This is part of a series of posts in which I recall a random experience which I will probably never do again. Full disclosure: I’ve definitely told versions of this story before in a variety of arenas, but hopefully this will serve as the most comprehensive (and final) version of this story.

When I was 9 years old, I was on the best baseball team I’d ever been on.****

That’s not something I say because we won our league title (which we did), or because it was the most fun team I was ever on (it wasn’t), but from a pure ability standpoint, it was, top to bottom, the most talented team I was a part of. There was so much talent* on the team, this was the first team I didn’t entrench myself at one particular position – my first time playing as a true utility player, as I was moved all over the field, playing, at various points throughout the season, second base, all three outfield positions, relief pitcher (although to be honest, I don’t recall if I ever got into a game), and catcher.

The team had four starting pitchers. Kai (the son of the head coach) was our ace. A big, strong kid who threw incredibly hard. I once got jammed on a pitch inside and dropped the bat because of the feedback. Ekolu (who would go on to be a quarterback and pitcher at one of the top high schools in the state) was the number two guy, tall, lanky, tough to hit against. Our third pitcher, sadly, I don’t remember, although I do remember that when I became the starting catcher (our regular starter was injured for a few weeks, giving me additional playing time), he sprained my thumb on the first pitch he threw me in a game. Our fourth pitcher, Timmy, was another tall, skinny kid who somehow threw incredibly hard, but also had a penchant for hitting batters (which is why he was our 4th pitcher).

Timmy would grow up to be this guy:

Timmy Chang, the all-time NCAA leader in career interceptions thrown (and a bunch of other stats, too).

But at this point, he was still a kid like me. A kid who threw incredibly hard, and had some control issues with his fastball, which the coaches were working on.

One day, he was scheduled to pitch in practice, which meant that before he actually went to the mound, he had to warm up. Since I was the backup catcher (and had been in batting practice, and thus wasn’t on the field already), I was told to warm him up.

Timmy and I went to the side of the field, and started playing catch, to loosen his arm up before he would eventually go in to pitch in the simulated game. Even playing catch, Timmy threw the ball hard – much harder than I could, and he barely looked like he was trying.

With every satisfying WHACK! of ball on glove, he got closer to being ready. And the closer he got to being ready, the harder he threw.

We were probably a dozen or so warmup tosses away from him being done, when I tossed the ball back to Timmy and heard one of the assistant coaches calling to me. I have to be completely honest, I don’t recall what was said at all, or why he was talking to me at that particular moment – he might have been asking if Timmy was ready. Or he might have been asking me to put on the catcher’s gear. I don’t remember.

What I do remember is that I heard someone else yell out:

“Danny!”

It was Timmy. I assumed that he was anxious to finish warming up and get into the simulated game. After all, we were 11 and 12 years old, and when you’re that age, the pitcher is the rockstar. Everyone wants to pitch. I wanted to pitch even though I knew that on that team, I had absolutely no business ever stepping on the mound (and again, I’m not entirely certain I did, at least, not in a game).

I turned to look back at Timmy and saw this**:

WHACK!

Although I don’t remember it, I fell down, and right away noticed that I was bleeding from my mouth. I also noticed that I was missing one of my two front teeth, but mostly what I noticed was OW OW OW PAIN PAIN PAIN.

The coaches and the players and, of course, Timmy, all rushed over. We got some ice from somebody’s water jug to numb my face down a bit – luckily, I had been hit in the mouth, just below my nose – so there were no breaks, no damage to the nose or eyes, and no concussion. My parents were called, and my mother picked me up – by that point, the bleeding had mostly subsided.

One of the coaches stopped by my house later that day with my tooth – they had found it in the field. It had been neatly sheared about 2/3 of the way to the gumline (meaning I still had the root) and remarkably had broken off cleanly. A week later, my dentist reattached it so that I didn’t look like a hockey player when I went to school. Two years later, the root, damaged by the impact, would finally require a root canal (which I was wide awake for, so I’ll try to remember to write about that later).

Ultimately, nothing much came of it – I had managed to escape serious injury***, and it was, by all accounts, an accident. I was back at the next practice, although because of my newly reattached tooth, I was required to wear a face mask on my batting helmet, which, as you might imagine, made me the popular kid when I went up to the plate.

But I’ll always be able to say that a future college quarterback knocked out my tooth when I was 9.

 

*As to my own talent level, I was never a phenomenal baseball player – I would guess that throughout my youth I was probably slightly above average. I was never the biggest, strongest, or fastest kid, but I hustled all the time and probably understood the rules better than most. By this point, however, some kids around me were starting to get their first growth spurts (I wouldn’t get my first real growth spurt until halfway through high school), and so although I wasn’t a bad baseball player, others were much, much more physically dominant.

**Apologies for the screenshot, but that gives you a rough idea of how close the ball was/what it looked like when I turned my head.

***This thought actually didn’t occur to me until right this moment, but if the ball had hit me in the side of the head (in other words, if Timmy hadn’t yelled at me and I hadn’t turned my head), I might have taken the ball in the cheekbone and/or just below my ear. Luckily, it was too low to hit me in the temple, but it seems that I might have actually been more seriously injured if the brunt of the impact had landed in either of those areas. Maybe I should call Timmy up and tell him thanks. Or at least stop mentioning that he holds the NCAA record for interceptions thrown in a career.

****EDIT: This post initially stated that I was 11 years old when this happened. I happened to watch a bit of an old tape and I was actually 9. The post has been edited to reflect this.