Florida church sells unused tickets for Shohei Ohtani's record-breaking game for fundraiser

"Never in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine that these kids would be witnessing baseball history," Alvarez said. "The atmosphere was electric. It was an epic night for this once in a generation player."

On such a monumental night, Alvarez somehow managed to acquire physical paper tickets for his parishioners — something rarely seen in modern sports anymore.

With roughly 60 unused tickets leftover, Alvarez took to X to advertise the memorabilia were available for purchase — not for personal profit but to raise money for his parochial school's new gym.

Ashley Dominguez, director of development at St. Theresa Catholic School, told Yardbarker that within the first few hours of Alvarez's post that they had raised more than $5,000 toward the new gym just by selling 20 of the leftover tickets. Their total goal is to raise $20,000 toward the $13 million project.

Alvarez's and Dominguez's posts garnered more than 13,000 likes, dozens of replies and over a hundred direct messages inquiring about the tickets. "Funds are still heavily coming in," per Dominguez.

"I tweeted out that picture not knowing that it would go viral," Alvarez said. "The response on Twitter/X has been very supportive."

She said the church outing was planned around their students singing the national anthem prior to the game.

"It was such a blessing seeing them showcase their talents in front of our South Florida community," she said. "I am sure that some baseball fans, particularly new Ohtani fans have been made."

As of this publishing, Dominguez says they've raised nearly $8,000 and still have 25 tickets remaining. 

"God gave us this blessing off Ohtani's bat, and we've run with it," Alvarez said.

Quotations and figures obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.