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Ray Searage
Before heading out into the sunshine for a midday bullpen session, Uncle Ray has a story to tell. In 1993, several years after his itinerant and inconsequential playing career had come to an abrupt end—“I suddenly realized that no one was interested in a 34-year-old lefthander with an 83-mph fastball and bone chips in his arm,” he says—Searage returned to Freeport, Long Island, where he had grown up. He spent his first months out of baseball as a construction worker making $10 an hour, lugging 12-foot pillars to be installed in cemetery mausoleums. He had a wife, three young sons, a rapidly depleting bank account and a rapidly expanding gut. “A rude awakening to life in the real world,” he calls it. [Then he got the call that began his great pitching coach career.]
“Ray is the guy in your neighborhood who, when your car has problems, you go ask if he can take a look,” says Pittsburgh manager Clint Hurdle. “He tells you to leave it there for a few days, and he’ll see if there’s anything to be done. You come back, and the car’s fixed. You ask him what he did, and he shrugs and says he just tried a few things under the hood.” - Sports Illustrated
There were two old facegens in the pack. Replaced with the younger version using the proper ID.
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