Baseball goes pink for Mother's Day

All major leaguers will wear pick wristbands and pink ribbons on Mother's Day. A pink ribbon logo will appear on the bases and on commemorative the home plates, and the lineups will be written on pink cards.

Why? To raise awareness of breast cancer and provide money for research.

As many as 100 MLB players might use pink bats on Mother's Day. Each player that wants to participate receives two of the bats and each of the 30 teams will receive half-a-dozen "generic" bats available to any player on the team. Players that already use Louisville Slugger bats will have their signature on the bat, along with their mother's name underneath in block letters, if they wish. Players using another brand of bat can, however, have their name (and mother's name) in block letters.

After Sunday's games, players will sign bats and MLB will then collect and auction them on MLB.com, with the proceeds going to the Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. In addition, each MLB team will sign a team-logo Louisville Slugger bat and those also will be auctioned on MLB.com.

Players will be allowed to keep one of the two bats if they wish, with many intending to give them to their mothers for Mother's Day. Each bat is also likely to be used in only one inning, to minimize damage to the bat or the chance that it might be broken.

St. Louis Cardinals David Eckstein and Jim Edmonds will be using the pink bats.