August 4, 2010
Westmoreland is making strides after brain surgery
by Lenny Megliola/
Ryan Westmoreland is fighting his way back from a devastating diagnosis. (photo: John Comeau/Lowell Spinners)
You cannot know the horror. Can’t imagine it. It has to be lived, then endured, with the heaviest of hearts. You don’t sleep much at all. A worried mind blocks that. You just wonder if tomorrow will bring more devastating news.
It wasn’t so much that a malfunction of the brain stem stonewalled Ryan Westmoreland’s promising baseball career. What made it worse was that he was the happiest, healthiest 19-year-old you ever saw. Big and strong at 6-foot-2, 200 pounds, the kid from Portsmouth, R.I., was on the fast track, destination Fenway Park. Step aside, J.D. Drew.
Baseball America labeled Westmoreland the best prospect in the Red Sox farm system, a can’t-miss kid, a distinctly possible 30/30 guy.
And then …
It began during spring training with a headache. No big deal. Then came the numbness in his fingers. Soon, all this strangeness was out of control. His motor skills began to slip, his hearing and vision too. Who could make sense of this? He was still only 19.
He saw plenty of doctors, in New York, in Boston. It was at Mass. General that he got the diagnosis from an MRI. It was worse than he could have imagined. He would need surgery right away, and getting to the brain stem is about as delicate a process as there is.
The hottest Red Sox prospect’s life suddenly got turned upside down. Inside out. Everything changed. The hope now was that he’d get through the surgery, which took place March 14 in Phoenix. Anxiety in the Westmoreland family couldn’t have raced any faster.
You wait and wait for the answer you fear, and for the answer you need. When the stepping-stone to the brain tumor symptoms were occurring, Westmoreland said, “I didn’t know what was going on. I knew it was serious.” Deadly serious. “I started out not knowing much, then it was downhill knowing everything.”
What had just happened? “I felt great going into spring training,” he said. “I felt strong.”
Rehabilitation eventually started, four days a week. Everything was happening in a blur. “There were definitely some very tough days and nights,” said Westmoreland’s father, Ron. But if ever a family needed a lift, needed something to pin hope on, Ron saw it soon enough. “The second day in ICU, Ryan got up and walked down the hall,” he recalled. Imagine the father’s heart rate at that moment?
There is no relief from the worry parents endure when something like this happens to their kid. You sweat out the diagnosis, and the day of surgery is hell. The son comes through it, and then you start worrying about the rehab process. Can he handle it?
And on the second day, the patient is taking steps, baby steps maybe, cautious steps, but he’s walking!
“From that day forward,” says Ron, “we got to a point where it just became an everyday positive. Every day, I couldn’t wait until after therapy to talk to him about what he’s gone through. Even though at the beginning it was very, very difficult – horrifying for us as a family – it got to a point where it was just positive.”
The baseball part, of course, is on hold. It’d be an extraordinary story if Westmoreland made it to the big leagues. Once it was a destiny, before it became a longshot. But who can say? The medical people can’t give him a timetable. They won’t fill him will false hope.
And Westmoreland won’t kid himself either. “So far, so good,” he said in late June. “I feel a lot better. The progress has been amazing.”
It’s a tough road back, though. Other outfield prospects, like Daniel Nava and Josh Reddick, have jumped to the big leagues with the Red Sox. Westmoreland was at Fenway Park the afternoon his friend Nava slammed his historic, first-pitch, first-ever major league at-bat for a grand slam.
It’s therapeutic for Westmoreland to be at the ballpark. Any ballpark. He was at Fenway for the Red Sox’ home opener.
He’s been to Portland, the Red Sox’ Double-A affiliate, where he caught up with players who might have been teammates this summer.
“It was amazing seeing guys I hadn’t seen since spring training,” said Westmoreland.
His mind flashed back to Fort Myers, how thrilled they all were, young and ambitious, and competing for the favor of the Red Sox brass that would decide just what level of ball they’d start out at in 2010.
Westmoreland wondered too. Now all he cares about is getting back on the field, swinging a bat, fielding, running like he always had, and feeling like he’d never left. He needed a team again, and not a medical team. He needed players around him, coaches to instruct him. He needed a batter’s box to step into again. And the unmistakable sound of a ball hit solidly.
If that day comes, and it becomes a consistent thing, when he’s ready to play again, “we’ll be ready for him,” said Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein. He spoke of the utter shock that spread through the organization when it was learned what had happened to Westmoreland. Epstein sensed that Westmoreland’s teammates, all the minor leaguers perhaps, suddenly realized how lucky they were to be so young and healthy, and just playing ball for a living.
Westmoreland, a sixth-round pick in the 2008 MLB First Year Player Draft, hit .296 last year at short-season Lowell. The left-handed hitter was named to the New York-Penn League all-star team. In 60 games he had seven homers and 35 RBI.
Before all this happened to Westmoreland, you might have figured he’d had enough setbacks. He had surgery on his throwing shoulder, and another when he broke his collarbone crashing into an outfield fence. But the brain surgery made the other two surgeries seem to be no more than an insect bite or hangnail.
And, after all this, Westmoreland did ask himself the unanswerable: Why me? “Absolutely, throughout my whole high school career, I didn’t get hurt once.” Then he turns pro, and needs shoulder and collarbone surgery.
You can get by those. But brain surgery?
“You do ask, ‘why me?’ ” said Westmoreland. “But you can’t do anything about it. Just move on.”
