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NEW YORK - Baseball season may be over in the Bronx, but New York Yankees employees were hard at work Thursday helping the USO of Metropolitan New York and its partner corporations to assemble 5,000 Big Apple Care Packs for deployed American troops.

The packs - which included items like toiletries, games, snacks and Yankees hats - are headed to troops downrange in time for the holiday season courtesy of USO partner FedEx. Volunteers from the Yankees’ front office, ESPN, Disney, FedEx and other USO of Metropolitan New York partner corporations gathered just inside Gate 2 of Yankee Stadium on Thursday morning to prepare the packs that will be ripped open by U.S. service members in the coming weeks.