Former Angel Prospect Harkrider Suing Team, Claiming Improper Medical Care Prevented Him From Reaching Majors

As Tim Harkrider extends his right hand, the ring commemorating a minor league baseball team’s championship sparkles in the sunshine.

He wears the ring proudly, despite its Angel logo.

“I don’t hate them,” he said.

He is, however, suing them.

In a lawsuit filed in his home state of Texas, Harkrider, 28, charges the Angels with inferior medical care that prevented him from recovering from an ankle injury, regaining his status as a top prospect and, ultimately, playing in the major leagues. The Angels deny the charges.

Harkrider, an infielder, never advanced past double A, two levels below the major leagues, but in his suit he makes the unprecedented claim that he would have played in the majors for 10 years and should be compensated accordingly.

The cost: As much as $17 million.

“There will never be any justice as far as me fulfilling my dream of playing in the major leagues,” Harkrider said. “The only justice I’ll have is me knowing personally that I was good enough to be there.”

Golden Dreams

Tim and Carie Harkrider were high school sweethearts with champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

“Even when he was in high school, he wanted to be in the big leagues,” Carie said. “I dreamed it with him.”

The glamour and affluence of the majors beckoned a world apart from the couple’s home in Carthage, a town of 6,700 tucked into the woods of eastern Texas, 20 miles from the Louisiana border. After starring in college at Texas, Harkrider signed with the Angels for a $40,000 bonus in 1993.

Most players need a year in rookie ball and one or two more at the Class-A level before they either move up or wash out, but Harkrider breezed into double A in 1994, after only three games of rookie ball and two months at Class A.

In December 1994, as Tim and Carie celebrated their wedding, life could hardly have been better.

Except, that is, for Tim’s pesky ankle injury. Five months earlier, Harkrider had raced backward from shortstop to catch a pop fly. The center fielder, charging in, gave way a moment too late.

“My center fielder slid under me. I stepped on his chest,” Harkrider said. “I thought, initially, it was a sprained ankle.”

So did Donald Floyd, the physician hired by the Angels for their double-A affiliate in Midland, Texas. Floyd ordered an X-ray in July and another in August, diagnosing a sprained right ankle each time, Harkrider said.

Harkrider said the doctor told him the injury would heal with time and he could play when he could tolerate the pain. Floyd did not return calls seeking comment.

The Angels activated Harkrider from the disabled list 20 days after his injury, with Midland playing in Shreveport, La., the Texas League stop closest to Carthage. The timing was no coincidence.

Sore ankle and all, the hometown hero did not want to disappoint his fans.

“The only reason I came back that quick was because we were coming to play in Shreveport,” said Harkrider, who estimated he was only 70% ready to play. “I could hardly run. I basically made them take me off the DL so I could play here.”

Thomas A. Connop, an attorney representing the Angels, did not return three calls seeking comment. In court papers, the Angels claim Harkrider’s suit lacks merit in part because of his “own contributory negligence.”

And how much responsibility does Harkrider believe he shares for coming back so soon that he might have aggravated his injury?

“I don’t feel any at all,” he said. “[The Angels] are the ones that were responsible for my care. Their doctors told me I was fine.”

Legal Hurdle

In 1995, former Boston Red Sox infielder Marty Barrett won $1.7 million in damages from Arthur Pappas, the team physician Barrett alleged negligently treated his knee injury. Although Harkrider blames Floyd for improperly diagnosing and treating his ankle injury, he is not suing the doctor.

Instead, Harkrider charges the Angels with breach of contract, claiming the team failed to provide the quality medical care stipulated in the standard contract signed by every minor league player.

The legal hurdle is a formidable one. Even if Harkrider could prove Floyd guilty of malpractice, that would be considered legally insufficient to his case against the Angels.

“You would have to show some reason why the team could be considered at fault for sending him to this person,” said Roger Abrams, labor and sports law expert at Northeastern University and author of “Legal Bases: Baseball and the Law.”

“One misdiagnosis is not evidence of fault.”

Floyd has more than one critic. Pitcher Matt Beaumont, a Midland teammate of Harkrider, said his knee injury was diagnosed by Floyd as a relatively harmless stretched ligament. The weakened ligament later ruptured, Beaumont said, requiring surgery and a year of rehabilitation.

Mario Mendoza, the Midland manager from 1994 to ‘96, said he still has pain in his left foot three years after Floyd operated to remove a bone spur. Mendoza said he wonders whether Floyd botched the surgery but cannot blame him with certainty because he did not adhere to a rehabilitation schedule.

