ATLANTA — As Termarr Johnson and Xzavion Curry walked out of Benjamin E. Mays Excessive College’s principal constructing earlier this week, college students on the baseball staff and cheerleading squad adopted. Outdoors, a big truck sat on the curb. Johnson and Curry, two Mays Excessive alums, stopped behind the truck and the scholars gathered for the large reveal.
Johnson and Curry pulled the large truck door open and … pandemonium. The youngsters went wild. They noticed new bats and gloves. They noticed a brand new pitching machine. There have been helmets. There was even an “L display screen,” used to throw batting observe.
Johnson and Curry — representing The Gamers Alliance — donated this new gear to their alma mater in hopes that it pushes ahead the baseball program.
“To have the ability to give again to anyone, and particularly to my alma mater at Mays Excessive College, it’s positively surreal, and I’m positively comfortable to have the ability to do this,” Johnson mentioned to MLB.com. “God says give. Simply doing His due diligence and doing what He tells me to do, and I’m grateful that He’s given me the chance to provide.”
The Gamers Alliance is a nonprofit group based by present and former skilled baseball gamers that goals to “make the sport extra equitable and accessible,” the nonprofit writes on its web site. The group does this by serving to communities that will lack the sources to play baseball at a excessive stage. Johnson and Curry helped kick off the Bat 2 College initiative, which serves to “present a right away infusion of sources to public colleges to extend baseball and softball participation amongst children from marginalized and under-resourced communities” — like Mays Excessive, which is positioned in southwest Atlanta.
Johnson has been part of MLB’s programming since childhood. He was a member of the Atlanta Braves RBI program in 2018 and ’19, and he additionally performed in a number of of MLB’s signature occasions, together with the Breakthrough Collection, Elite Improvement Invitational and Dream Collection, in addition to the Excessive College All-American Sport and the Excessive College Residence Run Derby.
Johnson and Curry are two function fashions for the present college students at their alma mater. Johnson, an infielder drafted No. 4 total in 2022 by the Pirates, is Pittsburgh’s No. 6 prospect. Curry, who graduated highschool six years earlier than Johnson, is a right-handed pitcher within the Minors with the Rockies. He has had MLB stints with Cleveland and Miami.
And now, the 2 shut buddies helped present the children at their highschool with an exquisite shock — and a mandatory one. Along with bats, gloves, helmets, the L display screen and the pitching machine, the haul additionally included catching gear, netting to line the batting cage and a batting observe shell.
“Once I was right here, we had the naked minimal of baseball stuff,” Curry mentioned. “I keep in mind once we received a scoreboard for the primary time and all of us got here to the sphere and we have been comfortable. Our batting cages on the market down on the area, it was just a bit batting cage by the bushes and it wasn’t actually a lot. It’ll actually assist this system excel and simply transfer in the appropriate path. … Simply to spice up the morale and all of that.”
Added Johnson: “We didn’t have a lot, man, to be sincere with you. We have been comfortable to have a scoreboard, when the scoreboard got here. To have the ability to give these kinds of sources to the children and seeing how [far] it’s come, and with the ability to assistance is superb for me on my entrance. It’s solely going to assist Mays baseball be higher.”
The Gamers Alliance might be donating to different public colleges round Atlanta this offseason. Mays Excessive was solely the start. (Final offseason, although, Johnson donated cleats, on his personal accord, to his highschool.)
The response of the scholars Tuesday?
“Oh man, it feels nice,” Curry mentioned. “After we have been youthful, we all the time wished any individual would come bless us with issues, and to have the ability to be that particular person blessing the neighborhood, it’s simply humbling and it feels nice. To see the children’ reaction– they’re comfortable. The gloves, they’re visually interesting [and] the bats. It’s sort of like me, after I get a brand new glove, and I am within the league, like, ‘Oh man, this appears to be like good.’ They get that very same feeling like, ‘Wow, that is good and that is one thing that’s mine.’”
