Tonight the Atlanta Braves play an elimination game against the Philadelphia Phillies, and the man taking the ball first quit baseball to work at a 7-Eleven.
Ray Kerr went to Hug High School in Reno, a program that has won 27 games since 2008 and lost 245.
He had been to exactly one major league game in his life, a Giants and Athletics game in Oakland when he was 13.
He pitched two years at Mendocino College and went 3-7 with a 4.60 ERA.
So he quit. Went home to Reno. Took a job at the IMAX theater and a job at the 7-Eleven.
Here is how he describes it.
"I cleaned up a lot of popcorn. I said, I'm done cleaning up popcorn."
And the other one.
He "stocked the shelves in the cold fridge, listening to my music, kind of forgetting about baseball."
He thought that was the rest of his life.
Then a junior college coach named Eric Perry called him.
"Let's go back to school. Let's go to Lassen Community College. I still think you have baseball left in you."
Here is the part that matters most.
Somebody had to pay for that school, and Ray Kerr grew up in foster care. The woman who paid was his foster mother, Lisa McCarthy.
In his words.
"She's the one who gave me all these opportunities to go back to college, to pay for it if I actually wanted to."
He had to earn a 3.5 GPA to get in. He earned it. Then he went 7-4 with a 3.45 ERA over 91 innings.
That summer he pitched in Alaska against Division I hitters and put up a 1.11 ERA, and his fastball started doing something it had never done.
"I thought I could only throw maximum 92."
It kept climbing into the mid 90s.
The Seattle Mariners signed him as an undrafted free agent in August 2017. Four years later they traded him to the San Diego Padres, and in April 2022 he walked onto the mound at Petco Park and struck out Justin Turner, Max Muncy and Chris Taylor in order.
He called his foster mother first.
Then in June 2024, with the Atlanta Braves, he tore his elbow and needed Tommy John surgery.
Career over. Again.
They re-signed him on a minor league contract. He did not throw a major league pitch again until August 17 of this year.
Since that day he has a 1.47 ERA, and left handed hitters are batting .174 against him. Which is why he is getting the ball tonight with Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper due up in the first.
Now the honest part. He is an opener, not a traditional starter. He may face six hitters and hand it off. The Atlanta Braves are doing this because of matchups, not sentiment.
But a kid from a high school that loses 90 percent of its games, who stocked a cold fridge at a convenience store and figured that was it, is throwing the first pitch of a win or go home playoff game.
He is done cleaning up popcorn.
White men are 36% of the population yet 39% of the labor force.
-Pay 62% of ALL federal individual income taxes
-50+% of federal payroll taxes
-70+% of taxable capital gains
-Only about 10% of all welfare recipients.
Which by definition IS the back bone of the economy… I’ll await your clarification
Back in 2008 oil damn near hit $148 a barrel and gas was around 4 bucks.
Now oil is way lower and somehow we’re still paying more at the pump.
You can throw out all the excuses you want, but regular people know when something smells fishy.
Something ain’t right.
@EvanAKilgore I’ve voted Republican for 21 years, but I’m going to vote Democrat for the first time in my life just out of spite. I don’t care who the candidate is.
Three Laws of Nature and History
1) You can't understand history unless you ask the supreme question: why are White men responsible for 97% of human accomplishments in science, philosophy, arts, exploration, poetry, architecture -- originators of all disciplinary fields of knowledge?
2) You don't understand the political dynamics of the browning of the West if you don't realize that the entire heritage of Whites will be stolen and/or extinguished by immigrants. Nonwhite cultures (and white liberal women) don't have any protocols for verifiability and scholarly integrity.
3) You remain a childlike conservative if you don't realize that if Whites don't affirm their ingroup interests and show pride in their Superior accomplishments, other races will be emboldened to destroy the White race.
When the University of Texas was being built, the outskirts of Austin was still being raided by Comanche tribes.
Our ancestors carved out a civilization out of wilderness, they weren’t building a fucking diploma mill for foreign colonists.
🚨Ramadan rugs over the 9/11 memorial.
The story they don’t want you to see.
FDNY Islamic Society laid prayer rugs over the 9/11 memorial plaques at headquarters during a Ramadan iftar. Mayor Mamdani was there.
The department calls it logistics. The auditorium was full. The rugs went down in the lobby, right on top of the names of the 343 who died.
I spent years working in Manhattan. I watched that city thrive as the capitalist engine of the world. Now the same institutions are folding to an ideology that treats that whole system as the enemy.
This isn’t coexistence.
It’s erasure.
The slow creep into the unions, the government, the memorials themselves.
They want you to look away.
Post it. Share it. The record is public.
We will not forget.
We will not stop. 👊
🇺🇸 The Stairwell That Should Not Have Been There
Ladder 6 left Chinatown that morning. The Pride of Chinatown. Captain Jay Jonas and five men: Sal D’Agostino, Matt Komorowski, Mike Meldrum, Bill Butler, Tommy Falco.
They went up the North Tower in Stairwell B. Gear on their backs. Twenty-seventh floor when the South Tower came down.
The order came. Get out.
On the way down they found a woman who could not take another step.
Josephine Harris. Fifty-nine. Bookkeeper for the Port Authority on the 73rd floor. A widow. She had already walked fifty-three flights on a bad leg. At twenty she stopped.
Tommy Falco looked at his captain.
