You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. It is with a heavy heart that I air this recording today as my guest, my friend, Ron Carroll, has gone home to be with the Lord since the time of this recording just a few weeks ago. Ladies and gentlemen, the following contest is set for one flaw, introducing first, from Lithuania, he weighs 123 kilos, the Russian nightmare, Nikita Kolob. Now, the Devil's Nightmare. Welcome back to another episode of It's Time to Man Up. When you think of adversity, when you think about overcoming, think about for a moment some of the things you've overcome in your life, challenges that you have faced, and my guest today, you're going to want to stay tuned and not go anywhere. You want to talk about more than an overcomer, more than a conqueror, that's my guest today, Ron Carroll. Ron, welcome to the Man Up show.
Hey Nikita, thank you. Well, great to have you with us Ron, and we're going to dive, we'll dive deeper into that as we go, but before we get there, you and I have quite a bit of history with each other. We go way back, don't we? We do. After lunch, it's just not enough time for you and I to catch up, I realize that on Sunday. That is a fact.
We would have to carve out about a half a day, maybe a whole day, in order just to catch up on everything, right? That's right. Absolutely. Well, and you have quite a history, a sports history as well, going back, I know, kind of generational, right, even from what your dad accomplished, and what your dad did, and what you accomplished. Is it fair to say you were, one of the related abilities, I was a champion of pro wrestling, you were a champion, can we say, in pro softball, kind of a home run king, were you not? I guess if you want to say that, the Lord gave me some pretty amazing platforms, and always, of course, tried to give him the glory, and he did.
For some reason, put me on those platforms, and I give him all the glory, kind of trying to do that in my own strength, I just would have not even come close. When did sports become important to you? How young were you?
How old were you when it became important? Well, from the time I was a kid, as you mentioned about my dad, dad was a Golden Gloves boxer, played pro baseball, but he was a professional softball player, and so baseball was just a big piece of our family, and as you mentioned earlier, some of the hurdles, I was born with a condition called aortic stenosis, and was told that I would never be able to play sports. At age 10, I had my first open heart surgery, and at that point, my surgeon, you know, he told me, he said, I don't know if you ever play sports again, that would kind of be up to you.
He said, my job was to try to save your life. It's hard for a 10-year-old to comprehend. Age 10, and so, of course, you know, in the friendship we've developed over the years, of course that didn't deter you, you did still go on to compete, so did you compete in like baseball in high school, or did you go, at what point did you pick up softball, tell us a little bit about that journey. So I played baseball almost all my life. That was really the only sport that I could get a true, I guess, doctor's release to play, and so they wouldn't let me play football or basketball for some reason, but they allowed me to play baseball, so I just tried not to ever take a victim mentality. I just thank God for that as a young man, and my dream was to always play pro baseball. Well, that didn't work out, but in my efforts of trying to, I got to go to a couple of professional camps, but in my efforts of doing that, I met my karate instructor, and so that's what got me into karate, and at the same time of playing baseball, I got to play a little college baseball, but I just never let go of the karate piece, which I don't know if doctors would have truly said, hey, you go ahead and go do karate, but it just got to a place, Nikita, where I just had to let the Holy Spirit guide my life.
I couldn't live in fear, having three open-heart surgeries, and it would be very easy to just kind of curl up and just try to go day by day, but God's blessed me and allowed me to live a full life. So H10 was the first of three heart surgeries, and let's step back just for a moment. You mentioned your dad with the gold gloves boxing, and so you said he was in pro baseball. Yeah, yeah, you know, dad had these funny stories, I mean, we, you know, as teenagers were cutting up, you got your friends over and everything, and we were giving dad kind of a hard time. He just told, wasn't one to ever brag on himself, but he said, you know, I could throw pretty hard, and of course he signed with the Reds, but he just got tired of hearing all that and us giving him a hard time, so he picked up the phone, and he called a man who was actually active in pro baseball at that time. I think he was the coach, third base coach for one of the professional teams, I can't remember, Oakland A's, I think, his name was Lou Fitzgerald, and so he picked up the phone and somehow got in touch with Lou Fitzgerald and put him on the phone talking with me and these other guys, and so Lou Fitzgerald says, he says, hey, I don't know how hard you can throw, but your dad could throw strawberries to a tank, so that was a pretty good, that kind of hushed my mouth and my other friends too, so he literally could throw, throw as they said, strawberries to a tank. That's pretty amazing, now did you, so did you ever get to see like either his golden gloves boxing days or pro baseball days, or had he already kind of been, you might say, retired from that? Yeah, I got to watch him play softball, and he was a pretty incredible hitter, pretty incredible softball player, and he would always take me with him, and so I guess that's what kind of, this kind of started sowing that seed of possibly playing softball, I actually stopped playing college baseball to finish my black belt and to go on and travel and play softball. So, and I want to jump into that in a minute, you mentioned no football, no basketball, but you could play baseball, which in a way, I'm looking at that thinking, well, that would make sense, I mean, basketball requires pretty good conditioning running up and down that court, right, for however much, right?
