Motivation Quote by Ferguson Jenkins

Jenkins keeps the sentence on a short leash, and that restraint is the point. As an athlete, he knows the philanthropy script fans expect: the heartwarming origin story, the big numbers, the sweeping mission statement. Instead, he narrows the frame to something harder to argue with and easier to trust: “touched me… on a personal level.” It’s a quiet bid for credibility, not through scale but through specificity. In celebrity charity culture, emotion functions like provenance; it’s how you prove the giving isn’t just reputation management.

The second line does a different kind of work. “About eight or nine” is deliberately unpolished, almost offhand, as if he’s resisting the press-release voice. That approximation signals a life where charity is ongoing, not a single branded campaign. It also gently deflates the expectation that philanthropy should look like a signature foundation with a unified narrative. Jenkins presents support as plural and practical, reflecting how needs show up: unevenly, locally, through people you know, through causes that found you before you went looking for them.

Subtextually, he’s drawing a boundary around motive. The charities “we’re involved with” hints at family, teammates, community - a collective identity rather than lone heroics. For an athlete of his era, especially one who built a career on steadiness, the message is consistency over spectacle: real commitments, chosen for reasons that don’t need to be performatively explained, even as they’re offered up for public consumption.