BACK SPASMS

“You’re gonna be drinkin’ water out of a dog dish.”

Work cohort Ryan Brach, as I crawled through a hotel lobby

The common medical malady “back spasms” is the most anemic, misleading term in sports medicine history. They should be called “twisting knife in the spine-asms,” or “oh my God, it hurts to cough-asms.” I had them pretty good the summer of 1997.

As part of my duties with the Boise Hawks baseball club, Idaho’s short-season, A-ball farm team for the California Angels, I produced, wrote, and hosted twenty episodes of a weekly thirty-minute TV show called Hawk Talk. For episode one in 1996, I decided to go big: skydiving with the coaching staff.

Manager Tom “Kotch” Kotchman would have nothing to do with it; I believe his exact words were “Fuck off” while pitching coach Jim “Benny” Bennett and hitting instructor Todd “Clausy” Claus said yes. We were off to Snake River Skydive with cameraman Dave “Go F’ Yourself” Falcone.

Having jumped from a not-so-perfectly-good airplane in Hawaii two years prior, I did my best to reassure the fellas that everything would be just fine. Clausy asked legitimate questions and seemed to show no fear. Benny, the Northwest League’s answer to Sam Malone from Cheers, started to get very quiet. He wasn’t about to back out, but as the airplane motor fired up, his face went completely blank and I honestly thought he might faint.

I went first. The plane wasn’t big enough to handle more than one tandem pair at a time. I would be leaping with a guy named Larry strapped to my back. Larry suggested that since I had jumped before, I should be able to handle pulling the rip cord on his signal. I agreed.

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

Dave attached a wireless microphone to my lapel and taped it down, zipping the jumpsuit up over most of the cord. Based on distance and reception, he’d only be able to hear what I was saying during the final stages of descent, maybe the last couple hundred feet. The idea was for me to do a flying stand-up, an on-camera hit describing part of the show. I think in this case I was supposed to say something like, “When we come back, Jim Bennett and Todd Claus take the plunge.” Then we’d land.

I was a wee bit nervous as the plane climbed but, honestly, much of the lustre was gone. They say you never forget the first time. No doubt about it. During the Hawaii jump in March 1994, I was freaked out and speechless during the climb, and I remember practically every little detail. This time, I was slightly blasé, the old “been there, done that.” Plus, while this section of Idaho was rather scenic, it wasn’t nearly as dramatic from the air as the rest of the state, and not nearly as delightful as the North Shore of Oahu.

We jumped. We dropped at about a hundred miles per hour for thirty-five seconds or so, and then Larry signalled in front of my face for me to pull the chute. Of course, I wasn’t paying any attention. I was looking all over the place, turning my head to the right and left and checking out the scenery. To avoid us becoming a human puddle, Larry had no choice but to reach around and rip the cord.

Meanwhile, I, his human air cushion, was in dipshit land. This was exactly why inexperienced skydivers first jump tandem — so someone remembers to pull the chute.

When Larry pulled the cord, I wasn’t quite back in the skydive posture. My head was turned sideways and angled up, my arms not completely extended in the neutral position. When the chute opened, our bodies and legs swung down violently and, with a tremendous yank, we went from falling very fast to hardly moving at all.

“Bddddddddddddd!” Every vertebra in my back cracked. A good crack, the kind you get when someone adjusts it or walks on it. Except near the bottom of my spine; that’s where I had a problem. Something strained and I went, “Ughhh!”

I managed to pull off some on-camera audio as we gradually lost altitude. But as I drifted closer to terra firma, Dave not only heard, “When we come back to the show,” he also heard, “Aw, shit that hurts,” and “Damn, that ain’t right!”

Benny jumped, landed, and immediately wanted to jump again. Clausy jumped, landed, and also wanted to do another jump right away. There’s nothing like plummeting to the Earth like a rock and then suddenly becoming a glider. The sound of air rushing past one’s head is intensely loud until the parachute opens. It’s replaced by almost complete silence. That’s the most dramatic sensation: loud as hell, quiet as heaven, gliding like a bird.

