In Fighting Trim : Colin Hines Survives Pituitary Disorder to Pitch Kennedy to City Quarterfinals

The name sounded familiar, but when Brian Roth looked across the classroom to find his old friend, he did a double take.

That is, he had to look twice to take in all of Colin Hines.

“I remember the teacher calling out his name on the first day of class,” said Roth, a senior at Kennedy High who was a sophomore at the time. “I looked over at him and thought, ‘There’s no way that’s the same guy.’ I mean, this guy was Humpty Dumpty. He was bloated.”

It was him, all right, although he looked nothing like the player Roth remembered from a youth basketball team on which they had played as 12-year-olds.

“At the time, none of us knew anything was wrong with him,” Roth said. “We just thought he’d let himself go.”

Few people knew Hines was having serious medical problems--and facing brain surgery.

“I remember that very well,” Hines said. “I knew exactly what they were thinking, that there couldn’t be two names like that, but that I couldn’t be the same guy.”

Two-and-a-half seasons later, down to 160 pounds on a 6-foot frame, Hines still stands out--as the Kennedy ace. He is 10-2 with a 1.58 earned-run average, has led the team to the Mid-Valley League title, the quarterfinal round of the City Section 4-A Division playoffs and 10 consecutive wins.

The Golden Cougars (19-9) play host to Canoga Park, the defending 4-A champion, at 3 this afternoon. Hines, who pitched five innings of four-hit ball in a 19-1 first-round win Wednesday against North Hollywood, will be available for relief duty. Three years ago, the prospects of pitching twice in three days was not only improbable but medically impossible.

During the summer of 1985, before his first year at Kennedy, Hines gained almost 40 pounds, ballooning to 190 on a 5-10 frame. Many thought Hines had succumbed to the Frank Layden diet and that he never met a carbohydrate he didn’t like. In actuality, Hines was suffering from a rare pituitary disorder that caused a wild fluctuation in his weight, leaving him him feeling run-down, withdrawn and self-conscious.

“It’s hard to explain exactly how I felt at the time, but try to remember how concerned you were about your appearance when you were 14 or 15,” Hines said. “I didn’t want to leave the house. I was just a couch potato.”

Hines first started gaining weight and feeling sluggish during the middle of his ninth-grade year. At first, the persistent headaches were diagnosed as allergies. Another doctor took a look a Hines’ swollen face and diagnosed the problem as muscle inflammation.

A third physician ordered a series of X-rays and a CAT scan, which revealed a benign tumor and cyst on Hines’ pituitary gland. The pituitary is attached to the base of the brain and secretes the hormones that influence growth and metabolism. Normally the size of a fingernail, Hines’ pituitary was causing a handful of problems.

Although Hines’ life was not in immediate jeopardy, doctors suggested surgery as soon as possible. The trouble was, Hines was pitching for the Mission Hills Senior Little League All-Stars, so the operation was pushed back. Even with Hines at less than full health, Mission Hills advanced to the World Series in Gary, Ind.

Hines made a mark in the World Series, helping Mission Hills to a fourth-place finish. In the semifinals, he lost a 2-1 decision to eventual-champion Taiwan, surrendering two unearned runs in the sixth inning.

“Nobody was really aware of what was going on with him,” said Brian Eldridge, a Mission Hills teammate who is now an all-league shortstop at Monroe. “He got tired a lot quicker than he should have and put on a ton of weight. His face blimped up.”

Hines insisted on keeping the problem to himself, laughing off the nicknames he picked up along the way--tags like “little Fernando,” for instance, which was not a reference to the left-hander’s prowess on the mound.

In October, 1985, doctors removed the tumor and cyst. After two days in intensive care, Hines began the long road to recovery.

Neither the operation nor the recovery was as easy as doctors predicted.

“They told me it would be like getting my tonsils out,” Hines said. “But there’s no way there was that kind of pain from having your tonsils removed.”

During the protracted recovery, the headaches were so bad that Hines was forced to take cortisone, a treatment that ended only two months ago.

Hines missed 15 weeks of school but still decided to try out for the baseball team in the spring. And even though he had returned to his normal weight, he remembers the whispers when he showed up for the first team tryouts. Hines said his performance raised the eyebrows of Coach Dick Whitney.

“I’m sure he took one look at me and thought ‘This is Colin Hines, the kid I read about in the papers?’ I’m sure he thought I’d be better than I was.”

Last year, he was 5-4 with a 2.18 ERA, but that was only an indication of what was to follow. This season, Hines has not lost a decision since the spring break, fueling Kennedy’s first league championship since 1981. He was selected first-team all-league.

Make no mistake, Hines is not throwing missiles--he has 55 strikeouts in 79 innings--but he now throws in the 80 m.p.h. range.

“But that’s never been his game,” teammate V. P. Pajcin said. “He’s got one of the best curves I’ve seen, and that’s what sets him apart.”

And now, all of Hines’ curves are in the right place.