Cleveland Guardians team up with Chess.com to raise $10,000 in first-ever charity tournament

On Tuesday, the Cleveland Guardians and Chess.com hosted their inaugural charity event.

Cleveland is the ideal team to introduce the website - which has worked with NFL players in its "BlitzChamps" competition - to the MLB. For the last two years, the Guardians have had their own chess club. Chess games have taken over the clubhouse for the last three years, particularly during spring training.

It started mostly when Steven Kwan and former Guardian Will Benson engaged in competitive play and attracted others. It has become a daily affair for Cleveland players to indulge in the game during 2024 spring training.

Eight players from the Guardians participated in SlugChamps on Tuesday. The top three finishers will donate $10,000 in prize money from the competition to various charitable trusts. The action was streamed live to fans on chess.com/TV, Twitch and YouTube.

During spring training, Steven Kwan expressed excitement about naming the best chess player in the locker room. In a press release from the Guardians ahead of the competition on Tuesday, he said:

"This is awesome. (Chess.com) is obviously what we play on every day just on our phones by ourselves, so the fact that they wanted to sponsor and do something is like extremely rewarding.

"I think it was really cool to see everybody was tuning in from different platforms. I didn’t know people cared about all of this. Chess has been a great team-builder in our locker room and has allowed us to build camaraderie, fuel competitiveness and work on our mental strength off the field."

Kwan started the chess fever at the Guardians clubhouse, winning the championship on Tuesday and taking home $6,000 for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District Chess Clubs.

It took him two hours and 47 minutes to beat McKenzie, Hedges and Schneemann to win the first prize.

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Jose Ramirez and Josh Naylor only two Guardians among top 100 baseball players named by MLB Network

In 2024, Josh Naylor and Jose Ramirez made it to the top 100 MLB as the only representatives from Cleveland. At No. 14, Ramirez was six places lower than he was the previous year. His output declined in 2023, from 126 runs in 2022 to 80 a year later.

Josh Naylor, who came in at No. 96, entered the list for the first time. In 2023, he had a successful career year, going from hitting .256 to .308 in batting average. He blasted 17 home runs and drove in 97 runs, a career high.

However, Andres Gimenez, Emmanuel Clase, Steven Kwan and Shane Bieber of Cleveland - who made it big in 2023 - were all unranked.