5 days of heavy rain caused many areas in Texas to be deeply flooded, swept away thousands of homes and forced more than 50,000 people to evacuate. As the news was still trickling through the news, Dodgers ace outfielder Mookie Betts reached out to the relief organization MercyUSA—and wired $2.5 million directly from his personal bank account.
“I can’t sit in the locker room, hit an RBI, and walk away like nothing happened. I’m a person before I’m a player,” Betts said after the Cubs win at Wrigley Field.
The money was used to buy 2,000 temporary beds, 800 water purifiers, 150,000 meals, medicine, baby formula, and emergency fuel, and to fund eight refrigerated trucks to deliver food to major evacuation centers in Houston and Beaumont.
What’s touching: Betts didn’t show up to any of the giveaways. He simply wrote a card to the flood victims, leaving it in each box:
“I’ve never met you. But I know you deserve better than this. Hang in there – you’re not alone.”
Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers teammate:
“I played with Mookie for years. But this is… way beyond expectations. This isn’t charity – this is character.”
Few people know that Betts grew up in tough circumstances in Nashville, where he saw his father lose his home to flooding when he was 10. “I don’t remember winning games as a kid, but I remember the look on my mom’s face as the water came into our bedroom,” he once said.
For him, helping out isn’t about fame. It’s about giving back to life for giving him a second chance.
In an MLB that’s often associated with flashy lights and million-dollar contracts, Mookie Betts has proven that sometimes the greatest hits don’t happen on the field – but in the dirt, quietly and with humanity.