Starting Over : Despite Career-Ending Surgery on Spine, 19-Year-Old Cal State Dominguez Hills Baseball Player Craig Turley Vows to Return to Playing Field--Perhaps by Summer

Freshman infielder Craig Turley didn’t think much of it last fall when, while practicing baseball at Cal State Dominguez Hills, he took a hard throw and didn’t feel a sting in his glove hand.

But when Turley stepped to the plate later in a practice game against Loyola Marymount, the 19-year-old twice let his bat slip from his grip. Turley, recruited in part because he could hit from both sides of the plate, left the game.

A month later he underwent two hours of brain surgery to correct a cyst on his spinal cord, which caused progressive numbness in his left torso and arm. It is questionable whether he will play again.

Turley says he will be back, and the surgeon calls the chances “pretty good.” But there are doubters.

“He had a bright future,” said Jeff Molchan, an attorney for the Turley family. “This may have ended his career.”

How well Turley adjusts may determine how far back he can come. Turley realizes he will never regain most of the feeling on his left side. Surgery could not correct that.

Doctors at Scripps Clinic in San Diego, where the operation was performed, did not remove the cyst. The operation only stopped fluid from collecting in a cavern on the spinal cord.

Turley acknowledges he may be in for a lifetime of stiff necks and headaches. Even before the operation, Turley said, he could not lie on his left side long without discomfort.

“What I’ve lost, I’ve lost for good,” he acknowledged.

It could have been worse. Had the cyst continued to grow, doctors told Turley, he may have lost use of his bladder and legs.

“I could have been a vegetable,” he said.

Doctors also told him that had they had complications in the surgery they would have had to splice his spinal cord. Turley would have had to learn to walk.

As it is, Turley explained: “The back of my head is numb and everything is pretty much out of whack.”

But Dr. Thomas Waltz, who performed the operation, thinks Turley has a good shot at recovery.

“(The cyst) doesn’t seem to have affected his physical coordination,” he said.

But Molchan cautions: “He’ll have to make a decision whether to play baseball.”

Turley was a soccer star at Diamond Bar High School.

But the 5-11, 185-pounder (he’s down to 175) also liked baseball. In his senior year he was voted the most valuable player of the Sierra League. His career batting average was .423.

He wanted to attend UCLA but no scholarship was available. As he searched for another school, he was increasingly frustrated with the lack of soccer scholarships at major universities.

“I did everything I could and I walked away from my senior year without one major soccer scholarship,” he said.

Turley was stubborn. He felt he deserved a scholarship. After a scuffle in a game got him kicked off his club soccer team, he gave up hope of going further in the sport.

“There is no support for soccer in (the United States),” he concluded.

College baseball offered a different route.

Enter Coach Andy Lopez of Dominguez Hills. Lopez had seen Turley play as a junior at Diamond Bar.

“He stood out,” Lopez said.

But because of Turley’s interest in soccer, Lopez stayed in the background. When word got to him that Turley had decided not to pursue a college soccer career, Lopez was ecstatic.

“I told him I’d love to have him in our program,” Lopez said.

And he still is holding a spot for Turley, should he make a comeback.

“We could use him right now,” Lopez said. Lopez calls Turley “a mature competitor.”

“For a young guy it usually takes a couple of years to know that some nights you’re going to play better than others or face a great pitcher,” Lopez said. “That’s when you have to do those extra things to get the job done. Craig has that ability.”

Turley says an automobile accident last July caused a dormant congenital condition (the cyst), to grow.

According to Waltz, Turley had a “congenital abnormality” that resulted from the formation of the brain and the spinal cord in such a way that it altered the flow of spinal fluid, allowing a cyst to develop on the spinal cord.

Molchan, who has filed suit on Turley’s behalf, contends that when a car driven by Craig’s father, Dee, was rear-ended while at a stop, the impact triggered growth of the cyst. Dee and Craig also allege that the operator of the car that hit them had been drinking and that may have contributed to the accident.

Craig says that he complained of a stiff neck. It took six months, several doctors and dozens of tests to diagnose the reason for the loss of feeling.

Now Craig sits alone on most weekdays in his home. The headaches are receding, but the stiff neck remains.

“It’s terrible sitting around here listening to the radio,” he said.

So he walks. He has mapped out a route of half a mile around the rolling hills of this eastern Los Angeles County community. Twice a day he makes the trip up a few stairs, down a cul-de-sac and onto Diamond Bar Boulevard.

Turley remains optimistic about his athletic future.

His speech has been slowed by painkillers, but his goal to play baseball hasn’t.

“I’ve been punched and kicked and had leg injuries,” he said of his young career. “But I’m never again going to complain about pain. There is nothing that hurts worse than this.”

Except not being able to play, which Turley says is only a matter of months away, perhaps this summer.

“I’ll be ready, no doubt.”