I guess that's what it was, yeah, my order valve would stick, and so oddly enough, kind of telling my age a little bit, is that the first surgery, they didn't have the technology then to fix it, to fix the valve, and so they would just go in and repair it, cut it, open it back up, they did that the first two, of course the last ones, as you know, I had the mechanical valve installed. Yeah, and so I'm thinking, so cardio, basketball, up and down the court, and of course it can get somewhat physical under the boards or whatever, but then football, we talk about physical, right, and football really, so when I compare that to baseball, and I'm like, no disrespect to you, baseball players out there, by the way, I just want to say, I played one year, I played, did you know that, Ron, I played one year of baseball? I don't know if I did, man, how am I still learning these new things? I know, just at lunch the other day, you just learned I screen test for Rocky IV, you didn't even know that. That was amazing, I couldn't wait to tell my son-in-law that over supper, man. Did he get a kick out of that, by the way?
Oh yeah, yeah, they were like, oh cool, I was like, okay, I'm just telling you, and I put all the details in there too. Good, good, I have it down to the details, so, but all that said, so Babe Ruth baseball, I don't know if they had that in the south, but they had that up north, yeah, northern Siberia had Babe Ruth baseball, but Ron, I played one year, true story now, true story, I hated the curve ball, right, like, I was deathly afraid of the curve ball, and so I taught myself to switch it, and so every time I get a left-handed pitcher, I'd bet right-handed, every time I get a right-handed pitcher, I'd bet left-handed, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, they'll never get me, and the craziest part is, looking back at the stats, I hit equal amount, and when I say equal, like, singles, doubles, triples, never got a home run, got close to the wall a few times, but I had an equal amount of singles, doubles, triples on both sides of the plate, to the number, like down to the number, and then I thought, that's like you were pretty good, yeah, I was okay, I was okay, I was a decent athlete, and not only that, though, and again, I'm not tooting my own horn, but I played seven out of nine positions, including pitcher, I thought, I'm gonna get these batters, these pitchers back, and I did, you know, I'm sure you know what submarine pitching is, right? Submarine pitching. Oh, yeah, like side arms?
Yeah, like almost underarm, right, almost like underarm. There was a guy in pro baseball named Kent Tocoville, I'll never forget him. I was getting ready to say that, he kind of pioneered it. He did. But it was Mars, didn't he? Yes, and that's who I patterned after, and here's the craziest part of this whole story, and I want to get back to your story, the craziest part is, that year, we had a horrible team, but they were able to draft three All-Stars off of the other teams to go to the, you know, for the champion team to go to the playoffs or whatever, I got drafted as a pitcher. Come on, come on, man. Yeah, for real. But I was like, huh?
There you go, something else, you gave me another nugget today. But here's what I realized, baseball is not my game, I'm just saying, right? So all right, so all right, so now let's fast forward though, let's fast forward to your softball career, so you're playing softball. When did you get into competitive softball? Because you played in some pro leagues, right?