We interviewed the fellas, did some stand-ups to close the show, and drove off with a pretty darn good local TV show in our hands.

As the summer wore on, the bulging disc in my lower back grew larger. As 1996 rolled into 1997, it began to push on my sciatic nerve. By the 1997 baseball season, I was in trouble.

Ah, sciatica — a dream come true. Pain, constant aggravation, can’t sneeze without swerving off the road, can’t cough without swearing afterwards, wifey always on top. It made the menial tasks like getting out of bed and walking completely miserable.

Our team medical trainer, Todd Hine, who also worked for the local hockey team during the winter, was tremendously helpful and diligent in trying to relieve my pain and discomfort. He gave me stretching exercises, sent me to a therapist, and attempted to stretch me out himself on a regular basis.

Now, I’m familiar with physical therapy, sports trainers, and the concept of doing whatever is necessary to stretch someone out. But “Hiner” took it to the limit. Since we both travelled with the team, we were together with the rest of the baseball staff practically every day for three months. Each and every day before or during batting practice, Hiner would tell me to lie down on the outfield grass in foul territory, and he’d attempt to stretch my legs and back. The idea was to reduce the pressure on my spine and nerves.

At its simplest, it meant pulling my bent leg by the knee up towards my head to work the hamstring. At its worst, it must have resembled a dry hump.

Once, down the left-field line in Salem, Oregon, manager Kotchman, a hard-core, win-at-all-costs baseball man who, when perturbed, used to call me “Moose Breath,” walked by and asked, “What the fuck are you two doing?”

Long-time, very successful Boise Hawks manager Tom Kotchman in Salem, Oregon.

I was on my back, my left leg was somehow up over my chest, and my foot was dangling in the air over my right shoulder. Hiner was lying on top of me.

“Jesus, Hiner, this is ridiculous, careful down there,” I’d say, laughing almost uncontrollably while trying to breathe.

“Quiet,” he’d say. “You gotta stretch. Stretch.” Hiner was five-foot-ten; me, a little over six-foot-six.

“Holy shit, get off me,” I’d beg. The therapy-molestation would last three or four minutes.

The stretching helped for the short term. I was also sneaking off and visiting a couple of chiropractors on the side. The first guy, Victor, a Canadian-born hockey fan, was actually pretty good. He’d give me adjustments and provide relief. The second guy, some Neanderthal recommended to me by the team owner’s son, was not so good. I’d lie on my side and he’d slam down on the back of my rib cage with his chest. This was supposed to “pop” things back into place. I’m pretty sure my bulging disc was on its way to herniating.

Come September, the Hawks were where they usually were at the end of each season: in first place in the four-team North Division. Their record of fifty-one wins and twenty-five losses earned them the right to play the winner of the South Division in a best-of-five Northwest League championship series. This time around, the Hawks would meet the Portland Rockies.

It’s very rare at the short-season, A-ball level to fly anywhere. Normally, we’d travel overnight by bus. But given the fact that the Hawks were perennial winners, had once again earned a spot in the battle for the title, and had taken a 2–0 series lead on their home field in Boise, owner Bill Pereira bucked up and flew us to Portland. They won Game One 7–5 and Game Two 7–1, so finishing off the Rockies seemed like just a formality. The Hawks would have three chances, if necessary, to pick up the deciding third win on the road. We flew to Portland, Oregon, on September 7. Little did I know that I wouldn’t be flying back.

The Hawks disappointed in Game Three, losing 2–1. Two nights later, they failed to lock up the championship again with a 6–0 loss. The series was tied at two and the collars were getting tight. The soon-to-be winningest manager in Northwest League history and his team were on the precipice of an unfathomable collapse.