The Texas State Board of Medical Examiners said it has not taken disciplinary action against Floyd since he was licensed to practice in the state in 1978. Jeff Parker, Angel minor league director in 1998-99 and assistant minor league director from 1990-97, said Harkrider is the only player who has complained to the Angels about Floyd.

“We get the best doctors we can, because it’s in our best interest,” Parker said. “It doesn’t make sense to sign these guys and give them to junior doctors.”

But Mike Parker, Harkrider’s attorney, said the Angels showed “conscious indifference” to his client’s plight in four years that included three operations and a smorgasbord of anti-inflammatory medication.

“At the end . . . his kidneys are bleeding, he’s got arthritis from the misdiagnosis and his career is over,” the attorney said. “It suggests they have an attitude that it’s not too important whether we take good care of Tim or not because there are a whole lot more in the pipeline. That may be a good corporate attitude, but it has devastated Tim’s life.”

Jeff Parker dismissed the notion that the team would risk the health of a prospect by compelling him to play hurt at the double-A level.

“It’s not a matter of trying to win the Texas League championship,” said Parker, no relation to the attorney. “We’re thinking about his future just as much as he is. To keep him playing in double-A is so insignificant to the big picture.”

Harkrider said he is suing the Angels, in part, on the advice of minor league coaches employed by the team. Harkrider declined to identify them, saying he did not want to put their jobs in jeopardy.

“There were instructors that came to town and encouraged him to [sue],” Aaron Guiel, another former teammate, said. “I was very surprised by that.”

A trial date is pending. The Angels lost a motion to dismiss the case and lost an appeal to force Harkrider into binding arbitration.

Interpretations Differ

Harkrider walked down the aisle at his wedding without pain. A few months later, just fielding a ground ball was an ordeal.

From the first drill of the Angels’ 1995 training camp, eight months after the injury, pain surged through the ankle. The Angels again assigned him to Midland.

“He played most of the year and progressively got slower,” said outfielder Mike Wolff, a teammate in 1994 and 1995. “He had trouble running after he hurt it. He couldn’t cover as much ground. He just couldn’t use that leg.”

Despite the lingering injury, Harkrider played the entire season, batting .291 and setting career highs in hits, doubles, triples and home runs.

“I kept telling [team officials] something was wrong,” Harkrider said. “With the numbers I was putting up, they thought I was bellyaching. . . . They kept encouraging me to play and saying it was going to get better.”

Said Carie: “His parents would even say, ‘Suck it up and go out there.’ I knew it wasn’t that easy. I saw him limping all the time.”

Although Harkrider perceived that the Angels considered him physically and mentally fragile, his manager described him as valiant.

“He was begging to play, even if he was limping,” Mendoza said. “He was biting the bullet.”

In August, with the injury more than a year old, Harkrider said Floyd administered an MRI examination. An X-ray helps diagnose bone injuries; an MRI helps diagnose tendon and ligament injuries. Floyd told Harkrider the MRI revealed only a severe sprain.

Two months later, with the season over and Harkrider’s pain worsening, the Angels sent him to Dr. Phillip Kwong, foot and ankle specialist at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic in Los Angeles. Harkrider gave Kwong the MRI film from Floyd’s office.

“He throws the MRI up and, three minutes later, he tells me what’s wrong,” Harkrider said.

“He said, ‘You’ve been playing with a detached ligament. . . . That’s been your problem the whole time. It should have been caught right off the bat.’ ”

“I said, ‘How could they tell me two months ago there was nothing wrong?’ He said, ‘They were wrong.’ ”

Kwong said he could not recall making remarks beyond a diagnosis. He also said doctors can interpret MRI results differently.

“It’s not as black and white as Tim may have expected it to be,” Kwong said.

Dr. Carol Frey, a clinical professor at UCLA and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, said most MRI results are reviewed by a doctor and a radiologist and that it would be “a little unusual” for both to miss a detached ligament.

She also suggested that, for a professional athlete, she would have ordered an MRI sooner than 13 months after the injury.

But since a sprain is defined as a partial tear, Floyd’s initial diagnosis may have been correct, with the ligament later tearing completely, Frey said.

Since an MRI cannot date an injury, Harkrider’s ankle might have sustained previous damage, Kwong said.

“I can’t recall anybody having his constellation of injuries,” Kwong said.

Along with ligament damage, Kwong said Harkrider had a bony growth on the side of the foot. The doctor also said that with the ligament detached and the cushion of cartilage worn down, bone was grinding against bone, leading to bone chips, bone spurs and arthritis.

