softball players descended below the stands to receive donated equipment from the Major League club.
“This is sick,” said Roosevelt High School player Michael Maccaroni. “I never thought I’d be anywhere but the stands.”
“It’s really cool that they’re giving to schools and giving them better opportunities,” said his teammate, Rafa Brennan.
The Twins Community Fund partnered with Pitch In to Baseball and Softball, a non-profit partner with Wilson Sporting Goods, to outfit the teams with balls, bats, gloves, and catcher’s gear.
The softball team at Harding High School in St. Paul–scene of a murder last month in the school’s hallway–received new bats.
“When we have equipment that’s easy access, it’s ten times better for the team and ten times better for Harding, because it takes off a bunch of worries,” said Stefanie Miller, a senior softball player at Harding. “It makes everybody in the community feel ten times better.”
Miller said a lot of her teammates not only can’t afford new equipment but that many of them don’t have a lot of softball experience.
“For a lot of us, this is our first year, including high schoolers,” Miller said. “For some of us, we’ve only–once we walked in that gym, that’s all we know.”
“What we need to do as a game is continue to find new ways to keep kids in our game, as they graduate from the little leagues into high school baseball and softball,” said Twins President Dave St. Peter. “Specialization is a factor in that, and particularly the northern climates like Minnesota where our season is so short.”