Knoxville Smokies pitch in at Second Harvest Food Bank
The idea behind getting the players involved started with something else: a pitch to gather food at Covenant Health Park, the team’s home venue.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) - The Knoxville Smokies took some time off baseball Tuesday to volunteer with Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee. The group provides food to assistance programs and food pantries across the region.
Chief Marketing Officer Michael Torano said he was pleased with the work the players put in.
“They’re overachieving,” Torano said. “They’re already halfway done. We’re only an hour in. We need them here every week.”
The idea behind getting the players involved started with something else: a pitch to gather food at Covenant Health Park, the team’s home venue.
“First we started talking about doing a food drive, which is happening at Covenant Health Park starting today on Tuesday, all the way through Sunday with every home game we have,“ Smokies Community Relations Manager Lindsey Archer said. ”We have barrels and boxes at every point of entry, so you can drop off the food. Then we started talking a little bit more about what kind of impact we can make, and we decided that the best way would be for front office and players to come and volunteer and help out where we can.”
Second Harvest serves 18 counties. The food bank reports that 213,000 people in the region face food insecurity each day.
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