• by P.J. Bednarski  @pjbtweet, October 5, 2018

T-Mobile is once again donating $5,000 to a hurricane relief organization for every home run hit during the Major League Baseball postseason. It will also kick in a dollar every time someone uses the hashtag #HR4HR on Twitter or Instagram, even if they aren’t T-Mobile customers. 

The #HR4Hr promotion (which stands for Home Runs for Hurricane Relief) started last year when T-Mobile raised $2.78 million for victims of Hurricanes Maria, Harvey and Irma with its first dollars-for-home run effort, and $4 million overall. 

This year, it’s resurrecting the same promotion to help victims of Hurricane Florence, except the price of a home run seems to have gone down. Last year, T-Mobile donated $10,000 per home run. 

The donated money goes to Team Rubicon, a nonprofit that gives military veterans a way to extend their service experience. So far, Team Rubicon has conducted 67 operations  during natural disasters and directed 2,000 volunteers, most of them veterans.

John Legere, T-Mobile’s never-shy CEO, said the company is “kicking donation efforts into high gear,” adding, “We won’t stop serving.”

As of Thursday night, through the first few days of the playoffs, with seven home runs so far, T-Mobile is out $35,000. And based on statistics, the payday could be sizable by the end of the series: The New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, Oakland A’s and Milwaukee Brewers, all in the playoffs, were baseball’s top four home-run-slugging teams during the regular season.  The Cleveland Indians were sixth,  the Colorado Rockies eighth and the Boston Red Sox ninth, out of 30 teams. 

Only the Atlanta Braves were homer underachievers, yet Georgia and surrounding states were most affected by Hurricane Florence.