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Customized Cleats Of Cubs' Kris Bryant Have Meaning Near And Dear To Heart

(CBS) As part of Players Weekend in which uniform policies will be relaxed so as to showcase the personalities of big leaguers, Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant will sports some eccentric cleats.

And there's meaning behind them. Bryant's customized cleats are colorfully designed as a tribute to each city he's lived in but more importantly raise awareness for spinal-cord injury research, a cause on Bryant's mind because of an accident that Corey Hahn went through.

In the first series of his college career at Arizona State in 2011, Hahn broke his neck sliding head first into second base and was paralyzed from the chest down.

"I thought, 'What can I do to bring some awareness and make it just fun?'" Bryant said on the Bernstein and Goff Show on Thursday afternoon. "Obviously, Red Bull is a huge sponsor for me, and they always have these crazy ideas. With the spinal cord injury to my friend Corey Hahn, who he went to ASU, and I think he got hurt like his first series his freshman year, he slid in head first. Just a crazy, freak accident and just getting to know what's he's been able to do and what he's had to go through, I thought it would kind of be cool to bring awareness to that. With the cleats, I'm going to wear one each day, and hopefully we raise some money for spinal cord research at the end of the weekend. Someone will have some of my cleats in their hands."

 

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