Shouldering a Heavy Burden : Dodgers’ Hershiser Describes Fear, Pain of Road Back to Mound Tonight

Orel Hershiser sits in his shorts on a hard trunk in a cluttered equipment room underneath the Houston Astrodome. The air is motionless and smells faintly of old pine tar. The heat isstifling.

Hershiser does not notice. He has spent an hour talking about his yearlong comeback from reconstructive shoulder surgery, so by now he feels only his memories.

The agony of his injury last April. The fear of of his unprecedented surgery. The struggles of early rehabilitation. The exhilaration of every step forward and the despair of every setback.

It is one week before he will appear in a major league game for the first time since doctors said he might never pitch again. That game is tonight at Dodger Stadium against the Houston Astros.

Hershiser does not see these concrete walls and empty bat boxes, only the Dodger Stadium mound. His eyes glisten with tears.

“Maybe people don’t know this, but I always say a prayer before I start a game -- that’s what I’m doing when my back is turned to home plate,” he says. “When I make my first start, I am going to be praying so hard, I’m worried that I am going to break down and cry right there on the field. I’m worried they’ll have to delay the game to calm me down.

“I just hope everyone understands. What they are seeing, and what I am living, is a miracle.”

The following, in his own words, is Hershiser’s account of this “miracle,” from the first twinges in his shoulder in the spring of 1990 to his feelings about standing on that mound tonight.

It’s funny but, in all the baseball dreams I’ve had during the long nights of the past 13 months, I was always pitching. I was always healthy.

Maybe the setting was 1988, maybe earlier, but in those dreams I would always be on that Dodger Stadium mound throwing the ball past somebody.

Of course, I would always wake up. I would sit up in bed in a sweat, and the first thing I would do would be grab for my shoulder.

I would hope there would be no scar, no pain. I would hope that my dream was my reality.

But my dream was always just that. I would feel my scar. I would feel my muscles ache. Most times it would just hurt to pull up the covers. Soon, it was all I could do to get back to sleep.

It seems like every major leaguer who has ever thrown off a mound has had a shoulder injury. When describing a pitcher, the word soreness is used as much as strikeout .

Why was my injury so different? Because it involved a reconstructive surgery that had never been tried on a major league pitcher before.

In other words, nobody knew if I could come back. Not surgeon Dr. Frank Jobe, not therapist Pat Screnar, nobody.

There was nobody I could phone who had been through this. There was no medical book I could study. There was no proven rehabilitation schedule because there was no proven rehabilitation.

Pat and Dr. Jobe, two reconstructive all-stars, would give me all this encouragement, and I would listen. But sometimes, deep down I would think, “Yeah, well, they are just playing Psychology 101 on me, because they don’t know whether I can do it either.”

The only person I could really talk to was God. If I’ve said this once to Him, I’ve said it 1,000 times: “Please Lord, help my shoulder to heal.” Tonight, hopefully, everyone will witness the answer to that prayer.

I was praying for my arm back before anyone even knew I had a problem. It was the spring of 1990, and even before I ever stepped on a Dodgertown mound for the first time, I knew something was funny.

I first noticed it, believe it or not, while driving around town with my family. I would point my right arm toward the back seat to correct my two sons, Quinton and Jordan. My shoulder would click and would feel like it was popping out of the socket. I would reach toward the glove compartment to pull out a tape, and the same thing would happen.

It really got bad when my wife, Jamie, and I would take the kids to the drive-through at a fast-food restaurant. I could not comfortably stick my right arm into my right rear pocket to pull out my wallet to pay for the food. I thought, this is ridiculous! And I wasn’t referring to our food getting cold.

Then I started feeling it at Dodgertown, when I would practice my motion in front of a mirror in the training room. Once every five or 10 “shadow” pitches, my shoulder would hurt and hit me with that same sensation of coming out of the socket. Because the guys were watching, I wouldn’t let it show.

I told no one about my problems except Jamie. Why? Because I just didn’t think they were anything that couldn’t be solved with hard work. Pitchers always have sore arms in the spring.

But after a couple of regular-season starts, the shoulder wasn’t getting better. I would get to the fourth or fifth innings fine, then the arm would die. It took all my energy just to get the ball over the plate.

And the common pain associated with pitching would not subside between starts. I was always hurting. And I was starting to get worried.

