David Newhan walks away from ‘the Hangman’s Fracture’

Veteran major leaguer David Newhan wants to play in the big leagues again.

He also wants to thank God that he is physically able to play with his two children, Nico, 5, and Gianna, 2.

Doesn’t make sense? Follow along here and it will.

It was last Sept. 22, and Newhan walked the two blocks from his home in Oceanside to the beach, where he often surfed.

“It clears my mind,” he says.

He had been home for about two weeks. Baseball season was heading into the playoffs, the Dodgers and Angels the talk of L.A. In Philadelphia, his Phillies would eventually make it to the World Series, where they’d lose to the New York Yankees.

But, much as he wished he could, Newhan had no part in that. He had just finished an entire season in the minors, batting .276 for the Phillies’ triple-A team in Allentown, Pa., the Lehigh IronPigs. He had 355 at-bats and 98 hits, but the other minor leaguers, as well as the Phillies’ organization, seemed to see him more as a player-coach than a player.

By the time he climbed on that surfboard, he had just turned 36. He had played parts of eight seasons for five major league teams, once had a 20-game hitting streak for the Baltimore Orioles and had even managed an inside-the-park home run in Fenway Park against Pedro Martinez and the Boston Red Sox.

He had played every position except pitcher and catcher.

“Even a few innings at shortstop,” he says.

But he had also been the prototype baseball nomad, traveling from the bigs to the minors. Except for the 2004 season in Baltimore, he never really had an everyday job, the kind that brings continuity and confidence. In addition to the five major league teams for which he played — the San Diego Padres, Phillies, Orioles, New York Mets and Houston Astros — he also spent time in minor league organizations of the Oakland A’s, Colorado Rockies, Dodgers and Texas Rangers.

He had always been an overachiever, attracting interest in high school only from NCAA Division II colleges. He was best known as one of the few Jewish players in the majors, and as the son of Hall of Fame baseball writer Ross Newhan of the Los Angeles Times. He carried the nickname “Son of Scribe,” and he enjoyed telling reporters he never considered a writing career because he grew up hearing so much cussing at the keyboard.

On that Sept. 22, the intention was to get back to work soon, to get invited somewhere to spring training and land a job. And then he did something uncharacteristic. He was a professional athlete so careful that he had, long ago, given up skiing and snowboarding.

“It wasn’t even especially heavy surf,” Newhan says. “I got caught between tides, kind of on the backside of a wave, and I dove off my board.”

He had surfed the area many times. He thought it was deep enough. But he slammed headfirst into a sandbar.

“I couldn’t move one bit,” he says. “I was just kind of floating up, but I wasn’t sure I’d get to the top. I remember thinking two things, if I did. One, I’ll yell for help. And two, please Jesus, let me move my arms and legs again.”

He calls the sensation “a stinger.” He says that, suddenly, he could move enough to grab the leash on his surfboard and start working his way to shore.

“I remember thinking,” he says, “that what just happened is not good.”

He somehow got to shore, gathered up his board and walked the two blocks home. His wife, Karen, was visiting her parents about 15 minutes away, so Newhan got cleaned off and called her. He didn’t know she was concerned enough to call an ambulance, and when it arrived before she did, he went to the door and talked them out of transporting him. Since he was walking around, they didn’t argue.

His wife drove him to the emergency room. He was on and off various carts and beds as he was examined for the next several hours.

“It was just killing me,” he says.

Eventually, as he sat on a bed in an examining room and watched through the window into the next room as a medical technician read his test reports, he knew something was bad.

“I saw him look at me and then call another doctor,” Newhan says.

He had fractured the second cervical vertebra, known as C2, in his neck. Later, a nurse would tell him what that injury is commonly called: the Hangman’s Fracture.

C2 is the vertebra most commonly fractured in a hanging death. Newhan’s odds of living, much less walking home carrying his surfboard, were not great. The injury he suffered was similar to that of actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed and eventually died. Also that of jockey Laffit Pincay Jr., who spent months in a neck halo that was secured by drilling screws into his head.

Pincay, like Newhan a well-conditioned athlete, walked around with the injury for several days before the pain forced him to see doctors. Like Newhan, Pincay could have made any slight wrong movement that would have created instant paralysis or death.

“They told me there were fragments that could have shifted any time,” Newhan said.

He spent 19 weeks in various neck braces and says he has healed so well that he is working out daily and ready for another try in the big leagues. He takes batting practice and can lift a pitch long and deep, just like before.

More important, he can lift his kids.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com