Logan Allen is a dollar richer today, courtesy of professional wrestler and actor John Cena.

A day after watching from the owner’s box as the Padres’ 22-year-old rookie fired seven shutout innings in his major league debut, Cena presented a signed $1 bill to Allen in front of the mound before Wednesday’s matinee. The currency included a personalized message:

“To Logan, I was wrong!”

On the back: “The hard work starts now.”


Let us explain.

Two winters ago, Cena and two friends, Rob Vetere and Colin Young, were dining at a Tampa steakhouse when a chance run-in with two young baseball players, Allen and Rays pitcher Ryne Stanek, led to hours of conversation.

They talked baseball. They talked family. They talked motivation (Allen’s older brother Philip had been confined to a wheelchair since he was 2 because of a condition best described as severe cerebral palsy; one of Cena’s brothers survived Stage 4 brain cancer).

“We were both old enough to talk openly about our lives and our values and our beliefs,” Cena said. “Logan is somebody that I admire. The way he lives his life, I admire it. He’s one of the good guys in sport and sport needs more good guys like Logan Allen.”


That fateful evening ended with Cena extending a friendly wager: Allen would have to pay him $1 if he did not make the majors.

More than two years later, Allen was warming up on the Petco Park mound to Cena’s wrestling entrance song, “The Time is Now” as Cena watched from the second-deck owner’s box behind home plate. It was the culmination of a plot that Allen schemed up immediately after meeting Cena.

“I wanted to ambush John,” Allen said with a laugh Tuesday night. “He had no idea and it got me going a little bit, too. … If he was going to be there, it was going to be his song.”

The next day, the two embraced in front of that same mound before Cena pulled the $1 bill out of his left pocket and handed it over to Allen. Vetere and Young, now a Padres batting practice pitcher, joined the two on the field and moments later Vetere threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Young as Cena and Allen looked on.


“I don’t know if (Allen) thought I was full of BS or not but … we’ve stayed in touch,” said Cena, who owns a home in the San Diego area. “It’s been a wonderful ride. It culminated yesterday, but I really wanted to pay the bet and I wanted to do it in a forum wher the world could watch, to show him, ‘Hey, I’m a man of my word and you’re officially here.’

“I wanted to pay it in front of everybody.”

