A Toronto kids’s hospital was flooded this week with a shock surge of hundreds of {dollars} in donations. The unlikely supply? Dodgers followers.
The Dodgers defeated the Toronto Blue Jays in a monumental World Sequence win final week, giving the Boys in Blue back-to-back titles. After such an upset, a rivalry between the cities appears pure. However Dodgers followers are making a widespread effort to show simply the alternative.
It began on-line when Blue Jays fan Marcus Kim urged on Reddit that the profitable group donate to the shedding group’s native kids’s hospital, a Blue Jays fan custom.
“Let’s offset the negativity generated by gamblers and benefit from the experience,” Kim mentioned.
Kim later posted his receipt of a $60 donation to Kids’s Hospital Los Angeles to Reddit’s r/baseball platform after Sport 7 with a plea for Dodgers followers to move alongside the goodwill.
The response was astounding with a whole lot of followers pledging their donations. To this point, $30,000 has poured into Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Kids, also called “Sick Youngsters.”
The acclaimed hospital was no random alternative, having been named Newsweek’s #1 worldwide decide for 2026’s greatest specialised pediatric hospital.
Sandra Chiovitti, director of Sick Youngsters public relations, instructed The Instances that greater than 400 donations from U.S.-based donors all contained references to the Blue Jays or baseball, with some even going past a single donation and pledging to contribute month-to-month.
“Sending love from Los Angeles,” one donor wrote.
“Within the identify of Alex Vesia. We’re rivals, not enemies. Good well being to you and yours. Go Dodgers,” one other mentioned.
“It has been a candy shock to see these U.S. donations are available,” Chiovitti mentioned. “So many causes for us to smile after some tears final Saturday evening.”
The funds will go towards analysis initiatives, tools and implementing superior applied sciences, she mentioned.
“Baseball followers turned a World Sequence rivalry — and heartbreaking loss — into hope for kids’s well being, donating $30K to @sickkids,” the hospital wrote on X. “This can advance care, analysis and training for sufferers and households.”
The concept was impressed by an instance the Blue Jays themselves set. After the Blue Jays defeated the Seattle Mariners for the American League Championship, greater than 150 Blue Jays followers donated to Seattle Kids’s Hospital.
Some Dodgers followers who donated shared on-line that they selected an quantity that had particular which means: $51.
The Blue Jays joined the Dodgers carrying the quantity 51 on the aspect of their hats throughout the collection in honor of Dodgers participant Alex Vesia, who stepped away from the video games, citing “deeply private household issues.”
Vesia has since shared that he was mourning the dying of his child daughter.
Helen Cumberbatch, a Dodgers fan who joined in donating to Sick Youngsters, instructed the Toronto Star she hopes this motion “turns into an enduring custom.”
