Shouldering On

Comets Story 17

What the Hades was wrong with my shoulder? I’d been asking that question for nearly half a century, ever since I’d hurt myself doing pull-ups in high school.

It happened in the winter of my senior year. I’d gone out for the wrestling team, hoping to strengthen myself for the next baseball season, when something popped in my shoulder.

At the hospital, doctors took X-rays and shook their heads. “Hard to tell what’s wrong,” they said.

“Fibrositis,” one finally said, “just rest it.” But the way he said it sounded more like a question.

Someone else told me to see a chiropractor and “put some heat on.” I did, but to no avail.

“Get a massage, a really deep one,” suggested another. The massage felt good but it didn’t change a damn thing.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I could no longer pitch the way I had, and I was devastated. All my dreams of playing baseball professionally were gone. In high school, I’d been hailed as “Pittsford’s winningest pitcher.” There were even scouts from the Yankees and White Sox looking at me. But not anymore.

Now, I could barely stand to look at myself in the mirror. In those few minutes of doing pull-ups, I had ruined everything.

So here it was, forty-eight years later and I was running after those dreams again. Oh, not to play professionally but to pitch again and pitch well enough to help my young, inexperienced team, the Honfleur Comets.

But I was still haunted by that question: what was wrong with my shoulder? Why didn’t it work the way it should? The not-knowing drove me crazy.

“You know, Klad, things have really changed in the medical world,” Petie said as I was lamenting the pain in my shoulder. “What do you say we try to find a doctor who could maybe help.”

I was all for it, “but where do you think we’re going to find a doctor in France who knows anything about baseball?”

That was enough to send Petie on an internet quest and enough for her to find Dr. Bernard Cauchois, the official physician of the French National Baseball Team. “He’s in Rouen,” she said, “and he said he’s willing to take a look at your shoulder.”

Rouen was about half-way between Paris and our Normandy house, an hour train-ride from either direction. We hopped an early morning train full of commuters off to work and school kids on their way to specialized academies, winding our way along the River Seine and rolling countryside. Although most of the trees were bare, Normandy was still green and cows grazed in fields that looked almost as lush as they do in the summer.

Dr. Cauchois’s office was like a giant warm embrace. There were baseball bats leaning against the walls and off to one side was a mini-gym stocked with the latest equipment. I immediately felt at ease, confident we’d come to the right place.

Cauchois himself was every bit as welcoming. “Okay, let’s do a few tests, some X-rays and an MRI, maybe a couple other things, and then we’ll see what we’ve got.”

I was sent off to a starkly modern facility that made me feel as though I had tumbled into a NASA program. I was strapped to a table and injected with dye, then shuttled from room to room and from one machine to another until I was finally sent home with an enormous envelope full of graphs and X-rays. It looked like gibberish and I couldn’t make heads or tails of them but a technician told me not to worry. “They’re being e-mailed to your doctor with more details. He’ll have everything he needs.”

By my appointment the next week, Dr. Cauchois had the results in hand. “Pas si grave,” he said. “Pas si grave de tout. Not so bad, not so bad at all. See here?” he said, showing me one of the X-rays. “It looks like a bit of bone broke off when you were doing those pull-ups and the shoulder re-set itself badly. Without that bit of bone, it doesn’t stay in place the way it should.” There was also a lot of scar tissue.

“Can anything be done?” I asked.

“Well, if you were younger and this had just happened, we’d put a little screw in and you’d be good as new, pitching like you did before. But now, let’s just get you going on a program of exercises.”

He called in his kinesitherapiste, or physiotherapist, and they began working my shoulder, talking about the muscles that would have to be “educated” to take over some of the shoulder’s responsibilities. “You won’t throw like you did when you were seventeen, but I can guarantee you’ll throw without pain.”

Three times a week throughout the winter, I caught the early morning train to Rouen for my prescribed workout. First, there was electrotherapy to stimulate the small muscles of my shoulder and upper back, then a rigorous series of exercises involving weights and resistance training. It was exhausting but it also made a difference. As weeks and months passed, I could tell I was getting stronger. What’s more, the pain that had dogged me all these years had diminished.

By the end of March, Dr. Cauchois announced it was time for something more, an infiltration de cortisone. “I can’t do this often,” he warned. “There are side effects. Too much cortisone can weaken ligaments and damage cartilage, but an injection now should eliminate any residual pain you might have. However, don’t do any throwing or lifting for the next few days. After that, you’ll be ready to pitch.”

I was ecstatic but a teensy bit skeptical. Except for the three innings I tossed the previous season, I hadn’t taken the mound in forty-eight years. Getting rid of the pain was one thing; pitching in a game again was a whole different story.

In my mind I knew how to pitch. Now, I would have to find out if my body would cooperate.

— Don