Monday, December 5, 2011

Return of Westy

In this time of sports news, there is a whole lot of big stories going on. Baseball’s winter meetings are beginning, and all the big name stars like Albert Pujols, Prince Fielder, and CJ Wilson will be vying for big dollar deals. The NFL and NBA have just finished with labor situations where they were complaining about getting more money than most of us will ever get in our lives, and one could be on the way again for the NHL. So it was refreshing to finally hear a good news story coming out of Fort Myers. Red Sox prospect Ryan Westmoreland will return to live game action on Thursday and Friday, playing in the Dominican Instructional League, one of the number of baseball’s winter leagues. To most of you, this really isn’t news at all. But if you don’t know Westmoreland, then you might want to read on.

Westmoreland was a top prospect coming out of high school. The outfielder from Portsmouth, Rhode Island was drafted by his hometown team, the Boston Red Sox, in the 5th round of the 2008 MLB draft and immediately shot up the organizations ranks in his one season playing with short season-A affiliate Lowell, eventually being named the top prospect that the Red Sox had by Baseball America. Everything was going great for the 5-tooled outfielder as he headed into Spring Training in 2010.

In March 2010 while in Fort Myers for spring training, Westmoreland began having incredibly painful headaches that blurred his vision. He was sent to Boston to be examined and was found to have a cavernous malformation on his brain stem. On March 16, the then 19 year old underwent surgery that was termed as “life-threatening” to remove the cavernous malformation. Westmoreland spent the next year and a half relearning how to do all the things we take for granted, like talk, walk, and eat. The Sox organization helped him in each step along the way, making sure that Westmoreland had the best care at every step of the way. During the summer of 2011, the baseball rat began to pick up a bat again and resumed baseball activities, going step by step in gaining the clearance of the doctors to do more and more. He began taking batting practice, than started facing live batting practice, then running out of the box. Finally after over one and a half years, Ryan Westmoreland will be returning to a real baseball game.

Although it will only be one at at-bat in a DIL game, but to Ryan Westmoreland it will be so much more. Best of luck to one of the best little know stories in baseball.

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