PORT CHARLOTTE — Tampa Bay Rays catcher Rene Rivera lifted a large cardboard box filled with school supplies from the back of his SUV one day last week.
The box was stuffed with 51 bags, each filled with notebooks, pencils, crayons, a ruler, a stick of glue, a pen, a pencil sharpener, a Rays sticker and a Rays shirt. The bags are for the children Rivera expects to meet this week in Havana.
“Here in the States, people complain how life is, but once you go to a country — I’ve been to the Dominican, I’ve been to Venezuela and even Puerto Rico — you know that life is not great,” said Rivera, a native of Puerto Rico.