That is how Ryan Westmoreland is taking his recovery from brain surgery and his return to professional baseball. A few days shy of a year ago, Westmoreland had a very risky operation to remove a cavernous malformation in his brain, a congenital anomaly that became symptomatic only last spring, as he was getting ready to follow up on a promising 2009 season. During 2010 Spring Training, Westmoreland felt fatigue, numbness, and he eventually went blind and lost his hearing in one ear. An MRI showed the malformation, a clump of abnormal blood vessels that were bleeding into his brain and and needed to be removed. The surgery carried serious risks--the most ominous being dying on the operating table. Westmoreland survived the surgery and began the arduous road to recovery, having to relearn walking, speech, balance, and even how to tie his shoe.
A year later, he is taking live batting practice, even though one side of his body is not quite in sync with the other. He doesn't know yet how far he will be able to come back--at what level, if any, he will be able to play pro ball. That doesn't faze him, though; he knows how far he's come since waking up from surgery last March in Arizona. He knows that, although his progress has astounded his doctors, recovery is a slow process and there are no guarantees. At only 20 years of age, Ryan Westmoreland's health crisis brought him maturity beyond his years. His story is inspiring no matter which team you root for, but if you happen to be a Red Sox fan, it's all the more heartwarming. If the day comes that he makes his Fenway debut for the Red Sox, it will be one of the most amazing stories in sports history.
In other Sox news, Adrian Gonzalez made his spring debut yesterday with a single and a sac fly. He's scheduled to play tomorrow night against the Yankees. Clay Buchholz, who is next up in the rotation, will be held out of tomorrow night's game, probably to avoid the Yanks getting too much exposure to him before the season begins, and ex-Yankee Alfredo Aceves will start in his place.
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