Ferebee Clawing His Way Back After Shoulder Surgery : He Developed Knuckleball at Montclair Prep After Suffering a Hershiser-Like Injury

Almost everyone who has ever played baseball tries it: Pick up a ball, dig your fingernails into it, give it a heave.

Fascination surrounds that spin-less wonder that drives batters batty--the knuckleball.

Chris Ferebee, a recent graduate of Montclair Prep who plays for the Sepulveda American Legion team, is no different, except his knuckleball emerged not for amusement but of necessity.

On May 20, 1991, Ferebee’s right shoulder was surgically rebuilt. That happens to guys such as Orel Hershiser, not 16-year-olds.

Ferebee had been one of the area’s most promising young pitchers before the surgery. Afterward . . .

“I couldn’t break a pane of glass with my fastball, so I needed anything to get batters out,” Ferebee said.

He still isn’t getting too many batters out--he is 1-2 with a 5.40 earned-run average in Legion play--but that’s not important. What is significant is that Ferebee, 18, is pitching at all.

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Pitching, they say, is the process of voluntarily injuring yourself once or twice a week. Arms simply were not designed for what pitchers do. Eventually, the job catches up with them all.

It caught Ferebee early.

Ferebee was a 14-year-old ace. He was one of the top two pitchers for a youth team that advanced to the Pony World Series in 1988. For his age, Ferebee threw quite hard. He also threw quite often.

He continued to impress during his freshman year at Montclair Prep, where he made an immediate impact with the varsity. He was 4-0 with a 2.01 earned-run average, giving up 18 hits while striking out 30 in 31 1/3 innings.

Former Mountie pitching coach Tim Montez, who arrived before Ferebee’s sophomore year, had heard the stories.

“(Montclair Prep Coach Walt Steele) was telling me we had a guy named Chris Ferebee who was a phenom as a freshman,” Montez said. “He said he threw really hard and had a big slider.”

But in the winter of his sophomore year, Ferebee’s shoulder fell apart.

“I was playing catch one day and every throw hurt,” he said.

Simple as that. Six months of failed therapy later, Ferebee found himself in an operating room under the scalpel of Dr. Ronald Glousman of the Kerlan-Jobe Clinic in Inglewood.

Ferebee had a torn rotator cuff, bone chips, loose tendons. “It was pretty screwed up,” he said.

Ferebee didn’t have to have the surgery, because he didn’t have to play baseball. But give up baseball? No way.

“He had made such a commitment to baseball,” his father, John, said. “(Doctors) told him without the surgery he could still play golf and fly-fish and ski and all those other things he liked, but he just wanted to play baseball, and we stood behind him in that.”

Because the rehabilitation was expected to last at least 18 months, Ferebee and his family decided to have the operation as soon as possible so he could pitch by his senior year.

On the operating table, doctors found a shoulder that was worn beyond Ferebee’s 16 years. He had blown it out early, he now acknowledges, from a combination of too many pitches and too little rest.

“I didn’t really take care of my arm,” he said. “I didn’t know of any kind of strengthening exercises.”

He was paying for it. The rehabilitation process was painful. It took Ferebee more than a year before he could throw off a mound. He spent most of his time simply trying to regain full range of motion in his shoulder.

“I’d be lying on a table and have doctors pulling my arm apart, pulling it back and stuff,” Ferebee said. “I was almost in tears a few times.”

He had to stretch through the pain to ensure the muscles and tendons healed with full mobility. His life became a daily circular trip from his home in Glendale to school in Van Nuys to therapy in Inglewood.

“While everyone else was having a good time, he was on the freeway,” his father said.

On the field, Ferebee’s rehabilitation was supervised by Montez, who knew exactly how he felt. While Montez was pitching at Pepperdine, he underwent tendon-replacement surgery similar to that performed on former major league pitcher Tommy John.

“He went through some down times,” Montez said of Ferebee. “He went through the same down times I did. He would pick up the ball and feel the pain, then just throw the ball down and walk off to the side and contemplate what he was doing out there.”

Ferebee played first base while his shoulder healed. He hit .329 with nine doubles and 24 runs batted in during his senior year. He didn’t pitch until this spring, and he did so reluctantly.

“We were very thin this year on the mound, so about a quarter way through the season, (Ferebee) said, ‘Coach, if I can help out, I’m willing to get back on the mound,’ ” Montez said.

Ferebee started throwing, but he had no velocity. Montez said at best he was throwing 70 m.p.h.

“I’m going, ‘Geez, he’s going to need another pitch,’ ” Montez said.

Ferebee found it one day in the bullpen, where he was fooling around with a knuckleball.

“He started throwing this thing and it was hitting every part of the catcher’s body but the glove,” Montez said. “So I told him to go ahead and throw it as his primary pitch.”

After pitching poorly in a limited number of outings, Ferebee started throwing the knuckleball. The first time he used it in a game was against Hart, and he pitched two hitless innings as part of a four-man no-hitter. Ferebee finished the season 3-1 with a save and a 4.30 ERA in 19 innings for Montclair Prep.

The first Legion start in which he threw a steady diet of knuckleballs came a few weeks ago against Burbank North.

“The Burbank hitters were watching him warm up and they were in shock,” Sepulveda Coach Dave Siedelman said.

Sepulveda catcher Josh Persell said hitters “are usually kind of surprised and way out in front. It’s hard to stay in as a hitter.

“When he gets kind of tired, (the knuckleball) gets very difficult (to hit). It starts moving and it gets hard to block too. As a catcher, you don’t know which way it is going. Neither does the pitcher.”

Ferebee is still getting a feel for the pitch. He will take it with him to NAIA Westmont College, enrollment 1,200, in Santa Barbara and let it loose up there.

Playing for Westmont is probably not what some envisioned a few years ago for Ferebee, who is batting .453 and has driven in 16 runs in 53 at-bats for Sepulveda. Montez, a recently hired assistant at UC Santa Barbara, said Ferebee, who is 6-foot-2, 190 pounds, would likely have been a Division I prospect had he not injured his shoulder. But given the surgery Ferebee underwent, he’s probably lucky to be playing baseball at all.

He certainly is lucky to be pitching. And besides his own determination, the knuckleball is probably responsible for that.

“I think I’ll always throw it because it is a good pitch,” Ferebee said. “It’s an out pitch. Everyone tells me I am going to walk out one day and throw the ball hard again, but until that happens, I have to keep throwing (knuckleballs.)”