Shattered Dream

Where his right eye would be is a leather patch, which covers a coral ball. His right cheekbone is twice its normal size, his nose is swollen and tender and the area below his left eye is black and blue.

When he walks, ever so deliberately, he bumps into objects he used to easily avoid.

Two weeks ago, Huck Flener was a professional baseball player, a left-hander who pitched in parts of three seasons for the Toronto Blue Jays. Now he’s not sure what he will do.

Pitching in a Venezuelan Winter League game, he was struck by a line drive hit back up the middle. The ball, as far as doctors can tell, hit directly on his right eye ball, which exploded.

It was a horrific scene. And one that Flener, as he sits wearily in the living room of his apartment, recalls with little emotion.

“It would have been a tragedy if the ball hit a few inches over and caused brain damage,” said Flener, 31, who starred for Cal State Fullerton from 1998 to ’90.

“I will find a decent job and I have a great family. To me, this just feels like the next stop. I don’t feel sorry for myself. Things a lot more tragic have happened to other people. If anything, my story is just a career cut short.”

*

Flener certainly knows adversity. He had been released by Arizona, Cleveland, Seattle and San Diego, all in the past three years. In 11 professional seasons, he had four major arm and shoulder surgeries.

That’s how he figured his career would probably end--another arm injury.

He spent most of last season in Las Vegas, rehabilitating after shoulder surgery. He spent the last month of the season with Mobile, the Padres’ Double-A affiliate. In 14 innings he had a 3.21 earned-run average and no record.

The Venezuelan Winter League was a common stop. Each time an organization released him, he flew to Venezuela to prove himself all over again.

But lately he was finding it harder to leave his wife, Gillian, at home in Colorado where she is attending law school at the University of Denver.

How often he had sat with Gillian and talked about quitting. “Only about a thousand times,” he said. “But every time, I think she knew I was talking out of frustration and that I was going to continue to play until I was really done.

“Anybody who spends a significant amount of time in Triple-A considers retirement all the time. The problem is, you’re so close. And you think, ‘Man, one good month.’ It’s really hard to walk away from that.”

*

This winter, Flener started out with Oriente in Porta La Cruz, Venezuela. In 12 games, he was 3-5 with a 3.91 ERA. He went home for Christmas, but then joined Escogido in the Dominican Republic for the playoffs.

After he was barely used, Flener hooked up with Lara, which has a working agreement with Toronto. In his second outing, he entered a playoff game against Magallanes in the third inning with no outs and runners on first and second. After a sacrifice bunt and an intentional walk, Donaldo Mendez stepped in.

Flener jumped ahead in the count and tried to jam Mendez with a 1-2 fastball inside. But he left the pitch out over the plate.

“I can see the ball on its way, but I can’t pick up the full path of it,” Flener said. “I just remember hearing it hit me before I could really do anything.”

What happened next is a blur. All he knew was that the right side of his face was numb, he was bleeding profusely, and first baseman Luis Sojo kept telling him to stay on the ground.

“I thought the reason I couldn’t see out of my right side was because it was swollen shut or just kind of smashed,” Flener said. “My initial reaction was, I’m hurt pretty good, but this isn’t that bad. I’ll get some stitches and be OK.”

But then he started putting together what some of the doctors were saying in Spanish. There was a serious problem with his eye.

His next thoughts were of Gillian. What if she was watching this sickening scene on television back in Denver? Sometimes, the winter league games are televised.

“I got real scared,” he said. “I thought that would be horrible for her to see that and not know how I am.”

Gillian wasn’t watching, and when she got a 6:30 a.m. call from the Lara Cardinals’ general manager she was alarmed but not overly concerned.

“He just kept repeating, ‘Huck’s going to be fine,’ ” she said. “He said they’re going to do surgery on his nose. I thought, ‘Oh, they’re just going to put his nose back in place and he’ll be fine.’ ”

But when she reached Cardinal manager Nick Leyva at the team hotel, she began to understand the severity of her husband’s injuries.

