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Sidelined Cubs Helping in COVID Crisis Outfielder Ian Happ Is Raising Money With Quarantine Coffee BY CARRIE KIRBY ith the Cubs seasons finally on track, we take a look at what some players were doing during the pandemic. The Cubs as an organization and its associated 501(c)(3)Cubs Charities leveraged Wrigley Field and donated funds to help struggling neighbors. High-paid veteran stars Anthony Rizzo and Jason Heyward have announced large financial donations, with Rizzo’s foundation providing thousands of meals to health care workers and Heyward gifting $200,000 to MASK Chicago and the Greater Chicago Food Depository, according to the Chicago Tribune. Slugger Kyle Schwarber has been working with Cubs Charities to feed first responders. Younger teammates are stepping up to the plate as well. At “The Compound,” the walled house in Arizona where up-and-coming stars Ian Happ and Nico Hoerner have been holed up with other players since spring training abruptly ended, daily workouts are interspersed with strategy sessions on how to leverage their budding celebrity to help people suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hoerner launched an account on Cameo, where the 23-year-old shortstop from Oakland collects $50 a pop for recorded birthday wishes or any other message for a fan. He’s sending all proceeds to Compassion Fund for COVID-19 Closures run by the Children First Fund in Chicago.
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Happ, who majored in finance at the University of Cincinnati and at 25 is already hatching plans for a post-baseball marketing career, decided to incorporate one of his greatest passions — good coffee — into a charitable gambit. He’s partnering with Chicagoland’s Connect Roasters to sell Quarantine Coffee, with $3 from every bag sold going to help kids and adults suffering as a result of the COVID crisis. Far beyond merely providing a celebrity endorsement, the Cubs outfielder has been a driving force behind the project. He reached out to Connect and pitched the idea. Connect provided a few varieties of beans for him to taste, and although at The Compound Happ prefers to sip as light a roast as possible, he agreed to go with a medium roast to create a product with the most broad appeal. “The entire process of trying to grow a brand and a product is a lot of fun in this downtime,” Happ said. “For me to be able to do a project like that with something I love, coffee, giving back to the COVID relief effort, merging those two together has been really great.”Happ and Connect chose Save the Children and Feeding America as beneficiaries for the project. “We wanted to make sure we were supporting all the kids who are out of school who need essential products right now, and we wanted to make sure everyone who is struggling to find where the next meal is coming from is also taken care of,” Happ said.
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