David Price making it hard for Red Sox fans to dislike him

It’s funny: last year, Boston Red Sox fans hated David Price with a burning passion. Now, they can’t get enough of the guy — even though he has yet to throw a pitch for the team and the Sox are paying him $217 million over the next seven years. It must just be charisma or something.

According to NBC Sports, Price made a generous $300,000 donation to charity which will be used to build a baseball field for special needs kids in his native Nashville, Tennessee.

According to The Tennessean, Price partook a Miracle Field league on Saturday mornings back when he played for the Tampa Bay Rays, playing ball with special needs kids in the Tampa area.

“One day of a couple of hours of baseball doesn’t raise a lot of eyebrows for myself or a lot of other people, but for these kids it’s something they look forward to every day of the week leading up till Saturday,” the 2012 AL Cy Young Award winner told the paper. “Just to be a part of that and help put one here in our hometown is very special.”

Keep in mind, this is the same guy who did this:

If Price wasn’t friends with Jonny Gomes then odds are, he wouldn’t be alive to pitch today as a result of the brawl that would have broken out.

Price’s feud with David Ortiz is in the past and he solves the Red Sox biggest issue — getting an ace. And Price is someone who has succeeded in the American League East.

Ortiz is willing to let bygones be bygones in his final season, so that might be a cue for Red Sox nation to do the same.

Now if only Price could undo this: