Jason Adam ready to help launch Reading with the Rays summer program.

When he recently devoured the final pages of “The Winners” to complete Fredrik Backman’s Beartown trilogy, Pete Fairbanks added yet another treasured reading experience to his library.

The value Fairbanks’ parents placed on the educational experience of picking up a book and the Tampa Bay reliever’s passion for reading made him a natural to participate in the Reading with the Rays program, which he did last year.

“I can remember reading a lot from a young age and it’s fun to be able to give back and have a good time with people in their quest for knowledge,” said the 29-year-old, whose mother, Jane, was a fourth-grade teacher before becoming a librarian at a St. Louis elementary school.

Fellow reliever Jason Adam will have the opportunity to read to elementary school students when he meets with a group of third graders Wednesday. Though details have yet to ironed out the Rays, who officially launched the program Sunday, will also have a couple of more reading events this summer.

“My mom would get us up in the morning before school and do her Bible study with us, read with us and try to teach us a little something,” recalled Adam, a 31-year-old Omaha, Neb. native. “Situations like this, where an athlete is reading to kids, it’s cool. Maybe it will pique the interest of many of them.”

That is what program has been designed to do for now 16 years. Current Rays players Manuel Margot and Christian Bethencourt have participated and a lengthy list of former Rays includes Chris Archer and Evan Longoria.

In addition to heightening interest, Reading with the Rays, which falls under the umbrella of the Rays Baseball Foundation, is an incentive-based program designed to keep kids engaged during the summer months while offering prizes and, ultimately, tickets to Rays games for accomplishing various reading goals.

“It makes reading cool when a guy like Jason, somebody they see on the field and that they see on TV, is reading to them,” said Kim Couts, the Rays’ director of community engagement. “Not only is it important for them to have a presence in being there with the kids, but it helps make reading cool. That’s really the role of the program, to inspire the kids to read and to prevent summer learning loss. So, it is very important that the players have a presence and read to these kids.”

More than 500,000 youths have participated in the summer reading program, which is made possible in large part through the cooperation of the library systems in nine counties in the Tampa Bay region.

“The goal of the program is to prevent the summer slide, the summer learning loss,” said Couts. “It’s about keeping the kids active, keeping them engaged throughout the summer and doing something educational. Hopefully, it’s also pretty fun.”

There were times when reading may not have been fun for a young Adam, though he enjoyed turning the pages of Sports Illustrated and SI For Kids. He was also a fan of Matt Christopher, who authored several sports books geared toward children.

“I went through a phase where I didn’t like reading and was a little brat,” said Adam, who has been enjoying every minute of reading to four-year-old Kinsley, the oldest of his three daughters. “There were a lot of great memories reading as a kid, though, and I am trying to start some good memories reading with my own kids. It’s been so much fun doing that.”

It was great for Fairbanks, a rabid fan of fiction, when his parents added an addition to their Missouri home when he was in the fifth grade. His mother and sister color coded books that were piled high on built-in shelving.

“I read basically every fiction book you can find,” he said, rattling off Harry Potter, Star Wars Expanded Universe and Mike Lupica’s series on youth sports as examples. “If it was a novel and I found it interesting, I was going to read it from cover to cover as fast as I could.”

Fairbanks has enjoyed reading from cover to cover to three-year-old son, Isak, the oldest of his two children.

“We read to him a lot and he is starting to memorize, a little bit, certain books that we have read to him frequently,” he said. “In a few years we can introduce him some of the classic kids’ books.”

Adam is looking forward to participating with the Reading with the Rays program, as long he is able to efficiently make his way through the pages of children’s books.

“Hopefully, I will not mispronounce too many words,” he said, laughing at the thought of a potential tongue-twisting tome. “I love what the Rays are doing with the reading program. It’s very cool to have something like this.”