Major Step Forward for Mercker, Angels

“If I choke on meat, do I quit eating?

If I get in a car accident, do I quit driving?”

So it was that on a splendid Saturday night in Anaheim, a simple man took a simple walk into what could be a complicated hell.

Kent Mercker, a journeyman pitcher consistent only in a 15-year love for a good game of catch, stepped on to an Edison Field mound where three months ago he nearly died.

The last time we saw him, he was clutching his head on that mound, writhing from a cerebral hemorrhage that often kills or debilitates.

At 7:04 p.m. Saturday, a mere half-season later, we saw him again, stalking out to face the New York Yankees.

” I don’t view it as courageous. I view it as, I took three months off. It’s time to pitch again.”

There should have been fear. Where was the fear?

For two days in May, his head felt like it would explode.

For four days he was in intensive care with doctors waiting for it to explode.

Yet for one glorious moment in the first inning Saturday, as Kent Mercker stood in the center of the diamond while his name was announced, it was only the fireworks behind center field that were exploding.

Then, it was more than half the stadium exploding with a standing ovation.

Then, more amazing than anything, it was his tired fastball exploding, darting out on Jorge Posada for a called strike at 90 mph.

He retired leadoff hitter Derek Jeter on a popout to start that first inning, then Posada on a groundout, then Paul O’Neill on a wild swinging strikeout.

After which Mercker tucked his glove underneath his shoulder and walked briskly to the dugout, seemingly trying very hard not to shout.

Three up, fear down.

“It’s like lightning. I don’t think lightning strikes many people twice, does it?”

It was a mystery why he was struck down on May 11 after throwing a pitch in the second inning to the Texas Rangers’ Royce Clayton.

It is frighteningly also a mystery why he is healthy today.

Eighty percent of those who suffer a similar hemorrhage are diagnosed with an aneurysm.

Half of those people die.

Of the 20% who didn’t suffer an aneurysm, most of them require surgery.

Mercker was the 1%. He was the fluke. He was told that apparently one blood vessel broke, and that vessel has since disintegrated.

His brain is normal again. Doctors say his chances are even less than 1% of being afflicted with the same problem again, the same odds faced by someone who never had the problem.

Easy to say, it not being your brain.

“We didn’t talk about baseball, we didn’t discuss it,” said wife Julie of those early hours of his 12-day hospital stay. “We both assumed he was done.”

Done, like Mercker seemed in the second inning Saturday when he threw three consecutive balls to Glenallen Hill before Hill drove the next one high over the center field fence for a 430-foot home run.

Done, like Tino Martinez moments later, when he was fooled by a Mercker changeup and popped the ball to the shortstop to end the inning.

Mercker trailed, 1-0, at the end of the inning, but if he jogged off like he didn’t know it, perhaps he didn’t.

While Hill’s ball was leaving the yard, he was bent over adjusting his socks.

“If I won the lottery, I would never play the lottery again, knowing that I didn’t have a chance of winning again. This is not the lottery, but I’ve had this once. I don’t think I’m getting it again.”

Mercker remembers the words of the first doctor, after the drugs had worn off and the hammer between his ears had stopped its incessant, numbing, nightmarish beating.

“We don’t know what it was, and all tests look good,” the doctor was saying. “But I wouldn’t play again this year.”

Late came the published words of expert witness Steve Giannotta, a professor of neurology at USC.

“It can be a life-threatening situation if there’s an aneurysm hiding in there,” he said.

Don’t play again? Something may be hiding?

Mercker thought he’d had a nice career, won a couple of more games then he’d lost, thrown a no-hitter against the Dodgers six years ago, and so what if he had not thrown a shutout since?

He was 32, and had two young daughters, and maybe it was time.

Then Mercker thought about those 15 years, and those 12 teams, in places from Durham to Buffalo.

He thought about the aging Astrodome doorman who called his hospital room, just some guy he joked with for several years while playing in the National League, one of dozens of baseball people who were remembering and praying.

“You know, I’m a baseball player, that’s what I do,” he said. “My wife and I decided, if I could still do it with no real risk, well. . . . So I got a second opinion.”

This opinion was that he wait several weeks, then endure a third and final painful test. If that test confirmed the findings of the other tests--that his brain was completely normal--then he could begin playing again.

He faced a different sort of test in the third inning Saturday, after he had allowed a leadoff homer to Scott Brosius, then allowed runners to reach second and third with two out.

Bud Black, the Angel pitching coach, had already visited him. Lou Pote, an Angel long reliever, was warming in the bullpen.

Mercker grimaced.

Then he fooled Bernie Williams into a groundout to end the inning to a roar that surely rang his ears, but in a good way.

“Given Kent’s circumstances, most people wouldn’t come back,” new Angel Ron Gant was saying. “Most people would be afraid.”

“I’m no hero. But if this can get somebody to drive to their car again after an accident, to do something they have been afraid of doing, well, that’s good. But I’m no hero.”

The third test showed, beyond a shadow of a nightmare, that Mercker’s brain was free of trouble.

“If you were my son, I would tell you to go play,” said his doctor.

The next day, he passed the Angel stress tests.

The next day, in early July, he began playing catch.

The plan was for him to make three or four rehabilitation starts. But he allowed no hits in four innings in his first start for Class-A Lake Elsinore.

With an injury-wracked pitching staff, the Angels figured he might as well make his second start in the major leagues.

It was sudden.

As sudden as the Yankees loaded the bases with no out in the fourth inning against Mercker Saturday.

Then Tim Salmon saved him with a diving catch. And Luis Sojo saved him by fouling out a full-count pitch.

And, finally, the Angels saved him by removing him from the game with Derek Jeter coming up.

Three and two-thirds innings. Three runs. Three walks. But after the Yankees had finished in the fourth, the Angels led, 6-3, and eventually won, 9-6.

And the crowd was standing again as Mercker walked off the field.

Not that he ever looked up, not once. Three months after the miracle, it was just another day at work. Another game of catch.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.