Baseball player’s sacrifice can’t save his mother

Paula Carney, whose son stepped away from his baseball career to undergo a liver transplant trying to save her, died Thursday having never fully recovered from the surgery. She was 50.

Carney required the transplant because non-alcoholic steatohepatitis had left her with end-stage liver cirrhosis. She received about 40% of her son’s liver during a procedure at the UC San Francisco Medical Center on June 2.

Joey Carney made the University of San Francisco’s baseball team as a non-scholarship walk-on, impressing coaches during an open tryout last fall. He became the only player in at least 18 years to play for the Dons after appearing in such a tryout.

Joey, a converted outfielder, not only made the team but thrived as a pitcher out of the bullpen. He was promoted to the role of closer about two-thirds of the way through the season, and he converted on all five of his save opportunities.

Joey came to USF out of Skyline College, where he played after leaving Siena University in upstate New York after his mother became seriously ill.

He became her donor after demanding that his parents allow him to be tested to see if he was a match. Paula didn’t want him to have to step away from the baseball career he’d worked so hard to achieve.

Paula, though extremely weak and often sickly, missed only a handful of USF’s 56 games, traveling to away games with her husband, Dale, and often with their younger son, Justin.

“Everything she did was for her boys or me,” Dale Carney said in a text message to family and friends on Thursday.

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Joey Carney said last week that he was recovering well and looking forward to getting back on the mound, perhaps toward the end of the summer.

Paula Carney appeared to recover quickly in the first days after the transplant, but later experienced a series of setbacks that included internal bleeding and, near the end, liver failure.

“Seems like the only time we communicate our true feelings is when a tragedy happens,” Dale Carney wrote Thursday. “For me, today, tell your spouse and kids, close family members, how you feel. They are what we live for.”

Services for Paula Carney are pending.

mike.hiserman@latimes.com

Twitter: @MikeHiserman

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