“Cap, what do you want to do with her?”
They were running for their lives. They took her anyway. One step. Both feet. One step. Both feet. People behind them and had to squeeze past.
At the fourth floor her legs gave out. She told them to leave her.
They did not.
Jonas went looking for a chair. He was a few feet from the stairwell door when the North Tower started to come down.
It took thirteen seconds.
Jonas said the building peeled away around them like a banana. Above them, no one in that stairwell lived. Below them, in the lobby, almost no one lived. They were sitting in the only piece that held. Fourth floor to first.
Fourteen people were in that stretch of stairs. The six from Ladder 6. Josephine. A battalion chief. A Port Authority K-9 officer whose dog did not make it.
Jonas later said if she had been faster, they would have been in the lobby. If they had left her, they would have been lower, or gone.
They called her their guardian angel.
Josephine died in 2011. She was sixty-nine. The six men from Ladder 6 were her pallbearers. They lifted her one more time.
🚨 BREAKING:
🇷🇺Putin:"I want ordinary citizens of Western countries to hear me..
The truth is that the problems you are facing now are the result of years of actions by the ruling elites of your own countries.
The politicians who watched this happen decided to immediately import 5 million more Muslims from the 3rd world and then call Islam a religion of “peace” nonstop while adding trillions to our debt to “rebuild” Muslim countries.
The worst betrayal in the history of civilization.
"La Russie n'a jamais été et ne sera jamais votre ennemie !
Nous ne voulons pas des matières premières ni des richesses européennes ; nous possédons les nôtres. Nous n'avons absolument pas besoin de vos matières premières.
La Russie est le pays le plus riche du monde en matières premières.
Nous ne voulons ni votre terre ni votre territoire.
Regardez l'immensité de la Russie sur la carte. Elle est deux fois plus grande que toute l'Europe. À quoi nous servirait votre terre ? Qu'en ferions-nous ?
Pourquoi pensez-vous que la Russie est un ennemi de l'Europe ?
Quel mal la Russie vous a-t-elle fait ?
Vous avons-nous vendu du gaz et des matières premières à des prix inférieurs à ceux pratiqués par vos « amis » ? OUI
La Russie a-t-elle sacrifié 20 millions de personnes pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour se débarrasser des nazis ? OUI
La Russie a-t-elle été le premier pays à aider l'Europe pendant la pandémie de COVID-19 ? OUI
Avons-nous aidé l'Europe lors des incendies et des catastrophes naturelles ? OUI
Qu'est-ce que la Russie leur a fait pour qu'ils la haïssent autant ?
La Russie n'est pas votre ennemie ; vos véritables ennemis sont vos dirigeants, ceux qui vous gouvernent. "
Le président Vladimir Vladimirovitch Poutine.
@jeff_gluck Hey @chaseelliott try running up front for once. I know not typical of you, and completely out of character. It would be fun to see though.
>Catholic, Former 22nd SAS soldier
> Picks up a random hitchhiker who tells him in an unnatural voice, “May God bless you many times this day.”
>Hears about a terrorist attack happening at a hotel
>Grabs his gear and drives toward the scene
>Enters the building alone. Moves floor by floor under fire.
>Rescues civilians trapped inside.
>Holds off the attackers for 18 hours.
>Neutralized 3 of the terrorists.
>Saves more than 700 people.
>Carried a Holy Rosary and Bible throughout the whole event
Christian Craighead, nicknamed “Obi-Wan Nairobi,” A true Christian warrior.
🔻Take 3 milliliters in a glass of Orange juice twice a month. REMEMBER WHEN the Media laughed and said ivermectin is JUST for horses and cows? THEY KNEW It was made for Folks since 1987
What they left out👇
1 - It blocks Spike Protein entry to cells and if the person was vaccinated they can treat themselves for damage already done through Ivermectin. It prevents the damage done by drugs created using mRNA technology.
2 – It does not have harmful effects and only beneficial effects in the treatment of C virus. In fact, it has destroyed the virus in the blood before it even gets into the cell.
3 – It has a very powerful anti-inflammatory action against and has a powerful impact on traumatic and orthopedic injuries, it strengthens muscles and has not side effects as corticoids.
4 –It addresses autoimmune diseases such as: rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, allergic rhinitis.
5 – It raises the immunity levels in cancer patients and cures Herpes Simplex and Herpes Zoster and decreases the frequency of sinusitis and diverticulitis.
6 – It protects the heart in case of cardiac overload. For example, in an embolism it inhibits the cardiac hypoxia because it stimulates the production of basic energy so that the tissue is not destroyed and so improves cardiac function.
7 – Antiparasitic, antineoplastic (anticancer). It's said to stop cancer cells from growing and spreading, leave healthy cells alone, and make chemotherapy work better.
8 - It kills chemo-resistant cancer cells, which tumors develop resistance to multiple chemo-therapeutics, and in combination with chemotherapy and/or anti-cancer agents it increases the effectiveness of these treatments.
9 – It has antimicrobial (bacteria and viruses) properties and boosts immunity.
10 – It goes to the Central Nervous System and regenerates the nerves.
11 – It helps to regulate glucose, insulin metabolism, cholesterol levels and reduces the liver fat in steatose.
12 – It can be used as a prophylactic agent and has been linked to a significant decrease in C-19 infection, hospitalization and mortality rates.
Share this everywhere !
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