Logo

OAKLAND, Calif. — “You can’t hit.”

“You have no talent.”

“You will never amount to anything.”

These are not actual tweets that Aaron Judge reads in a recently launched public service announcement. Yet they’re real. They’re what he and every other professional athlete encounter routinely on social media.

If you’ve stuck even one figurative toe into the filthy swamp that social media can be, and if you know of Judge’s background and perspective, then you can understand why the Yankees’ currently injured right fielder chose combating that negativity as his first notable cause.

“This is just not a passing thing. This is a revolution,” Patty Judge, Aaron’s mother, told The Post on Monday, before the Yankees-A’s game at Oakland Coliseum. “We are learning how to treat each other appropriately with social media.”

This is an initiative called #ICANHELP (https://www.icanhelpdeletenegativity.org/), founded by a pair of California educators who strive to equip our youngest generation with the tools necessary to combat the toxic behavior exhibited all too often on social media. A group of about 240 students and parents, including the co-founders and Patty Judge, attended Monday’s game wearing #ICANHELP and ALL RISE TO HELP T-shirts, and Judge met with the group a couple of hours before first pitch.

As Judge said in the PSA, “In this world, there’s a lot of negativity, and that’s kind of what I’ve seen on social media. That’s the norm. But if you can kind of go outside your own lines and spread your own lines and spread positivity online, that’s kind of the main goal.”

Aaron JudgeAPAaron JudgeAP

Co-founder Matt Soeth explained that students who join the organization learn how to take down social-media offenders by spotting them and quickly exposing them. The #ICANHELP hashtag operates as a “bat signal,” Soeth said, for teenagers to mobilize and help not only conquer people who cross the line, but also provide a support system for victims who cope with the resulting depression and anxiety.

As good fortune would have it, the 6-foot-4 Soeth has known the Judge family since “when Aaron was shorter than me,” he noted with a smile. The Players Tribune and Sharpie signed onto Team Judge last year and urged him to support a movement, and Judge, with his mom’s counsel, opted for #ICANHELP.

Patty Judge, a longtime educator (like her husband Wayne) who now consults, has flown considerably under the radar since her son’s fame and popularity exploded. She has decided to put herself out there more to see through this endeavor, holding a spot on the #ICH board.

“Because of all the excitement that we are into right now, and [because] I think I can do more power by getting out there a little bit, I’m looking at expanding my social media,” she said. “They’ll be training me how to respond immediately and/or unfriend and/or anything else I need to do, because I definitely will not tolerate that on that platform.”

Kim Karr, a co-founder with Soeth, said, “We want Patty to know that when she gets her accounts, we have her back. And the students have her back.”

Karr did not back away from a questions about how this social media negativity has been fueled by the current United States president.

“I think that they actually feel more empowered with negativity from higher-up authorities,” Karr said of the youngsters. “They feel like this is their time to take control. But they’re going to be educating adults on how to handle these platforms. This is their generation of how to communicate.”

In the PSA, Judge edits the hate tweets and makes them positive. “You can’t hit” becomes “You can hit!” “You will never amount to anything” turns into “You can be anything you want to be.”

Whenever you’re given something negative,” Judge says in the PSA, “you always have to turn it into a positive.”

“Judge could have gone anywhere on the charity/social-issue spectrum to leverage his newfound Q rating. That he and his mother are putting themselves out there for this often explosive matter shows you how strongly they feel about draining this swamp.

Comments
anonymous profile image
Powered by RoundtableBuilt on infrastructure designed for real-time media. Learn more at RTB.io.© Roundtable 2026. By using this site you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy