The Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees typically post baseball highlights on social media. During Thursday’s game, they instead focused on gun violence.
In the wake of the mass shooting in Texas, the Rays devised a strategy where they would ditch the home run clips and instead post stats about firearms.
The plan, approved ahead of the night game by the Rays owner and other top executives, came about after Tuesday’s attack was top of mind for many of the team’s staffers, said Brian AUL, president of the Rays.
“People were talking about it all around the office,” Mr. AUL said. “You can hear people saying, ‘What can we do? What can we do? What can we do?’”
When the Rays asked the Yankees if they would also like to participate, the New York team quickly said yes.
“There are things that are bigger than baseball, bigger than sports,” said Jason Zillow, a spokesman for the Yankees. “In those times, we want to use our voice to continue the conversation in a productive, thoughtful way.”
During Thursday night’s game, where the Yankees beat the Rays 7-2, the social-media accounts for both teams posted Twitter threads with stats, data and citations about guns.
“We’re a baseball team. We are not policy experts,” Mr. AUL said. “We know that this is really upsetting to just about everybody. And we wanted to make sure that we didn’t just move past it.”
A gunman killed 19 children and two adults Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The school shooting came just 10 days after a deadly shooting attack at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., where 10 people were killed.
The campaign by the Yankees and Rays quickly caught fire on social media. The first of the tweets sent by the Yankees announcing plans to discuss gun violence rather than game coverage has been liked more than 232,900 times, the most ever for any tweet by the team, according to Mr. Zillow.
“Every three hours, a young Black man dies by gun homicide,” the Rays tweeted, citing figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Firearms were the leading cause of death for American children and teens in 2020,” the Rays tweeted, again citing stats from the CDC.
The Rays also contributed $50,000 to Every town for Gun Safety, a group that advocates for stronger gun laws.
The organization’s decision to take a position favoring gun control alienated some fans on social media.
“Stick to baseball,” one user tweeted.
Others applauded the club discussing gun violence.
“Awesome. Give the fans the facts!! Let’s help keep each other safe and alive,” one person tweeted.
This wasn’t the first time the Rays had taken a stance on something unrelated to baseball that fans might disagree with. The Rays in 2017 advocated for removing a Confederate statue from a courthouse in downtown Tampa, Mr. AUL said.
The mood in the office on Wednesday morning following the school shooting was similar to that following the deadly Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016, Mr. AUL said. The shooting occurred days before the team’s Gay Pride night.
Back then, the Rays reduced ticket prices to $5 for the Gay Pride game and gave 100% of the proceeds to the fund for victims of that tragedy, he said.
“We have a history of, on rare occasions, standing up for some things that may invite controversy, but that we feel nonetheless are incredibly important,” Mr. AUL said.
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