Good Morning! Here’s the Monday Morning Blog!
Did you get a chance to touch base with that teen or young adult in your life last week? Maybe enjoy a family dinner with them? Or take them out to a ball game? The season is just getting started.
Hey teens and young adults! Be sure to take the adults in your life up on opportunities they present to spend time with you. It will be as good for you as it is for them.
April’s Theme – Life Lessons Learned from Baseball
April is when spring starts to come into season here in Minnesota. Another thing that comes into season is baseball. The regular season games have started for the professional baseball teams and games are starting soon for the local teams.
Baseball has been played for many years. It is a game that has taught many lessons to many people, whether they have played the game or not. How about this one?
“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” – Grantland Rice, early 20th-century sportswriter and broadcaster
This month I am going to focus on baseball and those lessons. Check out my mentor page and see how I am doing it Selma P. Verde – Mentor Page
Baseball Players are Role Models
Whenever we watch a baseball game, we see the baseball players as role models. They all are really good at their sport and worked really hard to play on a team. Each player has a story to tell about how they made the team. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier by becoming the first Black baseball player to play the game professionally. He had to deal with a lot of hate and discrimination during his playing days. Some of the same things Robinson had to deal with in the 1940s and 1950s are still going on today. That is where Shred Hate comes in.
Who is Shred Hate?
Shred Hate is a bullying prevention program created by ESPN (the cable sports network). It is endorsed by Major League Baseball and the X Games and seeks to eliminate bullying by teaching teens to choose kindness instead of hate.
According to their website, Shred Hate,
“The ultimate goal of Shred Hate is to cause a tangible reduction of bullying incidents in schools by igniting the compassion of youth. With 10 million students bullied each year in the U.S., the need and timing for such a program is critical.
Participation in sports can be two-fold as it can both be a refuge from bullying as well as lead to additional incidents of bullying. ESPN, X Games and Major League Baseball are committed to creating and sustaining a bully-free culture in schools through Shred Hate, which has reached nearly 90,000 students in 130 schools nationwide since 2016.”
How does Shred Hate work?
Shred Hate distributes anti-bullying messages from major sports organizations like Major League Baseball (MLB) through their players and administration to kids, teens and young adults. They have created baseball themed messages and lessons to provide ways to prevent bullying. This campaign has become an important part of MLB’s youth outreach program.
In an article on the MLB website, Cool to be Kind: MLB joins anti-bullying platform, one of the players shared the fact that he had been bullied and how important this campaign is for teens,
One of those who endured bullying in school was Hall of Famer Johnny Bench. Last fall, he unveiled an unrelated program using an app made available to more than 5,000 schools nationwide, so that bullying is reported. Bench said he still remembers two boys who bullied him when he was in eighth grade more than 50 years ago.
”There is way too much bullying going on in schools these days, and cyberbullying is the No. 3 cause of teen suicide in our country,” Bench said. “I have school-age kids, and I want every child protected as much as possible.”
Partnered with No Bully by Power of Zero
The Shred Hate campaign is part of a program called No Bully by Power of Zero. The No Bully System is a four-step intervention system for school leaders and teachers to help them put a stop to bullying in schools.
Level One – Build an inclusive school culture
Level Two – Interrupt all student disrespect and bullying
Level Three – Use solution Teams@ to solve ongoing bullying
Level Four – Teach empathy to remedy negative classroom cultures
In Aspen, Colorado, where this program was launched by the X Games, they were able to reduce the number of bullying cases in the Colorado schools who implemented this program by 94%.
Through Shred Hate and No Bully by Power Zero, professional sports organizations have helped get some powerful tools into the hands of teens and schools to help them fight bullying.
Baseball isn’t just a game
Baseball players at all levels are role models. I remember seeing younger kids watch my sons play traveling baseball. My sons watched players older than them when they were playing and still attended town team and major league games even after they stopped playing organized baseball.
When we see players and professional sports organizations reaching out to the community with messages about inclusion of others and taking a stand against bullying, we tend to perk up a little bit more and maybe hear their message because they are public figures and role models.
Baseball isn’t just a game. It is an organization which has created some great players and role models. It has also taught us some great life lessons along the way.
Special Birthday Giveaway
My first book, The Hard Way, achieved its 5th year in publication on April 12th! To celebrate this milestone, I will be giving away a basket of goodies this Friday!
An autographed copy of each of the books in The Way Series, The Hard Way and Shawn’s Way
A bookmark to go with each book
Your choice of a $10 gift card to where you get your favorite beverage (some people aren’t into coffee, so I wanted to put options out there)
A fun box it will all come mailed to you in
A special note directly from me to you
Take a look at my April 6th post on either Instagram or Facebook to find out how to enter. All entries must be submitted by 11:59 PM PDT April 27th and a live drawing will be held on April 29th at 9:00 AM CDT.