After Game Four, my broadcast partner, Tommy Smith, and I headed out for a few beers at the Kingston Bar and Grill, a watering hole best described as a sports pub. It stood across the street from Civic Stadium, the Rockies’ home ballpark, just steps into the hilly, southwest quadrant of Portland. It had great burgers, chicken sandwiches, and microbrews and was just a couple blocks from our hotel.

After lamenting the possibility of the Hawks not winning a championship, yet revelling in the excitement of having the opportunity to call the deciding game of a championship series the next day, Tommy and I went our separate ways. He went drinking with Hiner and Clausy while I headed back to the hotel to drop off our radio equipment and then meet my brother’s brother-in-law, John McDonald.

Johnny was a starving artist, originally from the upper peninsula of Michigan, a “Yooper.” By day, he worked in a bookstore as a stock guy, and by night, he’d occasionally play solo acoustic gigs at various venues around crispy, crunchy-granola Portland. Each time the Hawks came for a visit, I’d meet up with him and buy him a few beers at a tiny, triangular, basement bar that sat in the middle of a fork in the road on Burnside Street.

When I set down the box of radio gear in my hotel room, I remember feeling a slight twinge in my back, a twinge above and beyond the normal spasms I’d grown accustomed to. Undaunted, I trotted out to meet Johnny at the bar. We laughed it up, chatted with a few of the locals, and each drank about five or six beers. Besides catching a buzz, I was also going about the business of dehydrating myself with alcohol. My bad back, my drinking, and my not-so-heavy lifting earlier were all about to rendezvous for a memorable rebellion.

Most of the motels we used in the Northwest League were of the Super 8–Ramada Inn–Best Western ilk. Something a middle-class family of four would stay in on a driving trip across the country. Only on rare occasions would our motel be upgraded to a hotel. Portland was one of these times. Not glamorous by any stretch, I think it earned the “hotel” distinction simply because it had more than three storeys. This building had five.

Also rare in this case was the fact that Tommy and I had our own bedrooms. In most places, we shared a motel room with two twin beds and a tiny bathroom. Here, we had a main room off the common balcony entrance, a bathroom to the right, and two separate bedrooms. Tommy’s was to the right; I was to the left behind the living area.

When I came home from the bar, I went straight to bed. It was probably midnight, and Tommy hadn’t arrived back. I closed the bedroom door and turned in.

Normally, as we all know, one wakes up in a variety of relatively routine ways. One might arise gently and naturally after a good night’s rest, or be startled out of a nightmare, or awakened by a barking dog or a loud noise.

Physically, the usual occurrences might include an arm, leg, or hand feeling “dead” or having “fallen asleep” after being slept on funny. For a man, the potential also exists to wake up sporting a Woodrow after enjoying a pleasant dream of some sort. Both of those sensations are much more pleasant than the one that awakened me.

Apparently, I had rolled over or twisted in my sleep just enough to herniate my bulging disc. It essentially blew out, the pieces pressing against my spinal cord and the particles scattering down my spinal column.

I woke up screaming! I was experiencing unbelievable pain and disbelief at the same time. The level of my anguish was alien; I had never come remotely close to suffering this type of acute and protracted agony. It was like a chef was using my lower vertebrae to sharpen a paring knife. I couldn’t move.

“Oh my God, this is insane,” I said to myself. “Tommy! Tommy! Tommy!” I tried in vain to wake up my passed-out broadcast partner through two closed doors. Mustering enough voice was impossible. The act of yelling caused slight movement; slight movement brought excruciating pain.

It took me the next twenty minutes just to strategize how I was going get to the floor, and another fifteen to reach it. I managed to roll over onto my stomach, inch my way to the edge of the bed, and then “walk” off the end of the bed using my arms and hands as legs and feet. I lowered myself to the floor like finishing a push-up, with my feet scraping down the edge of the bed to the floor.

The good news: I knew I wasn’t dying. The bad news: I couldn’t stand up, I couldn’t crawl on my hands and knees (yet), and there’d be no using the potty.

My endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, had kicked in a little bit, but still not enough to allow me to do anything but belly-crawl. This I did, out into the little hallway, past the bathroom, and into the main room. It took about a half-hour, between gasps, grunts, and groans.

This is when I started to get really concerned about the ball game and the broadcast. It was six a.m., which meant I had about eight hours to get ready for the two p.m. start. Conventional wisdom dictated that I should skip the game, but there was no way I was missing the chance to call the deciding contest for the championship.

I was determined to figure out a way to get on the air. While I should have been worried about someday walking again, or taking a dump, or at least getting off the floor of this Portland hotel room, I was more worried about the show. I was the lead broadcaster in just my second season at a new gig, this was my first championship series of any kind, and my fellow broadcaster, Tommy Smith — fresh out of Santa Clara University and who normally did the play-by-play for innings four, five, and six — simply wasn’t very good. That’s not stating something Tommy didn’t know. He got the job mainly because he had a relative in the ownership group, and it was a one-season experiment heading into the summer. Tommy’s uncle Pete, a great guy and a very understanding investor when it came to his nephew’s broadcast limitations, was open-minded about the end result: if he were decent, they’d keep him. It didn’t help that Tommy was replacing my very accomplished partner from 1996, Jon Sciambi, a guy who went on to call baseball games regularly on ESPN.

I loved Tommy like a little brother, and still do, but there was no way I wanted him soloing for the final game of the Hawks championship series.

I lay on the floor of the hotel room in front of the TV for two hours waiting to call Hiner. I didn’t want to wake him up too early following a night out, but I needed some ice.

“Dude, my back exploded, you gotta get down here quick,” I begged Hiner.

“What? Hold on.”

Hiner came and took a look. He had a good chuckle, knowing my life wasn’t in danger, ran out, and a few minutes later returned with a bag of ice.

I lay there for another two hours until Tommy finally rolled out of the sack. He burst out laughing.

“Dude, what the hell is going on?” he said.

“Dude, my back blew up,” I said.

He felt bad and thought it was funny at the same time.

“Dude, no way.”

We said “dude” a lot in 1997.

With that, he asked me if dude needed anything, stepped over me, and headed out to get breakfast. He brought me back some McDonald’s. A few minutes later, Hiner brought me a fresh ice pack and some meds.

“Can you crawl yet?” he asked.

I could. And I did. Out the door, along the outdoor balcony that ran in front of all the rooms, into the elevator (where I had a delightful conversation with a fellow hotel guest while staring at his ankle), through the lobby, across the hotel’s driveway, and onto the back seat of a Boise Hawks employee’s Suburban.

All the while, Tommy and Ryan Brach, the Suburban’s owner, walked alongside me, carrying my garment bag and the radio equipment. Only twice did Brach have the nerve to say, “Heel.”

Although I could crawl, I couldn’t sit — it put too much direct weight on my lower back. I wouldn’t be flying home with the team the next day; even if I could sit, I couldn’t get up to walk onto the airplane.

Fortunately, because this was the championship series, Brach and a couple other front-office employees had driven the six and a half hours to Portland, and, fortunately for me, they hadn’t come in a pick-up truck.

The plan was in place: when the game was over, I’d crawl into the back seat of the Suburban, lie down, and ride 430 miles straight to a hospital in Boise.

Another break in my favour came thanks to old Civic Stadium being a bizarre ballpark. Among its idiosyncrasies, the press box and our broadcast position were at field level behind home plate. Fellow broadcasters referred to it as Eva Braun’s bunker (as in Hitler’s wife): cement floor, blue cement walls, and a wire cage to look through about twenty feet behind home plate. Calling balls and strikes was great, depth perception, not so much. A broadcaster would have to wait to describe balls hit in the air to avoid calling an infield pop-up a fly ball to right, or a home run a line drive to left. It was simply difficult to pick up distance off the bat.

