OAKLAND, Calif. – Oakland A’s infielder Tony Kemp has been named the recipient of the 2020 Dave Stewart Community Service Award. Kemp will be recognized as the 24th annual award recipient prior to the game on Friday, Sept. 25. The Dave Stewart Community Service Award is given annually to an A’s player in recognition of charitable contributions throughout Northern California and across the nation.

One of the A’s newest players in 2020, Kemp has dedicated much of his time to fundraising for community organizations providing resources during COVID-19 and also to using his platform to raise awareness and drive the conversation about racial injustice against Black people in America.

On June 5, a week into the nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, Kemp decided to combat social injustice through individual conversations with the goal of changing one perspective that can go on to change one more. Kemp coined his cause the +1 Effect. Kemp teamed up with BreakingT to create T-shirts for the +1 Effect, with part of the proceeds benefiting Campaign Zero, an organization dedicated to decreasing police violence with its #8cantwait initiative, as well as Gideon’s Army, a Nashville-based nonprofit. 

Earlier this year, Kemp also launched a fundraiser to help support organizations that are offering community support and resources during the COVID-19 pandemic in his hometown Nashville, as well as in Oakland and Houston. Kemp and his wife Michelle auctioned five autographed bobbleheads, raising more than $8,000 for Luke 14:12, a nonprofit soup kitchen that provides free meals to the hungry, homeless, and working poor of Nashville; Book’Em, an organization that creates a more literate Nashville and ignites children’s passion for reading through book ownership and enthusiastic volunteers; Gideon’s Army, a Nashville organization that works to eliminate the root causes of the prison pipeline to save children from death and incarceration and guides them on a secure path to success; Alameda County Community Food Bank, an Oakland nonprofit that distributes millions of healthy meals every year and is at the forefront of new approaches to end hunger and poverty; and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston, which works to inspire and enable all youth to realize their full potential as productive, responsible, and caring citizens. 

The Dave Stewart Community Service Award was established in 1996 in honor of Stewart’s many years of community service in the Bay Area. Throughout the years, Stewart has been involved in many nonprofit organizations, including the Oakland Boys & Girls Clubs and Team-Up for Youth, a program that supports healthy development for young people living in low-income communities through after-school sports and physical activity programs.

Previous winners of the Dave Stewart Community Service Award include: Ernie Young (1996), Scott Spiezio (1997), Tom Candiotti (1998), Art Howe (1999), Jason Giambi (2000), Terrence Long (2001), Tim Hudson (2002), Scott Hatteberg (2003), Eric Chavez (2004), Barry Zito (2005), Mark Kotsay (2006), Mark Ellis (2007), Dana Eveland (2008), Dallas Braden and Kurt Suzuki (2009), Craig Breslow (2010), Josh Willingham (2011), Jonny Gomes (2012), Sean Doolittle (2013), Jed Lowrie (2014), Stephen Vogt (2015, 2016), Liam Hendriks (2017), Chad Pinder (2018), and Liam Hendriks (2019).