LOS ANGELES — Dodgers star shortstop Mookie Betts on Monday was named the recipient of the 2025 Roberto Clemente Award, which recognizes philanthropic work by players.
Named for the Hall of Fame former
Pirates outfielder, the Clemente Award annually honors the MLB player “who best represents the game of Baseball through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy, and positive contributions, both on and off the field.”
Betts will receive the award on the field at Dodger Stadium prior to Game 3 of the World Series on Monday night.
“To be recognized is really nice, and especially after this year, going through all that I went through, the changes of moving and I’m not playing very well, just to know that my on-the-field things are irrelevant to this,” Betts said Monday. “You can still be successful and maybe not in a way that you didn’t know. It’s just really cool. It’s really cool just to be able to hold up this award and to know that this had nothing to do with baseball.”
Among the work by Betts and his wife Brianna recognized by Major League Baseball his 5050 Foundation, started in 2021 to help underserved youth, which raised over $100,000 in March; a joint $160,000 donation by Betts and the Los Angeles Dodgers foundation to the Brother Crusade, to support homelessness and hunger issues; donating over $30,000 of Nike equipment to victims of the Los Angeles fires in January; partnering with the Los Angeles Unified School District to form an academic challenge for athletes; and joining with the Obama Foundation to support the Mookie Betts Metro Baseball Tournament in Nashville.
“We go off of our feel and joy in seeing the kids. We have requirements of course, but we go off of what we feel in the community, when we’re in that space, and taking that moment in,” Brianna Betts said. “We feel things from the kids, and they ask us questions, and they’re involved and that makes us want to get involved. So we actually let them speak to us as well. So it’s like a two-way street. We are here for them, and they’re here for us as well.“
Mookie Betts through his 5050 Foundation has also held a bowling tournament since 2023 to raise money for charity.
“I think every athlete will say they’re people first and playing baseball is what he does for a living. But a humanitarian award like this and to be recognized, to get this Roberto Clemente Award is quite the achievement,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Monday. “Give Mookie, I give Bri, his wife, a lot of credit, their foundation. To be able to balance and prioritize on the field performance with off-the-field impact is pretty amazing.”
Betts is the fourth Dodgers player to win the Clemente Award, along with Steve Garvey (1981), Clayton Kershaw (2012), and Justin Turner (2022).
