We live in RI so all practice the past couple months has been at indoor facilities. Well, a week ago last Sunday - the day before high school tryouts - we were at the facility. I was sitting on a chair like at home, behind their L-screen. With only a few pitches left in his half hour session, he drilled a line drive that went right THROUGH the high side of the screen and shattered my nose.
He's not a real big kid (5'8", 135?), but he IS a good hitter, using a composite bat. While lying there in an enormous amount of blood, waiting for the rescue squad, my buddy who owns the facility and some other folks were inspecting the screen. Though there wasn't a "hole" in it, they did admit that the screen rope seemed loose. My son said he saw it go into the screen and me duck behind it, just like he had thousands of times before. This time though, he saw me drop to the ground. We heard that they changed the screen immediately after we left. The gory details: The doctor said he'd never seen this much damage from a baseball - fractured nose, plus several bone fragments floating around, a hematoma (blood clot that gets between cartilage and membrane and can kill nose cartilage, leaving nothing to hold up my nose, if not removed), plus a deviated septum (which IS a common elective
surgery, even tho I sure didn't elect for any of this). Also chipped a tooth. I guess I'm actually fortunate that the ball didn't hit my forehead or eyes or I might have ended up much worse.
Surgery was performed the Wed. after the injury. Tomorrow I'm having the splints removed and hopefully will be fully recoverd within a few more days. It's been a VERY tough road these past two weeks though. When you can't breathe through your nose, mouth breathing at night makes your mouth so dry that you wake up every 15-20 mins in need of water. So there were several nights that I only slept an hour or two. This week though, the dr. gave me some steroids to further reduce swelling and some Valium to help sleep. I finally slept most of the last two nights.
The first week or so, each day when my son would come home and ask "How u feeling?", I nearly broke down but tried to tell him "better". The poor kid surely didn't need this the day before tryouts. But you know what they say: "Sh.t happens!". I did all I could to convince him that it wasn't his fault. But he's asking "Will you ever be able to pitch to me again?".
I may end up trying to wear a catcher's mask awhile til I get over the trauma (I still have visions of the ball closing in on my face from so close. ).If there's any silver lining in all of this, Kevin was one of only 2 sophomores to make varsity!
There's a senior in front of him, whose job at 2B it is to lose, but Kevin has a stronger arm and bat than him, so it's not a done deal yet on how the season will play out. His coach told him that if he ends up not getting him enough reps at varsity, he'll swing him down w/ the other true swingers for some JV reps. So please folks, before you get behind an L-screen just assuming that it'll hold up, do yourself a big favor and give it a few tugs and maybe see if you can squeeze a ball through it anywhere.
Regards,
Mike
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