Still, I refused to cry uncle. I really thought I could overcome it by myself. I told Screnar, perhaps the best baseball therapist in the country, that the shoulder was still bothering me, but I didn’t tell him how bad, so he devised some strengthening exercises. When they didn’t help, I knew I was in real trouble.

I would go home at night, and Jamie would say, “Better today?” and I would say, “No, it’s worse.”

We would stay up late talking, and she would ask me, “When are you going to do something about it?” and I would keep saying, “Give it time, it will get better, just give it time.”

Soon, the talking would move to prayer. Together, we began to ask the Lord to rid me of the pain, and soon. On April 25, the Lord answered my prayer--although the answer wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.

I was forced to leave the game in the seventh inning against the St. Louis Cardinals because I suddenly had nothing . After allowing one run in the first six innings, I allowed two singles and three walks in that seventh and eventually allowed four runs in the inning.

We lost the game, 5-1, and finally I knew I was hurting the team as bad as I was hurting myself. And that was the last straw. That night, I walked into the trainers’ room and told our medical team that I would like to have my shoulder examined with a magnetic resonance imaging test, which is like an X-ray.

Earlier that day, I had been joking about the MRI exam, which some teammates had recently undergone. I would say the letters stood for “Maybe Really Injured.” Or “May Require Incision.” Some joke.

Seriously, I thought, “OK, Dr. Jobe will find a little cartilage problem, fix me up, I’ll just miss a couple of starts.” Basically, I just wanted a diagnosis so I could rid myself of my fears that it was something worse.

Then why did I bring Jamie with me to the routine 20-minute exam on that Thursday morning? The Lord sure does work in strange ways, because I was awful glad she was there when Dr. Jobe called us into his office 30 minutes after the exam.

The X-rays were hanging from his wall like some sort of grotesque art. Doc’s expression was just as awful.

“Orel, I’m afraid this is very serious,” he said. And suddenly I couldn’t move. Jamie couldn’t move. We just sat and stared as he explained that my shoulder, after carrying me for 195 consecutive starts, would need to be completely rebuilt.

I didn’t hear many details except when he used the words year, year-and-a-half, two years . Two years? I didn’t have two years to rehabilitate! I had a contract to uphold! This couldn’t be right!

Then Dr. Ralph Gambardella, another team doc, was summoned to examine the X-rays. To this day, he has never given me a diagnosis. All he said was, “Orel and Jamie, I’m sorry. I’m just so, so sorry.”

I took a few moments to compose myself. Then I immediately prayed. Staring at Dr. Jobe, but talking to the Lord, I quietly said, “Fine, I understand this. But together, Lord, you and I are going to whip this thing.”

As you will see, while my faith endured, my bravery didn’t.

Initially, I was so determined, we decided to have the surgery the next day. Some poor man even had to reschedule his surgery so they could fit me in, although the man later wrote to me and said it wasn’t a problem.

While we were driving to Dodger Stadium from the doctor’s office, a Michael Bolton song came on the radio. “Listen to this,” Jamie said, grabbing my arm.

I did, and soon, for the first time since hearing the bad news, we were both crying. “When I’m Back on My Feet Again” has since become the private theme song of my recovery.

I became a little emotional that Thursday afternoon at a news conference at Dodger Stadium, mostly because I was given a quick glimpse of what I would be missing. But it wasn’t a completely sad time, because I wanted everybody to know that the God who I praised during my successes was the same God who was watching over me now.

That Thursday night, I entertained some friends at my house. We ate pizza, told funny stories to ease the pain, then later I was driven to the hospital in preparation for the next day. Before I left, Jamie and I held hands a little tighter and hugged a little longer. It was a tough time, and I thanked God she was alongside to share it with me.

But my spirit had just been kidding itself. The next day, one hour before the surgery, my true fears were finally revealed.

In the most awful hour of my life, my heart finally revealed what my courage had been holding back. I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but Jamie and Pat Screnar claim it went like this:

As soon as the nurse gave me a shot to start me on the anesthetic, I lost it. With the drug breaking down my inhibitions, I started crying, then screaming, then begging.

“Please, please, don’t let them cut me!” I shouted to Jamie, who had climbed on the bed and was holding me. “I want to make my next start! I can make my next start! Please, don’t let them ruin my career!”

Jamie tried to calm me by reading verses from our Bible. For a while, it worked. But as I fell deeper into a drug-induced state, my true fears surfaced again.

