Major League Baseball

MLBPA to launch 'strikeout cancer' initiative

Published Aug. 13, 2014 3:29 p.m. ET

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NEW YORK (AP) Major League Baseball players will raise money for cancer-related charities by wearing T-shirts with a backward ''K'' on Sept. 2.

Each team will support a different charity as part of the '' initiative launched by St. Louis reliever Jason Motte, the Major League Baseball Players Association said Wednesday. Players will wear the shirts in clubhouses and batting cages. The backward ''K'' is baseball's scoring symbol for a called third strike.

Additional shirts will be available for purchase at www.108stitches.com, and proceeds will be split between the Jason Motte Foundation and charities selected by each team's player representative.

The union will contribute its licensing fee to Brain Tumor Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in memory Michael Weiner, the former union head who died in November from a brain tumor.