PEORIA, Ariz. — The doctors wouldn’t let Steven Shell look in a mirror.
He lay on an emergency room table in Tacoma last July 26 knowing he’d suffered a significant injury, but not quite sure how it happened or how bad it was.
It was bad.
Shell had been hit in the face by a line drive in the seventh inning of the Class AAA Tacoma Rainiers’ game against the Las Vegas 51s, although he has no recollection of the pitch he threw to Buck Coats.
All Shell remembers is being wheeled from the mound toward an ambulance, trainers covering his face with a towel so nobody in the grandstands at Cheney Stadium could see how ugly it had become. In the emergency room, as Shell began to process what had happened, the medical personnel wouldn’t let him look in a mirror.
“But when the doctors walked out of the room, I got my iPhone and I turned it around and took a picture of myself,” he said.
Then he looked at the image and was horrified. The right side of his face was swollen terribly.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh!’” he said. “I thought for sure that it was going to be a long recovery with surgeries and all kinds of stuff.”
Nearly seven months later, Shell is back on the mound again at spring training with the Seattle Mariners, having recovered both physically and emotionally from an incident that could have changed his life. When it happened, he thought it might have.
“My family and people in Tacoma were all saying prayers,” he said.
And, almost as quickly as Shell’s season — if not his career — seemed shattered, good things started happening again.
His face was a mess, but tests showed he suffered nothing more than a small crack to his sinuses. The ball, recorded by radar guns at 97 mph off the bat, had struck him in the one area of his face, above his jawbone but below his cheekbone, to avoid significant damage. A fraction of an inch higher or lower, and those bones could have shattered.
“I think God was looking after me that day. It was kind of a miracle because I didn’t have any surgery or anything,” he said. “I had a little crack in my sinuses, but other than that there was nothing and we just let it heal. I spent one day in the hospital, then I got to go home.”
Shell spent the rest of the summer and fall recuperating at his home near Oklahoma City, allowing him to spend time with his wife, Kenna, and their son, Tyler Bradley, who was born May 18. And he also gained a sense of what’s important personally and professionally, to enjoy the opportunity each day brings and not fret over the past.
“It causes you to think about everything because that could have been the end of your life,” he said.
The Mariners sent him to Lara of the Venezuelan Winter League to regain his feel for the mound and, yes, cleanse himself of the tendency to flinch.
“The first inning of my first game, I got a couple of ground balls right back to me,” Shell said. “I thought, ‘Oh no, here we go again.’ But I fielded them and ever since then I’ve never mentally had any problems.”
Shell hopes to get back to the major leagues and pitch like he did two seasons ago for the Washington Nationals. His 2.16 earned-run average in 39 games was the best in the National League and third-best in the majors for rookie relievers with at least 50 innings.
Last year, however, he struggled in four appearances and the Nationals designated him for assignment. Shell chose to become a free agent and signed with the Mariners, whose manager, Don Wakamatsu, worked in Anaheim’s minor league system when Shell broke into pro ball in 2001.
The Mariners converted Shell back to a starter at Tacoma and he believed his season was coming together nicely, especially in that July 26 start against Las Vegas.
“It was one of my better starts,” he said. “I felt like I was getting things going again.”
The memory gets foggy from there. Shell remembers facing Coats with a 3-2 count, but not much else.
“It was a fastball and he just smoked it up the middle,” said Adam Moore, Tacoma’s catcher in that game. “There was no time for him to do anything. It was by far the scariest thing I’ve seen. “The ball bounced right back to me and I don’t even remember picking it up. I just went straight to him. I remember him laying on the ground and I saw that the swelling was already there. I could hear people behind me scream, ‘Don’t touch him!’”
Tacoma manager Daren Brown and trainer Tom Newberg arrived next, and they helped stabilize Shell until medics arrived to transport him to the hospital.
“That’s one of the worst I’ve seen,” Brown said.
Even though the injuries weren’t severe, the Mariners made sure Shell knew they didn’t forget him as he recovered at home in Oklahoma. The Mariners and Rainiers sent a huge basket filled with gift cards and goodies, and checked on him routinely.
“I couldn’t think of any other organization that’s any better than Seattle as far as what I went through and what they did for me,” Shell said.
He became a free agent and he said he had opportunities to sign with other teams, but the Mariners and Rainiers had made an unforgettable impression.
“I’ve never played on a team like I played on in Tacoma, where everybody in that whole clubhouse was a good person,” he said. “I haven’t met anybody over here that’s not a good person.
“You weigh everything when you’re looking to go different places. I wanted to come back here and get back to the big leagues.”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog
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