After they placed me on a gurney, and were wheeling me down the hall toward the operating room, I really got wild. “Get me out of here!” I screamed. “I want to pitch again! Don’t let them hurt me!”

My wife said she could hear the whispers of nearby hospital staff saying, “Ohh, that’s Orel Hershiser.”

Even once I got into the operating room, I pleaded with Pat to carry me out. “I changed my mind, don’t let them do this!” I shouted to Screnar, who put his arms on me and consoled me for what would be the first of countless times during the next year.

Of course, after the surgery, Pat and Jamie told me I had been a real trouper through it all. Not until about a month later did they tell me what really happened.

I’m glad I didn’t find out about my craziness right away. Because right away, I felt crazy enough. I woke up after the surgery, saw my arm in a brace that elevated it near my head, and thought, “Oh no, this is serious.”

It is easy to think about rehabilitating your shoulder before a surgery, when you are able to do things like eat with it. But after a surgery, when you tell it to move and it won’t, you realize the true length of the journey facing you.

It was that Friday afternoon, immediately after the surgery, when I first said, “This is not going to work. How do they ever expect this not to be sore again? There is no way I am ever pitching again!’

This time when I cried, I was conscious of it.

That feeling, which would hit me many times during the next 13 months, never lasted more than a day or so. My faith in the Lord always wiped it out. When I think about it, this injury truly was an exercise in day-to-day faith.

When you become famous, and your monetary needs are taken care of and everybody is always looking out for your best interest, you have a tendency to get comfortable. But with this injury and landmark surgery, every day I had to trust God that I would get better. Because nobody else knew.

Every day it hurt. And almost every day before I finally threw off a mound, I didn’t think I would ever throw again. But every day I talked to God, and every day he told me, “Patient, be patient.” And every day I knew that if I didn’t believe in Him, there was no sense believing in myself.

And man, did it hurt. My pain and stress were so bad right after the operation, I caught a terrible case of flu. I checked out of the hospital after three days, but I vomited in the back seat of the car the entire trip home. Several hours later, I checked back into the hospital later because of that flu.

Not that the hospital--Centinela Hospital Medical Center--was so awful. One of the best things about it was that they put a guard outside my door. I guess that’s standard for celebrities, but I was happy because the guy was a Christian, and I would invite him inside at night when I couldn’t sleep, and we would talk and pray together on the couch. He was one of the many people that God put into my life whose strength helped me through this ordeal.

When I left the hospital the second time, after four more days, I passed my first obstacle. I rid myself of that brace, two weeks ahead of Dr. Jobe’s schedule for me. I still had to wear a sling in public because Doc didn’t want anybody shaking my hand, but I knew I had earned a small victory.

Until I threw a ball for the first time, on July 28, I would have to accept small victories.

One of these triumphs would occur under a hot shower, where I would sometimes stand for 20-25 minutes, twice a day, while trying to increase my range of motion. Each day, little by little, I would be able to touch a higher piece of tile. It hurt, and sometimes you could hear my screaming above the roar of the water. But each day, another victory.

Or like the time I was finally able to lie on the family room floor and move my arm up and down. With Jamie sitting patiently on the couch and helping me through the boredom, I would spend hours on that floor, inching the arm to the point of pain, then holding it in that position for 10-15 seconds.

During these early rehabilitation times, when I was receiving little gratification, when I had no tangible reason to believe I would ever throw a ball again, many people asked two questions:

Did I ever get mad at God? And why was I trying to come back in the first place?

First, I never got mad at God because, my goodness, look at everything he has already given me. My great family, a chance to play pro baseball, financial blessings. . . . Who am I to ask him for a 20-year career? Who am I to ask him for more ? I’m not worthy of what I’ve got.

A better question was the one about quitting. After all, I was receiving a guaranteed salary for 1990 and 1991. I was going to receive my total contract package of $7.9 million even if I never lifted a finger.

I could have given this comeback average effort, and although I probably wouldn’t have made it back, I was still set for life, and who would have known the difference?

Well, I would have known the difference. And so would God. To me, my contract with Peter O’Malley means that I give him 100% all the time through 1991. I had already let him down on one year of that contract because of the injury.

There was even a stronger reason I tried to come back. I discovered this months after the rehabilitation began, after countless nights of worry and doubt.

