A Boy’s Message Comes Through

Rex Hudler wanted to know if he sounded too corny.

He is in a Bay Area hospital feeling particularly grateful and happy, thankful, ecstatic, absolutely wonderful to be alive.

So when he got on the radio for his regular Wednesday morning Angels report on XTRA 690, when his XTRA theme song “Just Call Me Angel in the Morning,” came on, he began chattering.

And after he finished his radio show he had a question. Had he been too emotional?

Hudler is a 40-year-old man who has been a baseball player and, now, a TV broadcaster for the Angels.

It is the nature of the clubhouse, it is the nature of the men who play the game, to shrug off pain, to ignore pulled muscles and sprained limbs, to swing a bat even if a finger is broken and crooked, to make fun of injuries.

A baseball player doesn’t call an ambulance. But because he’s also a husband and father of two and the expectant father of a son due in June, Hudler called the front desk of his hotel Sunday and asked for help.

He had a headache, a bad one. Instead of broadcasting the Angels’ Sunday victory over Oakland, Hudler was being told he probably had a brain aneurysm and was lucky to be alive. His wife, Jennifer, rushed to Oakland. It seemed an eerie Angel replay.

A year ago, Angel pitcher Kent Mercker fell to his knees on the mound clutching his head in pain. He had a brain aneurysm and needed emergency surgery. He recovered and came back to the Angels last year. He talked of how his life felt different because of this brush with death.

On Wednesday, Hudler talked with a catch in his voice. He talked even while tears interrupted. He talked until he said his emotions were too much and he needed a rest, and then his wife, Jennifer, talked.

Hudler talked about the headache that started Saturday in a hotel room in Oakland. The headache that was much more than a headache. The headache that caused him to vomit, to cry with the pain, to call his wife and say, “Honey, something’s wrong,” to call the front desk of his hotel and ask for help.

“I’m still too much of a ballplayer to call an ambulance for myself,” he said. “So I had the front desk do it.”

Doctors aren’t quite sure what caused Hudler to have bleeding in his brain and his spine, bleeding that caused the headache.

But when he called Jennifer, she was scared enough to get on a plane quickly. “I knew something was bad,” she said. “Rex doesn’t complain. And he sounded different. I have a brother who had a stroke and I was afraid that was happening to Rex.”

The ambulance came and Hudler was in more pain than he could imagine, but he was conscious. And he saw what he considers a little miracle.

Rex and Jennifer have a 4-year-old son, Cade, who has Down’s syndrome. “Up syndrome we call it,” Hudler says. Standing near the ambulance, as Hudler was being put in, was another little boy, 8 or 9 years old, who had Down’s syndrome. “The little boy kept asking to go in the wagon with me,” Hudler says. “They were telling him he couldn’t and he kept wanting to come along. Finally, as they were closing the doors, the little boy told me I’d be OK.”

Hudler chokes up now. And it is OK. Nothing is more right than to let him tell us this little boy had to be a sign from God. A little boy so much like his own little Cade standing there to tell Hudler things would be OK.

Jennifer came to the hospital and was told Rex might have an aneurysm. Because he was drugged for the pain, it was her choice to make--which of two types of surgery did she prefer for her husband?

“What do you do?” says Jennifer, who is seven months pregnant. “I called the Angels’ doctors.” She was told that she should have Rex transferred to Stanford Medical Center, where there are world-renowned neurosurgeons.

A helicopter came to take Rex to Stanford. “I asked if they could fly over the ballpark,” Hudler says. The answer was no.

After extensive tests, doctors at Stanford have told Rex and Jennifer there isn’t an aneurysm. What caused the bleeding, though, is undetermined.

Tuesday, the headache stopped. In the ambulance, “every beat of my heart caused excruciating pain,” Hudler says. “By Tuesday, I didn’t need pain medication.”

“He told me to bring his computer, his cell phone and his briefcase to the hospital,” Jennifer says.

Hudler hasn’t spoken to Mercker, though he’d like to. Hudler would like to talk to someone who has experienced this.

“I am so emotional right now,” he says. His voice breaks again. “My life has been a wonderful ride, a lot of potholes and bumps, but so much wonderful. And then God sent that Down’s syndrome boy, standing all by himself telling me I was going to be OK. That was God’s voice.”

Rex and Jennifer, who have been married 12 years and who have a 7-year-old daughter Alyssa, have started an organization called Team Up For Down Syndrome. They want to raise awareness about the condition Cade was born with.

“We’ve felt blessed with this child, Cade, we’ve been given and now,” Hudler says, “I feel really good that God is giving me another chance to carry my message. It’s a message that we need to congratulate kids who have a disability because these kids have a lot to offer and a special place in our lives.”

On the radio Wednesday morning, he interrupted the talk about himself to ask, “Can’t we talk about the Angels?”

Well, no. Not today. This was a time to indulge us, to let Hudler speak and to have the rest of us listen.

On Nov. 10, Rex and Jennifer are planning a black-tie charity dinner and dance at the Sun Theater to raise money for Team Up For Down Syndrome. Rex plans to attend and to dance with Jennifer.

He plans to be back in the TV booth as soon as the doctors let him. He is also antsy about missing class. He is attending college now, for the first time. He wants to get his business degree. Jennifer graduated from Ohio State with a music degree. She has recorded a couple of CDs of Christian music. One song, called “He Knew It Was You,” Jennifer wrote for Rex. The “He” is God.

And here’s something else Rex should know. His time on the radio Wednesday morning? Not too corny.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.