PORT CHARLOTTE — They found themselves alone in the dugout, the baseball player with the mysterious muscle ailment that not only threatened his career but, for a time, was thought to have threatened his life, and the trainer who helped nurse the player through the ordeal, sharing a mountain of medical evidence and evaluations, theories and tears. Lots of tears.
The celebration last September after the Tampa Bay Rays clinched their first playoff berth still raged in the clubhouse, but team trainer Ron Porterfield returned to the dugout to collect his gear. At the end of the bench was Rocco Baldelli, the Rays outfielder who a year earlier thought he might be dying.
Baldelli played that afternoon, entering the game in the fifth inning as a pinch-hitter and forced home a run with a bases-loaded walk. The man who once thought at best he would never play baseball again was in right field when the game ended and the Rays, the worst team in baseball for most of Baldelli’s days in Tampa Bay, had clinched a spot in the postseason.
The two locked eyes.
Only one word was necessary.
Baldelli spoke it.
“Thanks,” he said.
Porterfield returned to his home in Parrish that night and cried.
“If I didn’t tell you I shed tears I’d be lying,” Porterfield said. “Just being excited for him, we shed many tears together.”
Porterfield fought back tears Friday morning when recounting that moment. He stood outside the Rays clubhouse at Charlotte Sports Park. Behind him was parked the Boston Red Sox team bus.
Baldelli was in town with his new team.
“It kills me to see him in another uniform, but I wish him the best,” Porterfield said. “I think anybody who would have gone through or seen him at his rock bottom would have done the same for him.”
Rock bottom came in August 2007 when Baldelli had to take himself out of the lineup of a Class A game at Vero Beach. He was there on a rehab assignment, hoping to play his way back to the major leagues.
The pain in Baldelli’s legs was too much. He called Porterfield from the dugout at 4:30 in the afternoon. Baldelli was crying. Aside from the times Porterfield hung up to call a doctor, the two spoke on the phone until 7:15 p.m., when Porterfield had to hang up for good because the Rays game at Tropicana Field was about to start.
“He was on the other end of the phone, probably not knowing what to do,” Baldelli said. “I didn’t know what to do, and he wasn’t sure what to do either, and that’s when all this pretty much started.”
The Rays flew Baldelli around the country during the next few months, seeking opinions from the top specialist in every walk of medical life.
The eventual diagnosis was a mitochondrial disorder, which slows muscle recovery and causes fatigue and burning in the muscles.
Just running to first base could force Baldelli to miss days.
But knowing there was an answer was comforting.
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