I wanted to come back, I finally realized, because of the game. It was that simple. I love the game. I love to compete. I love the game like I loved it when I was 8 years old.

And so I never stopped rehabilitating. Not once. I worked on my shoulder for, if I have counted correctly, 396 consecutive days after my surgery.

According to the schedule devised by Pat, it wasn’t like I could take any time off, anyway. Pat said to stop my progress would have ended my progress.

There were times I thought, “Well, we’ve worked hard for a month, let’s shut it down for four days.” But Pat said no, that would have ruined everything. We had to keep going.

Sometimes I would lose my mind. Like the time Pat told me if I wanted my scar to heal, I should massage it.

So one day in the shower I massaged it for 30 minutes, then the next morning the area around it was black and blue. I called Screnar in a panic. “I think I’ve got internal bleeding,” I cried.

When Pat found out what I had been doing to the scar, it was his turn to yell. “Bulldog, we only wanted you to massage it for two or three minutes, not 30!” he said.

Then there were the times I would try my pitching mechanics in the shopping center. I would stop Jamie in front of some dress store and begin moving my arm in funny directions while saying, “Look what I can do today!”

Soon there would be a crowd staring at me like I was a sidewalk magician, but I didn’t care. With my new shoulder, I felt like one.

My workouts lasted a total of about two hours a day. Sometimes they involved weights, other times isometrics. As painful and boring as the workouts were, the hardest part was consciously separating myself from my teammates during this time.

There were two reasons I wanted to be a loner. First, I didn’t want my teammates to look at me and think, “If only he was healthy . . . “ That feeling would affect their play.

Also, I couldn’t stand to watch a game in which I was not involved, and would not be involved for the rest of the season. I don’t just watch games, I dissect them, but if I couldn’t pitch that year, why look that close? So why look at all?

I actually tried watching a few games in the television room in the clubhouse, but in the early innings I inevitably threw up my hands and said out loud, “What’s the use?” And I left.

This was why, sadly, on the night that my close friend Fernando Valenzuela threw his no-hitter, I was at a Janet Jackson concert. When I learned of his feat next morning, I rushed out and framed the L.A. Times front sports page and gave it to him that day during a rare clubhouse visit.

The only good part of my early rehabilitation was the time I got to spend with my family. I could read to Quinton, our 6-year-old, before he went to bed. I could rock 2-year-old Jordan while singing “Edelweiss,” my favorite song from my favorite movie, “The Sound of Music.”

In their own way, my children kept my fire burning. When Quinton met somebody, the first thing he would say was, “My Daddy’s shoulder is fine!” Even if that person never asked.

The boys would also do something else pretty special without being asked. It would happen before they went to bed, after Jamie and I would say something like, “OK, what do you want to pray for tonight? For Mommy to get over her cold? For Grandma and grandpa to have a safe trip?”

They would say those prayers and then add, “Also God, please help Daddy’s shoulder.” It was enough to make me cry . . . and make me want to make personally certain those prayers were answered.

The other thing that kept me sane during those early months was golf. Ten weeks after the surgery, I was able to play, because you don’t use your back shoulder muscle much when you swing. It was a great release. Finally, I could do something competitive.

The problem was, people on the course would see me and not know what to say. So they might say something like, “Hey, we see you out here, why aren’t you out at the ballpark?”

They would laugh, but I knew what they meant. They meant, “How can you do this if you can’t pitch?” I couldn’t say anything, because that would make me look guilty when I wasn’t.

It wasn’t fair. But they couldn’t possibly know what I was going through.

My wife and Pat agree that I never snapped at anyone during the rehabilitation. Perhaps this is because I took all my frustrations out on the workouts.

I always wanted to push, to move to a heavier weight, and Pat was always forced to hold me back for my own good. I would say, “Why? Why can’t I do more if I feel ready?”

Realizing that I was competing against myself because I had no one else, Pat would flatly tell me no, that he knew what was best for me. And that was that.

Sometimes, of course, my body would tell me no. I could not lift an important weight. I could not fully extend an important muscle. During these times I would pray, right there in the weight room.

“God, what are You trying to tell me? This arm doesn’t feel like it can throw 90 m.p.h.? What is happening, God?”

Once again, I would hear the phrase, “Patience.” Through all of this I have realized a more personal meaning of the Bible passage that speaks on your faith being tested by fire. About hard times purifying your character the way fire purifies gold. You don’t know how strong you are, or how much you live for Him and depend on Him, until that fire surrounds you.

