Ryan Westmoreland's Recovery

Charles P. Pierce, Boston Globe Magazine, March 20, 2011:

At first, he blamed video games. ... "The first thing I noticed was the joystick on the right-hand side. I couldn't really feel it as much," Ryan recalls. "I didn't really know I was playing. I was watching myself playing, but I couldn't feel it. I thought, maybe it's something weird in my wrist because I've been playing so many video games." There were other odd things happening, too. He found his right leg weak after only a few minutes playing ping-pong. On the field, the baseball felt as though it were made of iron, and he couldn't feel the seams under his fingertips. Ryan told the team's medical staff, and they sent him for an MRI. The other players asked him what was going on, but he didn't know any more than they did. After the MRI, he went to the doctor's office, and they showed him the image. ...

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Contrary to the old sportswriting maxim, they are not always merely what they do. Over the past year, Ryan Westmoreland had to teach himself how to relearn all the most basic things that made him the person he was before he ever picked up a bat. He had to learn how to remember how to do things he had learned to do before. He had to visualize how he used to look when he ran, because that would help him remember how to run again. He was 19, and he had to wrestle with the most basic question of all. He had to learn how to remember who he really was.