One good deed: Baseball player stops after loss to help strangers

Evin Usry was sad and exhausted and still miles from home when he saw the big, lumbering shapes along the side of Highway 23 outside Metter and told his girlfriend to pull over.

Someone’s cows were out and he knew that meant someone else was having a bad day.

Evin was still in his Jefferson County High School Warrior baseball uniform when he stepped out of the car. His team had just lost two straight games to put them out of the first round of the state playoffs.

His lifetime career of baseball was over. It was something he played or thought about in one way or another nearly every day for as long as he could remember. He had started the second game and pitched into his fifth inning before he was pulled while his Warriors trailed 3-1. The Metter Tigers had then slowly extended that lead and took the win. And then, for Evin and his teammates, it was over, forever.

“I’ve played baseball my whole life and that was a moment I didn’t want to see. I’ve played ball since I was four-years old. I guess all good things come to an end but I didn’t want it to. Honestly, I was sobbing,” Usry said.

His girlfriend was driving him home from the game and it was just getting dark but when he saw the cows out, he said he knew he had to help. He didn’t think twice.

“I saw them and knew that definitely ain’t right,” Evin said. “Us having cows, we know what it feels like when the cows get out. It’s stressful.”

He knew if a car hit one someone could get seriously hurt.

So he spent a little more than 20 minutes, in his uniform, helping the Candler County rancher and his family corral the wandering herd of about 50 cows back down a dirt road and into their pen.

Mark Bland, the owner of the cows, said when he drove up Evin had already helped drive the cattle nearly half a mile and most were in the pen or headed that way.

"We had been and that game and seen Evin pitch," Bland said. "There’s no telling how many other cars passed and nobody else stopped. Here is this kid who probably had a pretty rough day, who is tired and here he stops and helps somebody he doesn’t know. He could have kept on driving and nobody would have known or blamed him."

Bland said he thanked Evin and is still blown away at his act of kindness.

"Cattle are strange beasts. You never know what kind of cows you’re going to get behind and whether or not they are going to turn on you," Bland said. "Anything could have happened that could have put him in harms way, but he wasn’t thinkin about that. He was just helping his fellow man."

Afterwards the teenagers drove home more than an hour in the dark. Evin said he didn’t think anymore about the incident until the next morning when he awoke to a stampede of social media messages.

The farmer’s wife, Terri Bland, had posted a story about this kid in a baseball uniform who walked up out of the dark to help round up a herd of cows.

In the post Bland says she spoke up because so many people, herself included, talk about this generation having no work ethic, being lazy and having no respect for their elders.

“Never give up on our young people because just as you say because just as you say something negative about them and throw them in that ‘they all’ category, some of them will prove you wrong and give you that ray of hope and faith that our children’s and grandchildren’s future will be just fine after all,” Terri Bland wrote in her post. “They’re in God’s hands. Thank you Evin Usry for your act of kindness tonight when you couldn’t kept driving by and no one would have known any difference! Thank you for setting a good example for your teammates and classmates for going out of your way to do the right thing!”

Since then Evin has said he has received message after message, been contacted by reporters and seen posts by news agencies as far away as Atlanta.

Evin says he was just doing what he has been doing all his life.

“I’ve always been taught to do the right thing,” he said. “I’m a Christian.and that’s kind of a basic necessity. You’re supposed to love your neighbor.”

Evin said he knew he could help and so he did. He never expected any kind of response for it.

“Both my mom and dad raised me to be the man I am,” he said. “I’m thankful for them and everything they do, taking me to church, giving me the Lord. I gave my life to the Lord earlier this year and He has blessed me."

He believes that doing the right thing is mostly common sense.

“Be kind to people and if you know what to do and can help, then help,” he said.

The son of Brian Usry and Angel Uslan, Evin will be graduating from JCHS in May and plans to attend Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College this fall where he wants to enter its pre-veterinary medicine program and eventually work with large animals like horses and cows.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: One good deed: Baseball player stops after loss to help strangers