Back in December, Carlos Rodon received a Venmo payment from a Yankee fan as a present for turning 30 years old.
Then, more started coming in, as Yankee fans not-so-subtly made their desires known, that they wanted the lefty in pinstripes.
Rodon granted their wish, signing a six-year, $162 million deal with New York this past offseason, and told reporters on Thursday that he put those Venmo payments to good use.
“My cousin, he’s a really good guy. I live in a really remote area in Indiana, and hunting is a really big part of our life, I guess,” Rodon began. “We drive in a really, rural, remote area. And we always drive by this house when we’re going to one of our spots, near the Illinois/Indiana border. One time we saw this little boy getting off the bus, this little wooden shack in the middle of nowhere. My cousin says, ‘We should do something nice for that kid one day.’”
Thanks to those generous Yankee fans (who admittedly had other motives), a couple years after first seeing that boy on their way to hunting, Rodon and his cousin Ethan were able to help the boy out.
“A couple years pass, we’re driving by, this year we’re gonna go hunting over there…and it was burnt down,” Rodon said of the boy’s house. “I drive past, because I’m just oblivious sometimes. My cousin was like ‘Stop, turn around.’
“We get out, talk to the kid. We got all that money from Venmo, and we did something nice for the kid over there.”
Rodon says he would still like to do something for the Yankee fans for their generosity, but wants them to know they helped change a boy’s life out in Illinois.
“They did something nice for me and some kid in the middle-of-nowhere Illinois that nobody knows about,” Rodon said. “We did a nice Christmas for him, and my cousin did a couple other nice things for the family.
“Thank you to the fans of New York. You helped some 15-year-old in Illinois who doesn’t really have much and his house burned down. Don’t listen to other people in baseball. You guys are great fans.”
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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