Professional softball leagues. Yeah, yeah, I've been very blessed, you know, out of college, I got to go and be a player rep, it was really my dream job, a player rep for a company called Bombat Sports, and in that, a month into that, I got to meet my wife, you know, to me that was, that was just God ordaining my steps there, but I really did, to be honest, if you can just imagine, I wasn't planning on settling down, I know we weren't really going to talk about that right now as far as that, but I had, you know, getting paid to travel, play ball, and put on events and all this kind of stuff, and I wasn't planning on settling down at all. And she did an interview with me, she worked with CNN, and that was an interview that's kept going. I'm going to tell you what my prayer was, Keith, I know we're kind of stepping aside, but that job, traveling and getting paid and going and playing ball and hitting in home run events and stuff, that was my dream. I prayed, I prayed, because I was lifting weights, I was traveling, I was doing some bare knuckle fighting and all that stuff from the karate standpoint, but I prayed in the park a lot of the college at Lenoir Rhine, I said, Lord, would you show me who my wife's hot, because I feel like I've missed her, I feel like I've walked past her, and my efforts of just kind of walking in my own strength and my own pride and, you know, just the aggressiveness of karate and the discipline of my own goals, I believe I've walked past her, so would you show me who you want, and within a month, man, I knew, I saw her, I got to do an interview with her, and yeah, I knew, so that's kind of a little nugget there about Nicky, of course you know Nicky. And the old cliche is the rest is history, and I- It's still going on, the interview's still happening. The interview's still happening, I'll just say for the record, you know, if you've ever heard the expression marrying up, I want to tell you right, I love Ron Carroll, but he married up, I'm just going to say, not only is she, I'm just saying, not only is she beautiful inside and out, but she is an incredible worship leader, I'm just going to say, she leads worship, we'll get to that in a moment, Ron is now pastoring a church, we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves here, but that support, Koloff for Christ Ministries, they have me in every year to share the gospel, and that's a blessing in and of itself, and of course I've spent time around the family, so since we're talking about the family, yo, take a minute because you've got a new grandbaby on the way, so take a minute and tell us about, you know, of course obviously we talked about your lovely bride Nicky, but tell us about the rest of the family real quick.
You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. If you would like to support Koloff for Christ Ministries, for a gift of $25, Nikita will send you his two CDs, Adoration and Declaration. For a gift of $50, Nikita will include his book, Wrestling with Success, and for a gift of $100 or more, Nikita will include a signed copy of his newly updated life story, A Tale of the Ring and Redemption.
Go to www.koloff.net and donate today. The Man Up show is honored to have Dr. Johnny Gaten as one of our longest running supportive sponsors. Dr. Gaten is regarded as one of the world's leading elite eye surgeons. He is motivated by his faith in doing all things heartily as unto the Lord. His desire to do his best has contributed to success in his eye care practice, performing over 70,000 eye surgeries. In addition, he's a world-renowned speaker, writer, and author.
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You can give monthly, annually, or one time. God bless you for making a difference around the world. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Yeah, so the Lord has continued to add to our family. Daughter Riley, you've known for so long, married a young man named Damian O'Brien. He loves the Lord. Hard worker.
He asks for much more. And yeah, they are going to have a little baby and been married about a year coming up and babies do end of June, end of June, 1st of July. So they've already named her and her name's going to be Scarlett. So Riley's almost 22 and my boys, my sons, Brayden is the oldest. He's 17 and they get to play basketball. They're basketball players.
They love it and wear me out. So and then my youngest is Holden. He's 15. He's going to be, he's going to be the baseball player. He's played for a year and is already, he's quite the pitcher.
He really is. They just never took an interest. Brayden or Holden and it just all of a sudden kind of came from nowhere. I never, I didn't really want to push them into things that I loved. I wanted to nurture that.
They took some karate and stuff, but yeah, that's my, those are the kids. Yeah. And you didn't want to, so he's kind of following in grandpa's footsteps.
It sounds like. He really, yeah, he is. He is. He's, I told him this too and I said, look, he knows I'm hard on him and I said, look, I think you, you have more talent than me, but I don't know if you work as hard. I said, I worked really hard. I really, I just wasn't gonna speak into that, Nick, the key to, I want to tell you a story is on the back of my mind there. You know, I had the same surgeon for all three of my heart surgeries surgeries. He was an incredible surgeon. His name's Dr Robichek and um, he just, uh, just passed away not too long ago, but incredible man. But when I was 10, he was the one that told me, uh, I don't know if you ever play sports again. My job was to save your life. So when they installed my mechanical valve, he got to be in on that surgery even though he had retired. Um, you're talking about a man that really invented the heart lung machine, so many different things.