Frey said most physicians opt for rehabilitation before surgery and run further tests if pain persists despite therapy.

“Nothing tells me the doctor treated him below the standard of care,” Frey said. “Even if the doctor didn’t make the right diagnosis, he did the right thing.”

Worsening Pain

In 1997, the final season of his career, Harkrider was back at Midland, a slow-moving shell of the player the Angels had signed four years before. He could hit, catch and throw. But he could not run and, increasingly, his walk deteriorated into a shuffle.

“If he had played a game the night before--or even if he hadn’t--he would wake up the next morning and he could hardly walk,” said infielder Jamie Burke, Harkrider’s road roommate. “When you see a guy wake up in the morning and he can hardly walk to the bathroom, you know there’s real pain involved.”

Said Guiel, an outfielder: “I saw him limp into the training room every afternoon before batting practice. I never saw him play two days in a row without him looking like he was favoring his ankle.”

Kwong operated on the ankle three times and administered several anti-inflammatory cortisone injections, with Harkrider sitting out the 1996 season for rehabilitation. By that time, Harkrider said he had taken anti-inflammatory pills “basically full-time” for two years, with doctors switching to new drugs as old ones lost their effectiveness or irritated his stomach, a common side effect.

During the 1997 season, Floyd prescribed another anti-inflammatory drug, toradol. According to Dr. Fred Weissman, professor of clinical pharmacology at the USC School of Pharmacy, toradol is a particularly potent drug, and its manufacturer does not recommend prescribing it for longer than five consecutive days.

Harkrider said Floyd directed him to take the drug for 20 consecutive days. During one game, Harkrider said, he went to the bathroom and passed blood in his urine. Subsequent medical tests, he said, indicated the drug had irritated his kidneys.

By then, Harkrider was worried that he would jeopardize his lifelong health if he continued to play.

At age 26, he retired.

“I made the decision, do I want to keep doing this and basically have a mangled foot and be crippled the rest of my life? It wasn’t worth it,” he said.

He was alone by then. Harkrider separated from his wife in 1996; the couple divorced last year.

“I had a lot of stress in my life,” he said.

Seeking Damages

Harkrider never played in the major leagues, yet his lawsuit seeks damages that assume he would have played in the majors for 10 years.

“That is what makes this an interesting case,” said Abrams, the sports law expert.

In his suit, Harkrider demands $1 million for pain and suffering and another $2.5 million to $16 million for a decade of lost wages, based on the 1996 salaries of Angel shortstops Gary DiSarcina ($1.6 million) and Dick Schofield ($250,000). DiSarcina was an all-star in 1995 and signed a four-year, $11.7-million contract in 1996.

Harkrider acknowledges that he was a longshot to beat out DiSarcina as the Angels’ starting shortstop, but said he envisioned a career as a backup infielder, at least for the first few years.

“That was going to be my way of breaking in,” he said.

If Harkrider were to win his case, Abrams said, jurors would hear “a little mini-salary arbitration in the courtroom.” Expert witnesses would testify about whether Harkrider would have played in the majors, for how long, and for how much money.

Two of three double-A players never reach the majors, even for a day, according to data compiled by Baseball America magazine.

“We will try to distinguish Tim from the average statistical probability,” said Parker, the attorney.

In 1995, the Angels thought highly enough of Harkrider to protect him on their 40-man roster, depriving other teams of the chance to draft him.

The same year, Baseball America ranked Harkrider as the Angels’ 15th-best prospect. Of the 14 players above him, 11 have played in the majors. and six--pitchers Troy Percival, Matt Perisho and Bill Simas, outfielders Garret Anderson and McKay Christensen and catcher Todd Greene--appear to have the potential to play at that level for 10 years.

Said Parker, the former Angel minor league director: “Harkrider would have been lucky to be a utility player. I’ve seen infielders a lot better than him not make it.”

Unfulfilled Dreams

These days, Harkrider, recently divorced, is back home in Carthage, completing his bachelor’s degree in health science. He can jog some, and he can play golf if he rides in a cart. He is eager to coach high school baseball somewhere in eastern Texas, but he vows not to move too far from his 2-year-old son, Dylan, who lives with his ex-wife in Longview, 45 minutes away.

During the brutally hot Texas summers, Harkrider might catch part of a ballgame as he clicks his remote control. If the Angels are playing, one of his old buddies might be batting.

“There are so many guys I see on TV that I played with and against,” Harkrider said. “That’s probably the toughest thing to swallow, just seeing them and knowing I should be there.”