Finally, I started throwing a ball on July 28. I threw exactly 30 feet. It felt so good to have the ball back in my hand and to be throwing. It was so simple, yet so precious. I felt the fire subsiding.

I started throwing off a mound Sept. 20, another milestone. After working throughout the winter, I finally faced a hitter in a batting practice on Feb. 11.

This was just before spring training. And it felt good enough to convince me that I could be ready for the beginning of the season.

Pat would not even listen to me talk about it. And I wouldn’t dare talk about it with anybody else. But deep down, I wanted to start this season with the team so bad, my arm twitched every time I thought about it. And after throwing several good simulated games during the spring, I was on schedule for such an appearance.

But then . . . the Lord wasn’t finished with me yet. On March 15, in my last simulated game before I would pitch an exhibition game, my arm suddenly felt like it was April of 1990. It happened on a Friday. I have since dubbed the day, “Black Friday.”

After just a couple of innings I was tired, and I ached. I was throwing the ball like a man who had just undergone surgery on the wrong arm. My good friend Mickey Hatcher was one of the major leaguers who was batting against me, and he was racking me for hits, and something terrible was happening in my mind.

For the first time, I truly believed I would never pitch again. As I threw to Hatcher, I thought, well, this is pretty neat, he will be the last guy to face me in my last professional appearance. I was done. I was sure of it.

Home opener? I left the field thinking I would be lucky if I could ever use my right arm to open a door.

I hurried home and called Jamie in California. “This is it, I’m finished,” I told her for the millionth time. “I will not pitch again.”

Because Pat and I could never talk or even look negative at the ballpark--you never know who is watching or listening--I waited until I got to my spring home to pour out my feelings to him. And pour, I did.

We talked for more than an hour on the phone, me about retirement, Pat about resilience. Pat kept saying that he and Dr. Jobe had expected such a setback, and that now maybe I would get on a regular schedule. I thought about it, I prayed about it and I prayed about it some more.

Finally, after sitting up all night with my good friend Jim Rhodes, who was visiting from California, I finally agreed with Pat. God was saying, “Get off your time schedule and get on mine!” I stopped thinking about my own problems and started thinking about His plan.

What a plan it has turned out to be!

I took two weeks off from throwing, and before I knew it, I was pitching in my first minor league rehabilitation start in Bakersfield May 15. It had been two months since Black Friday, but I felt so strong, it seemed like two years.

Not that the prospects of taking the mound again didn’t make me nervous. During the first two innings in Bakersfield, I sweated so much, I went through more towels than after one of my 30-minute showers. Between innings, I would knock over water cups and put my jacket on inside out. Those poor Class-A kids just stared at me like I was from Mars.

But then I heard the words again: “Patience.” I calmed down, allowed only two hits, and here I am, ready to take the mound tonight in what will be the most emotional start of my career.

I no longer have to just dream it. I can do it. I can walk down that tunnel at Dodger Stadium and tip my cap to Dr. Jobe, and recognize Pat Screnar, and say my prayers . . . and then I can pitch. And hey, I’m going to pitch. I don’t know what’s out there, but I’m excited to see what God has planned for me next . . . as crazy as His plans can be.

After tonight’s game, somehow, I am going to glorify God like I glorified him in 1988, when I made a statement to the world that you don’t have to be a wimp to be a Christian. This is even if the results on the mound are less than what I’ve hoped for.

I do know I’ll be leaving the mound a different person than the one who left the mound 13 months ago.

For one thing, I’m not allowed to carry luggage with my right arm. And if you ever shake my hand, you’ll notice that I don’t reach out like I used to. I keep my arm closer to my body, so it will never again be pulled to a place where it’s vulnerable. I feel my shoulder no longer belongs just to me, but to everyone who helped bring it back to life, and so I must protect this investment.

Maybe just as important, I can now grab and play my favorite tape and pay for a fast-food meal, all in one trip. A new shoulder is a wonderful thing.

Finally, after tonight’s game, if everything goes well, I may go up into my attic. There is a set of odd-looking instruments stored up there. You may have seen them before in a hospital. I want to bring them down and put them in some sort of glass case and attach them to my desk.

That way, any time they want, my children can see what tools were used to put their daddy back together.