It's amazing. All this man has accomplished. Well, my second surgery, he was involved in that one when I was 16.
So you and I are a lot of like with us, you know, just our, our, our nature to press forward to not let things hold us pack and just drive, drive, drive. So I saw, um, that's Nikki and I, uh, I think we were married at the time we were traveling and um, I was going, I was playing, um, in a tournament out in Texas and I flew back into, um, to Charlotte and I saw Dr Robichek and his wife in the elevator. They got an elevator with us and part of me Nikita wanted to say, ah, you know, I was like, I did it. You know, you think I could play and I did it, but, but I, I looked at him.
This was amazing. I'll never forget. I looked at him. I said, Dr Robichek, I said, my name's Ron Carroll. He turned and looked at me and remembered my first procedure and he, he, I said, I just got back from Texas, got to go play ball and didn't bring up anything. He came to tears. He came to tears. I'll never forget it because what he said was true.
It wasn't up to him, whether I played sports or ball, his job was to save my life. And so I look back on that, you know, after you really, I had to make a choice. I could either just curl up and be a victim or I could go and just take those steps forward, you know, kind of take that thorn and put it to work.
That's a powerful, I just, I made a note of what you just said for all of our listeners out there. Think about what Ron just said. He could grow up and be a victim or he could be a victor, right? We're all going to go through things, whether it's open heart surgery or, you know, a failed marriage or whatever it is, you know, loss of a close loved one, loss of a child or loss of a spouse or, you know, or whatever it is, you know, we, we got, God gives us choices so we can be a victim or we can be a victor and that's powerful. And you know, if you haven't gathered by now, Ron is a walking miracle story and we're just scratching the surface. And I know, take just a second, you've got a book out there too, right? Yeah. You know, it's probably more of a pamphlet than anything, but it's really, you know, my dad died with cancer.
Uh, as great an athlete as he was, he was probably a better coach, a hitting coach. And on his, uh, nightstand at the hospital where he passed away, uh, the key that he had these, he had written them out 10 steps, 10 steps to hitting. And it's only a yellow sheet of paper. And you know, I was, I was really hurting and, uh, of course, and you know, my brother's 10 years younger than I and 10 years younger and it was just so hard on him and I both. But I took that and it's our first, of course, Nikki is from Alaska, grew up in Alaska. And it was right after that, that I went to see, uh, my in-laws up there and got to spend some time. And it was a, it was a God calling me to a higher, he was just, he was, he was really working on my heart. I was healing my heart and I didn't know what was going on, but so I started to write, I took that little sheet of paper and I started to write, filling in the gaps, 10 hour flight.
And there's one thing you would love. I'll just share one little point from the, so 10 chapters at the end of it, dad would tell you, you're not a great athlete without, uh, accepting Christ in your heart. That's the last little chapter in it that completes an athlete.
And on the back of it, we have the Romans road and plan of salvation there, but there's one chapter where just to kind of give you a picture of my father, um, and it's, it's called, uh, keep your head down and, but it's actually to keep your head down, to keep your eyes focused on the, on the ball. So anyway, it, um, uh, we were playing in a world tournament, um, and I come up with the bases loaded and I, I needed to produce and you know, all these guys, they're all great athletes. So I, I didn't, I, I line drive out to the third basement and with the base is loaded and I heard my dad's dad was coaching third base and he screamed out. He said, I could have caught that with a pair of pliers and I was just like, okay. And, uh, it, he calmed down a little bit after that, but I made it out. Yeah. He said, I could have caught it with a pair of pliers and now the guys are mad at me.
I mean, you know, at that level, everybody's almost pulling for themselves and you know, just getting paid, all that kind of stuff. So the reason I say that, you just had to know who dad was and why he we're walking across. Uh, I'm walking across the infield, I meet him, he's leaving from third and he said, get out of the outfield. I've got something for you at home.
I'm looking for anything now, right? Cause no one else is going to talk to me on the team that competitive level. They, I didn't, I didn't show up when I needed to. And I'm like, dad, what is it? He said, get in the outfield.