Every area the ball touched on Flener’s face was damaged. Between the eye orbit and the nose, there were five fractures. His cheekbone and his nose were broken and the back side of his retina was detached.

Gillian and Flener’s father, Mike, arrived in Valencia, Venezuela a few days after doctors performed surgery to sew Huck’s eye back together.

A few days after that, Mendez visited Flener. The meeting was understandably awkward.

“He was real nervous,” Flener said. “You could tell he didn’t know what to say. I wanted to let him know that I didn’t want this to ruin his career. It’s certainly not his fault. I think he felt a lot worse than I did. He was pretty spooked about it.”

Mendez, a 22-year-old Venezuelan shortstop, appears to be going places. He played last year with Class-A Michigan and was a Rule 5 draft pick of the Padres in December--about the same time the team opted not to pick up Flener’s minor league contract.

*

Flener returned home a week ago and met with doctors who determined that the retina damage was too significant to save his eye. The next day, the coral ball was put in its place. At the same time, his nose was set and a titanium plate was inserted in his right cheek.

In about six weeks, he will be fitted for a glass contact lens that will go over the coral ball.

Fortunately for the Fleners, they purchased short-term health insurance after Huck was released by the Padres.

“When we purchased the policy, we said, ‘Oh this is just in case of an emergency, but nothing’s going to happen,’ ” Gillian said.

The Fleners have a modest two-bedroom apartment on the southeast side of the city. Huck was going to pay the bills until Gillian graduates from law school. Those plans will have to change.

Of more immediate concern are the adjustments Huck needs to make. In a few days he will be off his pain medication and that’s when he plans to start relearning how to drive.

“I want to get myself around so I don’t have to depend on other people,” he said. “There is no real urgency to get a job next week. As long I’m willing to relearn some things and learn some tricks to help out my one eye, I should be able to do just about anything. I’m not scared about my future.”

While he was playing, he always considered staying in baseball as a coach. Now he’s not so sure.

“I think I can help young, immature guys and get them ready for the big leagues,” Flener said. “But at the cost of my own personal life, I’m not sure that’s what I’d like to do. Do I want to not see my kids for three months? We’ve already made a lot of compromises in our marriage to continue my dream of getting back to the major leagues.”

Flener majored in business at Cal State Fullerton, but he never completed his degree. He left school after three years to sign with the Blue Jays, who selected him in the ninth round of the 1990 draft.

He says baseball is all he has really known since he could walk.

But Flener said he is ready to walk away.

“Some day it was going to have to end,” he said. “I know when spring training starts, it will be tough. I’ll miss being around the guys. But there are also new friends to make.”

*

Some of his old friends are just starting to hear of Flener’s accident.

Dennis Rogers was the pitching coach at Fullerton when Flener was a key member of two College World Series teams. In three seasons, Flener had a record of 21-3 as a starter.

“In college, he was like Greg Maddux,” said Rogers, now head coach at Riverside City College. “He was never dominating, but he had command of the strike zone and he knew how to pitch. He was a self-made pitcher.”

Of Flener’s injury, Rogers said, “That’s not really believable.”

Flener has been trying to contact Dodger outfielder Shawn Green, a former teammate in the Toronto organization. Flener actually wore Green’s jersey in his 1993 major league debut because his wasn’t ready.

The Blue Jays won the World Series that season, but Flener, a September call-up, was not on the playoff roster.

He was in Venezuela when Joe Carter took Mitch Williams deep to win the series.

He didn’t crack the big leagues again until 1996, still with Toronto.

In his longest stint in the majors, he was 3-2 with a 4.58 ERA in 15 appearances (11 starts) and 70-plus innings. In 1997, he was up for only 17 innings, going 0-1 with a 9.87 ERA.

Flener said his career might well have ended this winter, after the Venezuelan season, if no club had signed him during spring training. So he refuses to play a game of what-ifs.

“If I get the fastball inside, this doesn’t happen,” he said. “I’ve got no regrets.”

Nor does he feel compelled to see a replay of what happened to him.

“I don’t think it would freak me out to watch it,” he said, “but I don’t feel I need to watch it.

“I know what happened.”