NewsMets honor Robinson with Citi Field Kids
Program established to teach Jackie's values to children
By Anthony DiComo / MLB.com
04/15/09 9:10 PM ET
NEW YORK -- By the time Jeffery Moss was a teenager, the abusive stepfather that haunted his childhood had already had a profound effect on the young boy. Some of the abuse was physical, some verbal, some emotional. But every part of it had affected every part of his life.
It's with a certain gleam that Moss then recalls how the Jackie Robinson Foundation entered into his life, scooped him up and set him on a track that began with college and continues now, at age 24, in his role as a financial center manager at Citibank's Starrett City branch in Brooklyn.
The Foundation, through both a monetary grant and the personal and professional development that went along with it, quite literally helped save the boy's life.
"I thought it was a transaction," Moss said. "I thought it was just a check, but it became a family. And that family, I didn't realize until years later, nurtured me in so many emotional ways. And it's contributed to my success." Now, more than a decade after he first became involved with the Jackie Robinson Foundation, Moss is one of the program's many alumni who are helping to nurture the next generation of Foundation scholars. He and eight other Foundation alums were at Citi Field on Wednesday, Jackie Robinson Day, to help establish the Citi Field Kids Program, which will provide youths in tri-state communities with motivational and educational experiences at the new ballpark.
"I love when the Foundation puts me in these positions to be able to speak to, and, as best I can, to minister to these young folks," Moss said. "To show that they can do it, too."
The way Moss did it was so much different than the route taken by most. Suddenly with options thanks to a grant from the Robinson Foundation, Moss enrolled at Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he eventually networked with people from Citi. He joined the company out of college, and has since worked his way into his current position.
Through hard work, he parlayed his opportunity into success. And that's the whole point. At 24 years old, Moss is working a job that easily could have gone to someone twice his age.
"Some days I wake up and I'm like, what am I doing?" Moss said.
He's succeeding, that's what.
If Moss has his way, the current generation of Jackie Robinson Foundation scholars will be able to do exactly what he has done -- take one opportunity and use it to thrive. This past year alone, the Foundation sponsored 83 scholars, and it has awarded more than $18 million in grants since Rachel Robinson founded it in 1973.
The Citi Field Kids program is an extension of that, aiming to positively impact middle and high school students through the nine values that Jackie Robinson strove to embody: courage, integrity, determination, persistence, citizenship, justice, commitment, teamwork and excellence. The first group of Citi Field Kids, guided by former Foundation scholars, received a crash course in those values Wednesday, taking tours through Citi Field's Jackie Robinson Rotunda.
There, Robinson's nine values are inscribed on the floor, each with a short passage beside it.
"Jackie Robinson was not only a Hall of Fame baseball player," Mets chairman Fred Wilpon said. "He was, in my view, an American icon -- a hero in this country for us all to look to."
Following the tour, the Citi Field Kids walked up to an auditorium overlooking the Rotunda, where Moss addressed them and related his own experiences.
"The Jackie Robinson Foundation was a catalytic program and a catalytic moment in my life," Moss said. "From the moment that I applied to the moment that I graduated and even now, it's kind of been a rite of passage. It's fed me every step of the way."
Wednesday's program hosted students from the 36 nonprofit organizations in four boroughs that make up the United Neighborhood Houses federation of settlement houses. And they are just the start. The Mets will host five other Citi Field Kids sessions this season, each of them featuring current or former Mets, front-office executives, broadcasters or a teammate of Robinson's.
The goal is to create an environment conducive to learning and to inspiration, so that, perhaps, one of the Citi Field Kids will one day become the next Jeffery Moss.
"Being a part of the program became more than just a transaction," Moss said. "It became a transformation for me. Instead of just trying to go for a degree, I had decided that I wanted to change the world the best that I could. I wanted to have a positive impact on the world."
Anthony DiComo is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