I'll give it to you when you get home. I said, dad, what is it? He said, well, you're not going to shut up until I tell you.
I was like, no, I need something. He said, I made, I made something for you. It's a hat and it's fishing line and there's a number 12 hook that hooks to your groin. He said, the next time you lift your head up when you're trying to hit, you'll only do it one time. And so it's keep your head down.
Don't lift your head up. So that was one of the chapters in the little, little book as I was telling you about, well, and it's a great inspirational story. I've, I have read it and uh, you know, it's, it'd be a great, where, where can, can, where can they get that? Can they purchase it somewhere? Yeah, they can just reach out to the church, make any kind of a, a donation, whether it's a dollar and we'll get one to them. They just, uh, send it to the church requesting that there's a little note on the website. Um, what, what is the church website? What's the church website? Uh, christianfreedomchurch.com christianfreedomchurch.com. Yep.
Kings Mountain, Kings Mountain, North Carolina. And uh, we're, we're, uh, just got only a couple minutes left here, but Ron, Ron has been a pastoring there now for eight years. So, um, he has a still involved, we're gonna have, we'll have to talk more in another time about, about the prison ministry that they're involved in, uh, combined with softball and be able to share some of those stories. But christianfreedomchurch.com, you said, Ron? Yeah.
Yeah. They can check us out on Facebook as well. And uh, on Facebook and, and of course I encourage you to get that book. Uh, it is incredibly inspirational. What a role model. Dad, golden glove boxer, pro baseball, Ron overcoming three open heart surgeries going on to profession, to play professional softball himself, karate, you heard him say bare knuckles. We didn't even get into half of that story, but you'll get more of the story.
And if you're ever in Kings Mountain, North Carolina or around that area or ever need a Sunday service, uh, you know, pop them online and, and uh, Ron is just as an intense preacher as he was a professional athlete as well. Keep your head down. I love that Ron, keep your head down, but, uh, uh, amazing story, uh, a walking miracle.
And if I, if we were to leave you with anything today, it would be a victor, not a victim. Right Ron? Yes, sir. Absolutely.
And, uh, incredible family that, that he has there. Uh, we, we do need to, uh, so just prison ministry, 60 seconds, Ron, you guys go out to, what, what are our, just real quick, a couple of prisons where you guys have gone and had these softball tournaments in, in maximum security prisons. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, we've been, uh, we have a trip coming up, uh, heading out towards LA, uh, and, and North of LA we've ministered in Folsom prison. We've ministered in, uh, you know, Lexington, Kentucky. We've met, you know, it's just that we, we, we go where they let us minister really. And, um, I've seen about 10,000 inmates come to Christ over the last seven, seven, eight years. Okay.
Pause, pause. 10,000 inmates come to Christ. I want our listeners to just embrace those numbers. 10,000 inmates come to Christ through, through home run hitting softball competitions inside maximum security prisons. And if, uh, if you recognize, see, here's what I know about Folsom prison. There's a man named Johnny Cash, who sang a very famous song called Folsom Prison Blues. And, uh, there's no blues involved in this because Ron Carroll and his team, if you ever want to support these guys, again, go to christianfreedomchurch.com. And if you ever feel led of the Lord to support these guys, to help fund these guys, to go into these prisons and lead these prisoners to the foot of the old rugged cross, I'm not talking about jailhouse religion, I'm talking about these guys have seen the most hardened criminals come to Christ and surrender in tears, right, Ron?
In tears. Uh, gang, gang leaders, uh, I mean, just all, all across the board. I mean, I could just talk, you know, I could talk all day.
Giving their life to Christ. So, well, thanks for being a part of the Man Up show today, Ron. Yes, sir. Thank you, Nikita. And to all of you out there, check it out. Ron Carroll, Christian Freedom Church, Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and, uh, as always, my challenge to you today, I hope you were inspired by Ron's story. Go out and live a God field and have a God blessed day.
Until next time. This podcast is made possible by the grace of God and your faithful prayers, support, and generous gifts. May God bless you for your continual contributions. Go to Kolob.net and donate today. If you are enjoying the Man Up show, would you help us spread the word? Tell your family, tell your friends, tell your neighbors to download, subscribe, and leave a comment. Nikita Kolob here.
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