Welcome Back Veterans is a new funding initiative aimed at providing mental-health care to returning soldiers, sailors and airmen and helping them find employment; the program is sponsored by Major League Baseball and the McCormick Foundation.

PNN Online reported July 3 that the McCormick will provide a 50 percent for match the first $4 million raised for the program.

The foundation and Major League Baseball will fund all operating expenses, as well.

Major league teams all wore hats with U.S. flag logos on July 4th weekend in recognition of the program. The caps are also being sold to the public, with a portion of proceeds going to the new charity.

New York Mets executive Fred Wilpon said the goal is to raise $100 million for Welcome Back Vets. Wilpon noted that colleges are working on a protocol for helping returning veterans, including those with mental-health needs.

"That would be the start of what we hope will be a network around the country, connected with the V.A. hospitals and the Department of Defense areas, where we will have the troops and their families treated for free," Wilpon said. "There is a lot of value in that, not only because of the people who are doing it, but the confidentiality and the fact that some of the troops are hesitant in getting help in these areas. Which they shouldn't be, but they are. So we hope to provide that service."

"In the last 40 or 50 years, we've done a lot of proper treatment and some discoveries on cancer and heart disease. We hope to have the same for depression, for post-traumatic syndrome and all the things that some of the troops have seen happen to them while they were there fighting on our behalf. Their families are just as important."