Hope at Home Plate

CBN.com In a regular season that spans a grueling 162 games, physical ailments and severe injuries are near certainties. But some are far more devastating. On July 19, 1996, catcher Chad Kreuter, then of the Chicago White Sox, would be confronted head-on with the challenge of his life.

"Mike Sweeney lifted a fly ball to short right field. Johnny Damon went to score by tagging up, and we had a pretty violent collision at home plate," Chad Kreuter recalls. "I remember just being hit by him, and it didn't feel right when I got hit. I ended up landing on the plate with my back on top of the plate and not being able to get up."

Chad's wife, Kelly, recalls his attempts to recover from the jolt.

"He got up and swung his arm around, and I thought, It can't be that bad. Maybe he'll stay in the game," she says.

"As an athlete, you don't think the worst," Chad explains. "You just think, I'm going to get it back in place. I felt like I was going to catch. Once I kind of put it back into place, I got some feeling back on my left side, and I thought it was only a matter of a couple minutes to get back into playing. One of the trainers came in behind me and pressed on my shoulder and put me in some excruciating pain and said, 'Chad, you need to get out of here, and we need to get this checked up.' "

In the locker room no one was prepared for the overwhelming injury the X-rays revealed. A stunned team of trainers and doctors gave Kreuter the shattering news.

"All of them were shaking their heads, and I knew something wasn't right," Chad remembers. "Then they said, 'You need to go get his wife.' I thought, What could be so drastically wrong that they need to get my wife?"

Chad and Kelly saw the doctor to get the full report on Chad's condition.

"The doctor's came back in and stuck the X-ray up on the little lighted machine, and they said, 'See all these lines?' I said, 'Yes.' They said, 'Those are all fractures. See the splinters over here? It's all bone.' He said he probably will never have use of his arm again," Kelly says.

Chad was overwhelmed.

"It was very stunning at that point in time to still be sweating from being out in the field and within minutes of coming off them saying, 'You're done. You'll never play again."

With surgery scheduled for just days later, the Kreuters departed for Los Angeles. Chad's condition continued to deteriorate up until the night before surgery. He knew that his career hung in the balance, but he had no idea that his life was also in danger.

"Saturday night and Sunday I was very nauseous," says Chad. "I wasn't keeping my food down. Even though we were in the hospital most of the day, they attributed it to the pain medicine that they had given me. I had ruptured a vein that's on the lining of the stomach, and I was bleeding internally. Monday morning I was supposed to check into the hospital to have surgery on Tuesday. I had gotten in the shower and the hot water hit me. I think it just overcame me, and I fell out of the shower and went into convulsions on the floor."

Kelly found Chad lying on the bathroom floor.

"When I came back in the bathroom," says Kelly, "he was completely unconscious, convulsing, his eyes rolled back. It was absolutely terrifying."

Paramedics responded immediately and transported Chad to an Intensive Care Unit, where, his life preserved, he would spend the next five days gaining the strength to undergo shoulder surgery. Then on the operating table, the unexpected happened again.

"What happened to me, it was miraculous, plain and simple," says Chad. "The doctor's own words were, 'Muscles moved around. Bones moved around very miraculously.' Those were his own words when he came out and told us, and I said I knew it would happen. We just had so many people involved and the prayers that it was just awesome."

Chad's wife gained strength from her relationship with Jesus Christ.

"That was just a huge, comforting factor also knowing that Christ was just right there with us," says Kelly. "He didn't want us in pain. He didn't want us to be afraid and hurt and all those things."

"The prayers that were going up around this country were enormous," says Chad. "It gives me goose bumps right now thinking about all the different people that called. It meant a lot, and, obviously, He heard those prayers because what happened in surgery was very miraculous. Not only did the doctors do a wonderful job, but the Lord did a wonderful job in there."

Armed with $40,000 worth of rods, two steel plates, and an unmatched work ethic, Chad Kreuter again defied the odds. Contrary to the doctor's predictions, he returned to the game less than a year after his injury and played seven more seasons.

Says Chad, "I feel so blessed because it's special. It's very special."