alex manoah

Toronto Blue Jays player wins award and donates $100k after defending teammate

A Toronto Blue Jays pitcher has made a very large donation to an important charity here in Canada after he came to the defence of one of his teammates.

Alek Manoah made headlines two weeks ago when he tweeted his support for teamate Alejandro Kirk after multiple disgusting remarks were made about Kirk's body.

It came after the 23-year-old Mexican athlete and catcher hit a home run and ran across the field at Toronto's Rogers Centre.

Fans in the crowd were obviously hyped and even the team's account tweeted out footage of the amazing play.

But a specific, now deleted comment, soiled the moment for everybody.

Somebody named Mathew said "imagine how much better he'd be if he were in shape," regarding Kirk and continued on a vile fat-shaming online rampage.

But in comes Manoah, whose spot-on comment made the online troll cower in defeat and delete his comment.

"What's actually embarrassing for the sport is people that go by the name of Matthew and have never played a day in the big leagues thinking they can control the narrative and stereotypes. Go ahead and tell that 8 year old kid who is 10lbs over weight that he should quit now," said Manoah, he retweeted the original hateful statement. 

Since then, Manoah has been praised for showing support and standing up for Kirk, not tolerating any kind of hate.

And that good deed has resulted in the pitcher being awarded Dove+ Men Care's first sponsorship for sportsmanship.

Part of that award gave a $100,000 sponsorship to Manoah, which he has decided to donate to KidsSport, a Canadian organization providing children access to organized sports.

This goes just to prove that doing the right thing and speaking up for what is wrong can result in 100,000 more acts of goodness.

Lead photo by

Alek Manoah


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