USD Baseball 1990

Page 27

Adam Schwindt

"When time wore on and nobody showed up, it seemed like an eternity," said Stumpfl, "but it was only about seven minutes when the cop got here and about 10 minutes when the paramedics got here and took him to the hospital." Schwindt underwent three hours of surgery at Sharp Memorial Hospital to remove a blood clot near his brain. He was in a coma for the next week. " It's very difficult to look into your child's eyes and not see any1hing there," said Adam's father, John Schwindt. " It's just scary. You don't think of the vulnerability. You don't realize how vulnerable you are and how you can only protect your kid from certain things. "We haven't had a death in our family for a while, so we haven't been exposed to that kind of criticalness for quite a while. He and his little brother (12-year-old Andy Schwindt) are each other's biggest fans and it was pretty hard on the little one. Part of that is because there was no progress for a time." Initially, doctors could do little as they waited for swelling to reduce around Schwindt's brain. "When he first went in I was told he was going to be in the hospital for a long time," said Cunningham. "They didn't want to hazard a guess, but they said it would be a number of months. They thought he might have some speech impairment and some motor-skill impairment. "A week ago last Thursday the neurosurgeon told his dad that he would probably be in intensive care for at least another three weeks and in the hospital for another month or so after that." Schwindt made a rapid recovery, even though he had to relearn many of the things we take for granted. " I basically had to learn how to walk again," said Schwindt. "Then they ran a lot of tests to see how my memory was and all that. When they first put a piece of paper in front of me, I couldn't even read what it said. It's been a weird situation for me the last four weeks, but I feel good and I feel normal right now. " I'm hoping to get by body in tune to get back on the baseball field, and I want to get my mind ready to go back to school. I haven't picked up a baseball yet, but I'll probably be playing catch with my little brother tomorrow." The emotional impact of such a traumatic experience is often the most difficult thing to overcome, not only for the person injured but for those who were involved in the accident. " For a while there, every time somebody hit one back through the middle everybody would freeze," said Stumpfl. "Seeing as he's OK and that he will be back has helped everyone relax." After the accident, Cunningham began each practice with an update on Schwindt's condition. A psychologist also spoke with the players to help them deal with their feelings. One of the things the psychologist mentioned was how the healing process could be helped by the ~ood-natured ribbing that goes on among ballplayers. Thats exactly what has happened. "About seven of them came in when I first went into rehab, and we were ragging on each other," said Schwindt. "I'm a. pretty stubborn person and they ragged on me because the ball ricocheted all the way back against the fence behind home plate. They said it was no surprise because I'm so hard-headed." Said Stumpfl: "We went over and talked to him for a while and he was just Adam. He lives on junk food . I knew he was all right when I saw him drinking a Pepsi and eating Cheetos and trying to get us to bring him something from McDonald's. As a matter of fact, I think one of the other pitchers brought him a chew. That's when you really knew he was OK." There is one subject for which Schwindt's teammates no longer will be ragged . "I'm the only biology major on the team and everybody else is a business major," said Schwindt, whose interest is becoming a doctor has been intensified. " I always hassle them about how they don't know any1hing about medicine. I can't hassle them anymore. I would have bet a million dollars they would have fallen apart. I can't believe what they did. I'm very amazed-and very happy."