MLB Players Participate In Wine Business For Charity

The city will be buzzing baseball this weekend with the Mets and Yankees at Yankee Stadium.

The vendors will be out in full force trying to make a buck.

So will the charities - including a national group that has tapped the New York Mets’ Johan Santana, Brian Schneider and Jose Reyes and the New York Yankees’ Jorge Posada and Bobby Abreu to lend their names and likenesses to a line of wines.

“We’re certainly aware of this weekend,” said Michael Lembo, co-founder of Charity Hop, a Boston-based sports-marketing firm designed to bring athletes together with charities. “It’s a nice spin to see them bonding before they play that night.”

A few hours before batting practice Friday, the players are expected to be at Mickey Mantle’s in Manhattan for the Longball Cellars wine tasting. Not to sip merlot and chardonnay, but to explain their relationship with wine as a vehicle to support what moves them.

For Schneider, it is the construction of baseball fields so kids can learn the sport without having to field grounders among broken glass and syringes.

Kids also motivate Santana and Reyes. For Santana, it is for youth programs and to support schools and hospitals in his native Venezuela. For Reyes, it is the kids in his native Dominican Republic.

For Posada, the inspiration was just one kid - his own, Jorge Jr. - who was diagnosed with craniosynostosis. Abreu’s cause is for kids in his adopted hometown of New York as a supporter of the Police Athletic League.

“All of us are grateful to be in the positions we are in,” Schneider said. “We’re all extremely lucky. This is an opportunity for us to give something back to the community that supports us.”

Last year, the Longball brand’s first, $320,000 was raised from the limited selection of Tim Wakefield, Curt Schilling and Manny Ramirez in Boston. This year, Charity Wines hopes to raise more than $2 million, organization vice president John Corcoran said.

Charity Wines has expanded to include active players in New York as well as athletes in Boston, Cincinnati and Atlanta, where Tom Glavine has a brand. It has used retired athletes for several years, and its current roster includes Dan Marino, Brooks Robinson and Ernie Banks.

The Mets’ catcher wants proceeds from his wine, Schneider Schardonnay, to go toward building baseball fields in any community that needs help.

“I love baseball and always had a place to play,” Schneider said. “There are a lot of communities where this isn’t so. I want kids to be able to have the same opportunity to play that I did.”

The wines are available online at www.CharityWines.com and in most wine stores. They go from $11 to $13 a bottle.

Lembo is relying on support from non-drinkers, such as sports-memorabilia collectors who’ll purchase the bottles just for the players’ pictures and catchy brand names.

“We’re counting on a lot of that,” Lembo said.

Charity Hop associates itself with athletes who have strong reputations of working in their communities and are sensitive to their personal images.

The company said it hopes to work with David Wright next year, but Lembo said it would not work with Derek Jeter on this particular project.

“Derek Jeter’s Turn 2 Foundation works against drug abuse and alcoholism,” Lembo said. “Right off the bat, I knew this would be in conflict with what he’s trying to do.”

Santana and Reyes are highly regarded in their homelands, and both have expressed interest in expanding their charitable foundations to assist organizations in New York.

“That will come,” Santana said. “Right now, there are so many people in Venezuela who are asking my help.

“There is only so much you can do, but when people ask for you to help, especially organizations that support children, you want to do everything you can. The problem is there are so many people who need so much. You don’t know where to begin.”

Santana will have a glass of wine with dinner, but doesn’t call himself a connoisseur.

“My agent (Peter Greenberg) called me,” Santana said. “It sounded like a unique way to help.”

Reyes’ name is on a brand of cabernet sauvignon called CaberReyes. His charity is Major League Baseball’s Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) program, which helps to raise awareness of the sport. Help is needed in the Dominican Republic, too, he said.

“There’s always a lot that can be done,” Reyes said.

That includes kids in New York, and children who are suffering from craniosynostosis.

“One of the great things about the program is that the players can donate to the causes that mean the most to them,” Lembo said. “These are issues these players really care about.”

Abreu has always been a supporter of the PAL, even when he played for the Philadelphia Phillies. His wine is a merlot called Abreu’s Finest.

The reasons an athlete supports a charity are wide-ranging, but always personal to some degree.

The most personal cause is that of Posada, whose son, 10 days after his birth, was diagnosed with craniosynostosis, which afflicts one in every 4,200 children born each year. The condition occurs when the skull fuses before the brain is fully developed.

Surgery is the only way to correct the condition, and Jorge Jr. had seven operations in six years.

He will need more, but how many, the Yankees’ catcher can’t say.

“Jorge’s future is going to be great,” Posada said. “I just hope he discovers what he wants to do in life and he’s happy and healthy. That’s all I want.”

Such words, while raising a glass of Jorge Cabernet, could be a toast this Friday.

- John Delcos, The Journal News