He quit baseball to work at an IMAX theater. Now he's a Braves playoff legend

It was 2015, and it was another end to another long day and night at Legends IMAX theater in Sparks, Nev. Raymond Kerr and his brother, Richard, were just finishing cleaning up from their shifts.

Richard was sweeping up popcorn and any of the other assorted junk moviegoers leave behind. Ray was washing down the snack bar, where he served up pretzels, soda and candy -- sometimes sneaking some of that candy for himself.

Hey, the perks of the job.

The pay wasn’t great, the hours were long, but 21-year-old Ray had made a decision to leave California’s Mendocino College -- and a promising baseball career -- to come back home and work. He missed his family and was not into the school part of school.

He stopped going to the gym, he played a ton of Xbox, he was just, as his brother says, “living.”

“Yeah, he was done with baseball,” Richard remembered.

Still, whether it was while watching the slides flip through in the theater projector room or out on a fishing trip with friends, Ray’s mind sometimes wandered to what could’ve been, or what could still be.

“I think that’s what woke him up, everyone would just tell us we’re so athletic,” Richard said. “We go play a softball game or pickup basketball game and our friends would be like, ‘Damn, why don’t you guys do this or that? Why aren’t you pro?’”

Why aren’t you striking out Shohei Ohtani in the NLDS?

Ray Kerr has suddenly become a household name this postseason. But it’s been a long, arduous journey to get there.

Ray and Richard started playing baseball at a young age in Sacramento, Calif. Their dad signed them up for it. Richard is 10 1/2 months older than Ray, so they were in different leagues. Ray was almost, right away, better.

“Everyone in my family went to all his games,” Richard said. “They never went to one of mine.”

And then, pretty quickly, baseball took a backseat to life.

Their father was in and out of trouble with the law in Sacramento. Richard mentions a time period of almost two years where they lived in a tent in their grandmother’s backyard. Their mother was mostly absent from their lives.

Eventually, the brothers were forced to move to Reno, Nev., around the time they were entering high school.

“I remember, we had school the next day and [our dad] woke us up out of our sleep and said, ‘Grab whatever you can, we gotta leave,’” Richard said. “I fell asleep in the truck, woke up seeing snow and we were in Reno.”

The Kerrs ended up in foster care in Reno, but they found a baseball team again at Hug High School -- albeit a bad one. So bad that Richard didn’t even know it existed.

“I didn’t even know they had a baseball team my whole freshman year,” Richard laughed.

The brothers performed well on Hug’s team -- the coach, bewildered to suddenly have this influx of talent on his field, figured they must’ve fell out of the sky.

Both Ray and Richard went on to play at Mendocino College in Ukiah, Calif., but in 2015, they dropped out and returned to Reno. Ray was a two-way star there with sky-high potential, but wanted to come back home and be closer to friends and family. His brother followed suit.

The brothers worked at the newly opened Legends iMax and Ray took a job at 7-Eleven after that.

“I remember I would go in and see him in the refrigerator looking hella cold,” Richard recalled. “Putting in the Monsters and Gatorades and stuff. He and our friend Dylan lived together. He was sleeping on his couch for a little while.”

But playing a little bit on a local semipro sandlot team and seeing, and hearing, how good he was started to light his desire to return to competitive baseball. As he told Nevada Sportsnet in 2022, “I was still missing that real part of my life of being on the mound."

That’s when Eric Perry, a friend of a friend and coach at Lassen Community College, came along to try and convince the tall, lanky left-hander to give college ball another shot. Matt Konopisos, owner of that local Reno Astros team, helped urge Raymond in that direction as well.

Their foster mom Lisa McCarthy, a huge, loving influence on their lives, stepped in to help out.

"I said, 'Hey, go for it,'" McCarthy told MLB.com in a phone call. "I'll be there, I'll support you however I can."

“She said, ‘If you guys wanna go back to school, I’ll pay for it all,’” Richard told me. “And Raymond took that chance.”

Raymond ran with the chance.

Kerr posted a 7-4 record with a 3.56 ERA in 13 starts at Lassen in 2017. He went on to play in the storied Alaskan Baseball League the following summer, dominating the mostly Division I competition to the tune of a 4-2 record and a 1.11 ERA in 48 innings.

“He liked it out there,” Richard said. “He was shooting guns, fishing, seeing bears. He was living wild.”

By the time Ray got back to Nevada, Konopisos had set up a tryout with the Mariners. With a live fastball that seemed to be ticking up by the year, Seattle signed the 22-year-old as an undrafted free agent and sent him to the Arizona Complex League.

Kerr pitched in the Minors for the next six seasons, getting traded to the Padres along the way. He finally made his big league debut for San Diego in 2022, calling up his foster mom Lisa with the news.

"Oh god, my heart was pounding out of my chest," McCarthy said. "I was so proud of him."

The lefty pitched in 39 total Major League games from 2022-24, getting traded to Atlanta before the 2024 season. Then came Tommy John surgery, and an elongated two-year recovery where, as he told The Athletic’s Jesus Cano, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever put on an MLB uniform again.

But like he had his entire life, he pushed forward and that left elbow slowly got its lightning back.

Kerr was activated by the Braves in August of this year and put up a sparkling 1.47 ERA over nine games. And then, like when he suddenly appeared at Hug High School or on Lassen's tiny campus or seemingly walked out of the Alaskan wilderness, he dropped onto the national stage pitching for the Braves in the postseason.

He’s opened two games for Atlanta, giving up zero runs in six total innings with six strikeouts. His story has gotten out there, with baseball immortals even giving him shoutouts on the FOX postgame show.

“I’ve seen the posts of [Derek] Jeter talking about him, and I had to make sure it wasn’t AI,” Richard said.

"Sometimes it's like, 'Am I dreaming?'" McCarthy told me. "It fills my heart to see his baseball career take off."

Richard is almost in disbelief of his brother’s rise “after everything we went through.” The kid who -- 11 years ago -- used to work at a movie theater, has lived a life that could be shown in one.

“I text him before every game, telling him 'To go out there, play hard, go crazy and remind them who you are,’” his older brother said. “Every time you touch that bump, make them feel what you’ve been through. Go out there and, just, be Kerr.”