WESTLAKE, Ohio (AP) -On a night off from work, Shaquille O’Neal took on two sticky subjects: peanut butter and Alex Rodriguez.
Phoenix’s All-Star center helped collect more than 3,000 sealed jars of peanut butter for food boxes to be distributed by Feed The Children to needy families around the country. Following a fundraising program, O’Neal, who will face the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night, talked about Rodriguez’s admission that he used banned drugs from 2001-2003 while playing for the Texas Rangers.
O’Neal, who has been friends with the New York Yankees third baseman for years, credited Rodriguez for coming clean.
“He’s an honest man,” O’Neal said. “He admitted it, so hopefully people will forgive him. But I really can’t elaborate on something I know nothing about.”
O’Neal said he and his teammates have not discussed Rodriguez’s situation or baseball’s widespread steroid abuse.
. “Every other sport has drug testing and all that. But A-Rod is still a good guy and an honest man so hopefully he will be forgiven.”
Meanwhile, O’Neal’s appearance at Church On The Rise generated a huge response from area residents, who dropped off peanut butter and other goods to be distributed by Feed The Children, an Oklahoma City-based international hunger relief organization founded in 1979 by Larry Jones.
With peanut products made at a processing plant in Georgia being blamed for a salmonella outbreak that has sickened 575 people and may have caused as many as eight deaths, Jones said his group is taking extra precautions to ensure the peanut butter that is given away is not contaminated.
“We’ll double check with the Jiffys, the Peter Pans and make sure that the peanut butter is good,” said Jones, who plans to take some of the goods and money collected during O’Neal’s stop to Wilmington, a city hit hard by the economic downturn. “We understand the problem that is out there but on the other side of the coin, we understand the nutritional value of peanut butter so we’re going to double check.
“The most expensive thing we buy at Feed The Children is peanut butter, which is why we chose it. When we started this, the salmonella was not there but we’re being extremely cautious.”
ike Espy, former Secretary of Agriculture under President Clinton, helps oversee the food’s dispersal.
“He along with my staff make sure we don’t pass off any (tainted peanut butter),” he said. “This is the No. 1 concern that we have, that no one gets sick off the peanut butter.”
O’Neal has been working with Jones in cities around the U.S. to help families who can’t afford groceries. O’Neal said donating his time means even more these days.
“This is what I was taught by my parents,” he said. “We’re definitely living in tough times, industry is not what it used to be and people are losing jobs every day. But we’re still the top country in the world. It’s time for Americans to stick together somehow.”
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