Comeback Trail

It’s not the most glamorous job, but Michael Johnson is fine serving as the Murrieta Valley team manager, carrying the bats, balls and helmets and hitting a few fungoes to the outfield when called upon.

It might be tough for some former players to be relegated to such duty, but not Johnson. Last August, he spent 10 days in a coma after a motorcycle accident sent him crashing headfirst into a wood pillar in front of his house.

He had to learn to walk and talk again after emerging from the coma, spending several weeks in a semiconscious state.

A pitcher for Murrieta Valley last season, Johnson, a senior, cannot play this season because swelling is still present in his brain.

“I’m very lucky, very fortunate to come back and still be going to school,” he said.

The accident happened when Johnson was warming up his motorcycle by taking it for a quick spin around the block. When he returned, he revved the engine accidentally and lost control. He was not wearing a helmet.

“I’m usually a safe guy,” Johnson said. “I normally don’t get on a motorcycle without a helmet. I don’t know what happened that day.”

Johnson’s stepmother, Suzanne, was cooking dinner in the kitchen at the time.

“I heard the engine and all of a sudden I heard this slam,” she said. “I stopped what I was doing. My younger son was rushing in the house, saying, ‘Mom, call 911.’ I rushed out to the front. Michael was lying on the grass and shaking, I thought they were seizures. He was seizing so much his jaws were locked shut. We were concerned he was going to stop breathing.”

Johnson did not wake until 10 days later. He was blinded for another two weeks because swelling in his brain was blocking sight transmission, his mother said.

Johnson returned home in a little more than six weeks, but his cognitive processes were slowed.

“There are times I’d walk by his bedroom with his door open and he’d have his forehead in his hands,” Johnson’s stepmother said. “He’d say, ‘I don’t know how people get through this.’ He’d always been very good in math and not knowing the answer to five times six was degrading for him. His response instead of self-pity was, ‘I have to work harder than ever before to get back to where I was. I don’t like not knowing things.’ ”

Doctors predicted Johnson would take at least a year to get back to school. It took less than half that time. Johnson was home-schooled for a semester and returned in January.

He still has some short-term memory loss, but his return to school has been nearly seamless. He is taking a full load of classes. For his senior research project, he wrote a paper on traumatic brain injury.

“There’s only one way to look at life now -- I have a second chance,” he said.