Our Story

Some stories start with a business plan.

This one started with a cheer.

Not a slogan. Not a strategy. Just a mom in the stands, shouting the same three words every time her son stepped up to bat.

For years, at every one of her son Nic's Little League games, Jackie's mom stood in the stands and shouted the same three words: "Rip a shot!" Nic was the team's left-handed first baseman — steady, focused, the type of kid who showed up early and stayed late. He grew up to become an Oregon State Trooper and a real-life American hero, the kind most of us only read about.

That cheer never really left Jackie. Not as an idea. As a sound. The sound of her mom's voice carrying over a chain-link fence. The sound of a summer evening. The sound of loving someone so much you can't help but shout for them.

In 2022, Jackie was a nurse, working through some of the hardest nights the world had seen in a generation. She needed somewhere to put what she couldn't say out loud. So she and her mom did what they'd always done when things got heavy — they daydreamed instead, giggling about what a great song "Rip a shot" would make someday.

That daydream became a love letter to baseball. Before long, Jackie had written The Sweet Spot. She brought it to Ryan Whyte Maloney, who was a beloved contestant on Season 6 of NBC's The Voice. Ryan heard what Jackie couldn't yet hear herself, and gave it music. He shaped it into the song it became, earning his place as its co-writer, producer, and vocalist.

At the time, neither Jackie nor her mom realized they weren't just writing a song. They were quietly writing the first chapter of what would become RIPPASHOT™ — The Baseball Candy Co.

Then Jackie quietly held onto the song for four years.

She's not entirely sure why she waited so long. Maybe the dream wasn't ready yet. Maybe she wasn't. Or maybe it was simpler, and sadder, than that — she never let herself try, because trying meant there was a version of this where the answer was no.

Maybe you know that feeling too. The one where the dream sits so close you could touch it, and you still don't reach out.

What finally changed wasn't a lightning bolt. It was smaller than that, and more human.

Somewhere in those four years, Jackie made a list — on it, she'd written ten things that lit her up, things that might let her feel alive again, things that might finally make her a business owner instead of someone who just dreamed about being one. RIPPASHOT was number three.

She tried the first idea. It didn't work. She tried the second. That one didn't either. But neither attempt was wasted — each one taught her a little more about what she was actually looking for.

So she sat down at the kitchen table with her mom — the same woman who'd been cheering "Rip a shot" since Nic's Little League days — and they went through the list together one more time, asking the same question of everything on it: does this one have enough heart to carry us through?

RIPPASHOT won. It wasn't even close.

They went out to lunch to celebrate the decision and brainstorm the next aligned step to make this dream come true. The waitress led them to a booth, and when Jackie looked up, she found herself sitting beneath a wall hanging: an American flag, made entirely of baseballs.

She took it as a sign.

But before the stadium ever said yes, Jackie had to say it to herself first.

That happened three days later. She stopped asking herself the question that had kept her stuck for so many years — what if the answer is no — and decided to just find out. On a Tuesday morning, she sent the song to five stadiums, half-expecting silence.

Her mom's voice was in her head the way it always is: ask, and you shall receive. Jackie had never quite believed that. Not until this.

One stadium answered in under two hours.

Yes.

A week later, Jackie stood above the home dugout at a Hillsboro Hops game, an ice cream cone in hand, having just come from her seat out in left field, waiting for the clock to strike 6:18 p.m. When the first notes of The Sweet Spot rang out over the speakers, Jackie's hand went straight to her heart. She stood there in a crowd of strangers who had no idea what it meant for her to be standing there at all. Four years of holding onto a maybe finally let go of her, and she smiled the biggest smile of her life.

She remembers thinking: all those years, and all it took was one question. Just one.

It felt like the sweetest surprise Jackie had received in quite some time — the kind that makes you wonder if some dreams don't disappear when we set them down. Maybe they just wait. Patiently. For us to be brave enough to pick them back up.

If Jackie has any courage in her at all, she learned it by watching Nic first — the boy who never stopped being brave, whether he was rounding first base or, years later, standing in front of rooms full of strangers, turning the hardest day of his life into something that helps other people carry theirs. Asking a stadium to play a song will never be as brave as what Nic has done. But it was Jackie's own small version of the same thing her brother had shown her his whole life: that courage is just choosing to move forward, even scared.

It was in that moment that Jackie realized she didn't just have a song anymore. She had the beginning of something much bigger than she'd ever imagined.

One thing kept leading naturally to the next, the way it often does once you stop standing beside your life and start walking into it. Jackie knew she couldn't let it stay just a song. She wanted to create something players, parents, and fans could actually hold in their hands — something that carried the same feeling home after the last out. Candy became the perfect place to begin.

That's how RIPPASHOT™ became The Baseball Candy Co. It began with authentic Swedish dugout candy imported from Europe and made without the shortcuts — no high fructose corn syrup, no artificial red dyes, and non-GMO ingredients — because if Jackie was going to share sweetness with baseball families, she wanted it to be the kind worth sharing. Premium apparel followed later, another way of carrying that same feeling beyond the ballpark.

Jackie still can't quite believe it worked. Every time the song has played since — for crowds both small and sold out, for evenings when she sits beside her parents in those same stands, listening to words once shouted from a Little League fence echo through a ballpark — it feels exactly like that first time, as though the magic never wears off.

RIPPASHOT exists because a mom cheered for her son.

A nurse needed somewhere to put her heart.

A stadium said yes.

And one woman finally believed an old dream was still worth chasing.

If there's a lesson in any of it, it's a gentle one: you don't have to see the whole path to start walking it. Sometimes all it takes is one email. One phone call. One question you've been too afraid to ask.

Maybe you have a dream like that too — one you've been quietly carrying, waiting for the right time.

This might just be your sign that the time is now.

And maybe that's what baseball has always been, too — not just a game, but a place where ordinary moments become the ones we remember forever.

Somewhere tonight, a mom is still cheering three words from the stands.

Rip a shot.

Find Your Sweet Spot.