The Philadelphia Phillies are helping the community during the coronavirus pandemic by providing food to area food banks. On Monday morning, the team loaded up hundreds of cases of food to fifteen pantry vehicles outside Citizens Bank Park.
Everyone wore masks, including Phillie Phanatic, the team´s official mascot. Social distancing was kept up as food was loaded into vehicles to be distributed around the Philadelphia area.
During the “contact-less” hunger relief effort Dave Buck, the Executive Vice President of the Philadelphia Phillies told Fox 29 reporters they had contacted several local food banks. “Hatfield called us a couple weeks ago and said that they had some hams that we could give away and we called 4 other partners: Pope, Super Pretzel, Giant and Herrs. We called 15 different local food banks that we have relationships with and they’re all coming down to pick up a lot of food.”
You can read: Philiabundance works to meet the increased demand for food due to coronavirus
The team expressed their satisfaction to realize how important this initiative can be for the community.
“It’s very important and when something like this happens, there are consequences you don’t think of. You think of the health first and now the food thing. It’s great for all of us to do it, we feel great about doing it. You had the testing in our space the other day, so this makes us feel really good that we can help out a little bit.”
And while baseball is still delayed due to the coronavirus, Dave Buck and the Phillies realize that they are big part of the community and they are thankful that fans have been supporting them all these years. This was just their way of showing their support.
“Thank you for supporting us all these years. We’re all in this together. Phillies in it together, Pennsylvania, America, we’re all in this together. So we’ll all get through it.”