Shin-Soo Choo. If you weren’t a fan of his before, you pretty much have to be one now.

Here is a man who remembers where he came from and is willing to give back.

Yesterday, Choo donated one thousand dollars to every one of the one-hundred-ninety-one minor leaguers in the Rangers system. That’s huge. Not just in cash outlay but in helping keep those minor leaguers afloat.

It’s easy to get jaded and cynical about major leaguers and their bloated salaries because greed for more money and cheating to get money comes so easily to that species of human. 

But there is a totally other end of the spectrum. The minor league baseball player. They earn from $290 per week for low-A to $500 per week in Triple-A.

A $290-per-week salary comes to $15,080 per year. A $500-per-week salary is $26,000 per year. Except not in baseball. Players get paid only during the season. A minor league season is roughly twenty-four weeks. So it’s about half those annual numbers.

Oh, and in case you missed it—it’s in all the papers—the season is being delayed because of a deadly virus. Which means, minor leaguers aren’t getting paid anything at all. Baseball players, major leaguers and minor leagues, get paid only from opening day until the end of the season. No season, no pay.

Shin-Soo Choo came to the rescue. He told MLB.com’s T.R. Sullivan that he will never forget the struggle of trying to survive on a minor league salary with kids, of saving his meal money and, instead of eating, buying diapers.

“Twenty years ago, when I came from Korea, I had nothing,” he told Sullivan. “Baseball gave me a lot of things. I want to pay back to other people.”

We could all use a huge dose of good news right now. Shin-Soo Choo is dispensing it. One thousand dollars at a time.