For Baxter, this is a walk of life

So which player is the most compelling story heading into the 2007 season?

Is it Tom Brady? Peyton Manning? Vince Young? LaDainian Tomlinson, maybe?

No, it’s not a household name. It’s Gary Baxter, a Cleveland cornerback who probably won’t even be on the field Sunday when the Browns play host to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“I’m close,” Baxter said Thursday of returning to the lineup. “That’s all I can say. I’m close.”

That he’s gotten this far is astounding. Baxter may be only days away from becoming the first player ever to return from torn patellar tendons in both knees -- a freak injury, even for someone who puts his joints at risk with every snap of the football.

His injury was so bad he had to lay in a hospital bed for two months last fall. So bad even the nurses cried. So bad that his mother took a three-month leave of absence from her job, slept on a cot in his room, and woke every hour or so to help turn his legs this way and that.

And now, less than a year after doctors told him he might never walk without a hitch, Baxter not only made it through Browns training camp but made the 53-man roster.

The patellar tendons connect the shin and kneecap. The only other NFL player known to have sustained tears to both at the same time was former Chicago Bears receiver Wendell Davis.

An amazing story himself, Davis made it back to the practice field in two years, spent one season with the Indianapolis Colts but never made it back into a game.

Baxter, 28, is aiming higher. He wants to fulfill the promise he showed in his first four seasons as a pro, when he was a rising star for the Baltimore Ravens, the gold standard of NFL defenses. He was a starting cornerback there from 2002 through 2004, and so impressive that there was a bidding war in early 2005, when he became a free agent. Cleveland won, signing him to a six-year, $30-million deal.

Then came the injuries. A torn pectoral muscle sidelined him for all but five games in his first season with the Browns. He recovered from that, though, and was off to a fresh start last season when he suffered the gruesome knee injuries, ones that would have ended a thousand other careers. It happened in an Oct. 22 game, when he was defending a pass to Denver’s Javon Walker at the goal line.

“When it happened and I fell to the ground, I just told myself, ‘I just broke both of my legs,’ ” Baxter recalled in a telephone interview. “I didn’t know that I’d done anything to my knees. The pain was just so rough on me that I was speechless.

“When the doctors ran up to me, I couldn’t say anything. I was just hollering.”

His family watched in horror from a luxury suite, desperately praying as a golf cart rolled onto the field.

“Gary’s always told me, ‘Mom, when a football player gets hurt, if he’s able to walk off the field, it’s OK. But whenever they have to bring a cart onto the field it’s serious. You’ve got to start praying,’ ” said Faye Baxter-Jones, who lives in Tyler, Texas. “My heart fell, my stomach locked up, and I was in pain. I just dropped my head and was fighting the tears because I was really praying. I was hoping for the best, but he wasn’t getting up. He wasn’t moving.”

When Baxter was carted off, his family was briskly ushered downstairs. That’s when things got blurry for his mom.

“One of the doctors or trainers came up and said, ‘Ma’am it’s serious. It’s possible that he may not ever walk again,’ ” she said. “That’s when I fell out. Everything in me just weakened and I fell into the arms of a security guard.”

For Baxter, the months that followed took astounding physical, mental and emotional toughness. He’s deeply religious, and spent much of his time praying, reading Bible passages, trying not to question why, or let his mind drift to discouraging places. He drew strength from the “Warrior” tattoo on his right wrist, one he’d gotten years earlier when his body was unbroken.

“I’ve always said that a warrior never surrenders or gives up,” he said. “He’ll have one leg, one arm, it doesn’t matter. He’ll take on a hundred people.”

In Baxter’s case, he took on 10 months of intensive rehabilitation, several tearful breakdowns, an untold number of doubters, and unbelievably long odds to get this far. He didn’t participate in contact drills this summer but has begun to do so.

“[Browns linebacker] Andra Davis told me his happiest and proudest moment in the NFL was to see me walk through those doors at the practice facility and run onto the field,” Baxter said. “After he saw what I went through, and he came to the hospital and saw me hooked up to all of those machines, saw me in that bed immobilized. . . .

“He said, ‘Man, you’re my hero. You’re my inspiration.’. . . Most guys have too much pride to say that. That’s big.”

Bigger still will be the day Baxter plays in his first real game. He won’t even guess how that will feel. He prefers to focus on the present and look at his recovery as a series of baby steps, each more steady than the last.

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sam.farmer@latimes.com

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Good starters

Active quarterbacks with the best records as starters (minimum 10 starts):

*--* QUARTERBACK TEAM W-L PCT. Philip Rivers San Diego 14-2 875 Tom Brady New England 70-24 745 Rex Grossman Chicago 17-6 739 Ben Roethlisberger Pittsburgh 29-11 725 Damon Huard Kansas City 10-4 714 *--*

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