The great thing about the location on this occasion: I didn’t have to crawl up sixty steps to a traditional press box. A driveway ran right down into the guts of the building behind the bunker. I crawled out of the Suburban, into the press box, and lay across two chairs. For the game itself, I lay on the counter where we’d normally keep our notes and broadcast equipment. I called innings one, two, three, seven, eight, and nine lying sideways with my right arm propping up my headset-laden cranium.

Lounging like a Kardashian, all six-and-a-half feet of me was stretched out, face pressed up against the screen — a minor-league diva. The counter was only about twenty inches wide. At one point, manager Kotchman, who walked by after talking to the ump or something, stopped and stared at me like I had six eyeballs.

He must have thought, What the hell is wrong with this guy?

“I screwed up my back,” I tried to explain through the screen.

“Uh, huh.” This confirmed his suspicions about my overall mental stability.

The ball game didn’t go so well. For me, the next three hours were literally the dictionary definition of adding insult to injury. At one point, with a chance to tie the game in the top of the sixth, Boise base runner Paxton Stewart got doubled off second base when he took off running on a pop-up to left field. That was after his walk and a base hit to start the inning. Ugly. The Hawks lost Game Five 4–2, and the series.

No championship, no ring, no nothing — but the disappointment would have to wait. I was actually relieved to be crawling into the Suburban to start the long ride home.

Cell phones were rare in 1997, but we had one on this occasion, which was nice when the fellas decided to stop in Pendleton, Oregon, halfway along our journey, to gamble at the Wild Horse Casino. They ran in for about forty-five minutes while I lay on a bag of ice in the back seat chatting on the phone with my wife, Nora, who planned on meeting me at the hospital.

Talk about taking one for the team: acutely injured guy lying alone in the back of a truck while his buddies played blackjack. Actually, I thought it was kind of funny, and it was the least I could do, given how much I appreciated the lift, and because the boys cancelled overnight plans in Portland to drag my gimpy ass home.

Three hours after the gambling stop, we pulled up to St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise. My wife walked up and thanked my colleagues, while an orderly with a gurney came outside to get me. I crawled from seat to stretcher.

Once inside, the nurse on duty wasn’t buying into the seriousness of my back problem. To find out just how bad it was, she gave me a shot of something, Demerol I think, into my right butt cheek.

“In a few minutes, I’ll have you get up and we’ll check it out,” she said.

Oh really? Take your time. After what seemed like just a few moments, I was flyin’.

“Yeah, baby,” I said to Nora. “Oh yeah, this stuff is goooood.” I was on Pluto. The pain was absolutely gone — until the nurse had me stand up.

“Ouch, ah, damn! Oh, no, no, no. Can’t do it,” I said.

“Really?” she answered. “Well, let me give you one more shot on the other side, and we’ll check again.”

“Works for me.” I smiled as I lay back down. Moments later, my happy-happy, joy-joy buzz was revitalized. This was an acute, high-potency shot of painkiller pretty close to the nerve centre.

“Oh yeah, I gotta get me some of this,” I said, laughing, to Nora.

“Knock it off,” she ordered, smiling.

“Man, I’m tellin’ ya!”

The nurse came back in.

“Okay. Get up.”

Nope. Again, once I stood up and tried to move around upright, the pain crashed the party in my extra-terrestrial brain.

“Alright,” the nurse determined, “you’re going for an MRI right now.”

Upon further review, the doctor determined that surgery was required almost immediately. I was admitted to the hospital as a patient, my first time since birth. The next morning, I’d have a partial discectomy.

Lying on the operating table, looking up into a light, I saw the face of the anaesthesiologist as she put a mask over my nose and mouth.

“Okay,” she said. “Count down from ten.”

“Ten, nine, eight, seven . . .”

~

Tommy Smith married his college sweetheart, Shannon, is in the medical sales business in Arizona, and has four kids.

Kotch is managing in the Gulf Coast League in the Boston Red Sox organization.

Clausy is the global scouting coordinator for the Red Sox.

At last word, Benny was coaching baseball in Australia.

Hiner owns a training center outside of Boise.