Earlier today, on the second day of HOPE Week 2018, the Yankees honored 10-year-old Cassidy Warner of Scranton, Pennsylvania. The club also celebrated students and mentors from the anti-bullying organization, No Bully. Yankees players Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Dellin Betances, Austin Romine, Neil Walker and A.J. Cole, along with coaches Mike Harkey, Marcus Thames, Carlos Mendoza, Reggie Willits and P.J. Pilittere surprised Cassidy, her family and No Bully participants at Heritage Field (on the site of the original Yankee Stadium), where the group played a game of kickball and talked about how bullying is unacceptable.
The 10-year-old Scranton, Pennsylvania, fourth-grader exhibited bravery beyond her years this March, posting a video on Facebook without her parents’ knowledge, detailing her struggles with being bullied. She does not speak in her video, instead holding up white sheets of paper with handwritten descriptions of bullying she has endured at school. She writes that classmates have spit on her, pulled her hair and spilled milk on her jacket. They’ve pushed and kicked her and threatened her life, and whenever she sits at a lunch table, other kids leave.
Her sadness was not limited to her own experiences. She also hoped her video could affect change in the world, ending her post with a message that read, “This is my story… Stop bullying! Not just for me for other kids too. Please share my story!”
When her story came to the attention of the Yankees, the team offered her their support and let the world know that they are against bullying by filming a video of their own featuring virtually the entire roster and manager Aaron Boone. The team let her know that the Yankees were her friends, and that they’d love to be able to spend time with her – which they did today.
Photos courtesy of the New York Yankees.
[ngg_images source=”galleries” container_ids=”207″ display_type=”photocrati-nextgen_basic_thumbnails” override_thumbnail_settings=”1″ thumbnail_width=”250″ thumbnail_height=”175″ thumbnail_crop=”1″ images_per_page=”20″ number_of_columns=”0″ ajax_pagination=”0″ show_all_in_lightbox=”0″ use_imagebrowser_effect=”0″ show_slideshow_link=”1″ slideshow_link_text=”[Show as slideshow]” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]