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WWE News: Braun Strowman’s Dad Is An Icon In His Own Right, Just In A Completely Surprising Sport

By Simon Alvarez
Published on: 08:17 PST, May 20, 2017

Braun Strowman might be out of commission for a while due to a severe elbow injury, but that has not stopped the WWE universe from discussing facts about the Monster Among Men. Last week, wrestling fans were abuzz after it was revealed that Braun’s sister was a pretty tall woman herself, and this week, interest in Strowman’s father has been rekindled. Interestingly, Braun’s dad was an icon himself, and he was actually a pretty formidable athlete back in the day.

Reports about the past professional sports career of Strowman’s father have emerged earlier this month after an article from CBS Sports revealed that the favorite heel’s dad had been a sports icon around 30 years ago. Surprisingly, however, Braun’s father was not involved in contact sports at all. Instead, Rick Scherr, Adam (Braun Strowman) Scherr’s dad, was a professional softball player.

The nature of the sport aside, Rick Scherr was a giant of a man himself, weighing in at 300 pounds and standing at 6 feet 5 inches. His nickname in the sport, “Crusher,” is well deserved, as Scherr was dubbed as the Home Run King of Softball during his career. A Los Angeles Times article written at the height of his career stated that during the 1985 softball season, Crusher was able to hit 451 home runs. Scherr even had a reputation for sending softballs out of major league parks.

“They had 35,000 people there, and I just caught a good day, with the wind blowing out. I guess I hit six into the bleachers. The guy pitching finally threw me a real nice pitch, and I hit it onto that Waverly Avenue, or whatever.”

“The first time I went to San Diego, they had just moved the fences in. The guy putting the show on came over to me and asked, ‘Do you think you’ll be able to put a ball over the first fence?’ I said, ‘Hell, I’m going to put some up there in those seats.’ He looked at me and kinda smiled, like he’s thinking, ‘Ah, ha, ha.’ He said, ‘We don’t have baseball players hit balls up there.’ So I go up there, and out of 25 pitches, I think I hit 15-16 up in the seats. Some of them went 8-10 rows in.”

Through the course of his career, Rick Scherr was estimated to have hit as many as 1,800 home runs. Overall, it appears that an athlete’s blood really does run in the Scherr family. Just like his father, Adam is now making a name for himself in professional wrestling as the Monster Among Men, Braun Strowman. His performance has so far garnered him acclaim from viewers and avid fans of the WWE, and he has emerged as one of the most-loved heels in recent years.

One thing that has made Braun Strowman so likable among wrestling fans is his capability to stay in character on and off-screen. His official WWE Twitter account, for one, has gained a notable following among wrestling fans due to his witty and in-character responses to fans who are taking the events onscreen a little bit too seriously. A particularly noteworthy example of this happened when Roman Reigns’ fans reacted negatively to his beatdown of WWE’s resident Big Dog. Staying in character, Strowman sent out a tweet saying “Your tears hydrate me.” Such a response is as great as some of the best one-liners of the WWF Attitude Era.

Braun Strowman is arguably one of WWE’s biggest assets. He is a heel right now, but his performance in the ring and his actions online have managed to make him extremely likable to new and longtime wrestling fans alike. With the career of his father in mind, however, it seems that charisma and athleticism do not fall far from the Scherr family tree.

[Featured Image by WWE]

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