Photos by Tony Overman/The Olympian
River Ridge's Manny Davila connects with the ball Wednesday in his first at-bat since losing sight in his right eye. Manny received a standing ovation from many in the crowd when he came out to lead off the sixth inning. He grounded out to the Timberline third baseman. "I was so scared. I kept saying, 'Don't get hit. Don't get hit,' " he said.

Manny lost the sight in his right eye when a foul-tipped baseball hit the 19-year-old in the face.

Back in the game

One month after accident, Davila triumphantly returns

GAIL WOOD, THE OLYMPIAN

LACEY -- He is now a stranger, a foreigner in his own land. Manny Davila's world -- right field, where he once chased fly balls with such ease -- is now a dark, distant landscape.

Baseball -- the sport that consumes him, the sport that he loves so much that after a two-hour practice at River Ridge High School, he'd come home and swing a bat at a suspended baseball connected to a rope until his hands blistered -- is now another planet.

Even a simple game of catch with his dad in the backyard has turned into an uncertain venture.

Everything changed with one pitch last month. A foul tip off his bat during a March 20 game in Renton -- just the second game of the season -- smashed Davila's right eye, destroying the retina. After two surgeries, doctors told Davila that his shattered retina is beyond repair.

"I can't see anything out of it," Davila says. "I see only darkness."

With one eye, his depth perception is limited. Pop-up hits -- the ones he used to love running under, waiting for the last second before reaching with his glove and snatching the ball with ease -- are no longer a cinch to catch.

But four weeks after the injury, just three days after ophthalmologists at Stanford University told Davila he would never see out of his right eye again, the senior returned to baseball practice with his team.

"I was so happy," he says. "After that first day, I thought I could do it. I thought I could make it."

But he left the second practice early, giving his coach, Chad Arko, an excuse about having to put drops in his eyes.

"I was dropping easy fly balls," Davila says. "I was even scared when I was playing catch. They were throwing so hard. I couldn't do the things I used to do. It broke my heart. If I had stayed, I would have cried in front of everyone. I didn't want that."

Instead, he cried while driving home.

"What am I supposed to do?" he says, emphasizing each word slowly as if he can barely bring himself to ask the question aloud. "I'm blind in one eye. I've never heard of anyone who ever played baseball with one eye."

The game he still loves he now fears.

"Manny was always the guy who always wanted to play more," says Bo Oeltjen, a teammate and longtime friend. "I was the first guy over at his house when he came home from the hospital. He said he wasn't sure he could play again. I told him he wasn't a quitter."

Davila, who wears a black patch over his damaged right eye, continues his comeback by playing catch and chasing fly balls his dad hits.

Last Monday, he came back to the team again, but he still wonders how it all got to this point.

"One minute I am normal," Davila says. "One minute I am playing baseball. The next, I am -- all this work. All this effort. I had poured my heart into getting ready. I ran during the winter. I ran in the rain, in the snow. This was going to be my chance. Now ..."

Davila's grandfather and his father, Julio, played baseball in Panama, where Manny was born before moving to Lacey when he was 10. He reads biographies on baseball players, on players like Sammy Sosa, the Chicago Cubs home run hitter who plays the same position as Davila. Julio played minor league baseball in Panama.

"Manny is a fighter," Julio says. "It is hard for a father and for a mother to see their son lose his eye. You ask why. He has worked so hard. But he is working hard to come back. He has not quit."

Baseball nightmares

It is midnight.

Manny Davila jerks awake, a nightmare of the ball striking his eye haunts him. Because of these dreams, his 21-year-old sister Yuliza has been sleeping in his bedroom to comfort him when the haunting memories wake him up. He sees a white blur coming off the bat. He feels the pain. He hears the voice of his teammate, Oeltjen, who is saying: "Squeeze my hand, Manny. Squeeze my hand."

It is March 20 all over again.

Davila is the first batter up that day in River Ridge's game at Renton. He tells himself he won't swing until he gets a strike. The first pitch, a fastball, is a strike.

Now, he is ready. The second pitch is another fastball, and Davila swings. It glances off the bat and bashes his eyeball, forcing it back into his eye socket. It bursts like a water balloon. He staggers, then before falling calls to Oeltjen: "Bo, help me."

Oeltjen and coach Chad Arko rush to his side.

"I thought his eye had popped out," Arko says. "There was so much bleeding. There was also this dark ooze on his cheek. His eye was so swollen you couldn't see it. I looked around for his eye on the ground."

A four-hour operation that night closed his lacerated eye, but pieces of the eye are missing, leaving him with an irregularly shaped pupil. Desperate, Julio tells the doctors they can take his eye for his son.

But Dr. Robert Nash tells the family the injury is so extensive a transplant will not help because the damaged retina can't be reattached. Although doctors recommended Davila take a glass eye, he refuses when he is told there is a one percent chance that he could still regain sight in the eye.

"One percent is better than zero," he said.

A day after the surgery, Davila received a call from Kirby Puckett, the former Minnesota Twins major league outfielder whose career was shortened because of glaucoma. Davila also got an autographed baseball and bat from Jay Buhner, the Seattle Mariners outfielder.

"Kirby Puckett told me baseball wasn't everything," Davila says. "He told me there are other things in life. I asked him only one question. I wanted to know what it was like to play in the major leagues."

That was Davila's dream, fueled by his accomplishments last June at a camp in Orlando.

For the second year in a row, Davila flew to Florida to take part in a summer baseball camp that cost his family $3,000, a sacrifice for his parents.

It was baseball from sunrise to sunset. Until then, Davila mimicked the batting style of his favorite player, Roberto Clemente, the power-hitting right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1970s.

But at this camp, Davila, under the advice of coaches, changes his batting stance. He ends up making the all-star team -- one of 26 players chosen among 500.

"They announce my name, and I can't believe it," Davila says. "I was so happy. Me, Manny Davila, an all-star."

The way back

Just two weeks after the accident, Davila is in the batter's cage, about to take his first swing at a baseball since the injury.

He is terrified. Wearing a batter's helmet with a face guard that his father bought him, Davila waits for the pitch from the pitching machine.

"My legs are shaking," he says. "My heart is pounding. I have these flashbacks. I see this ball coming at my eye. But I stand in there, and I swing."

He misses the first pitch. He backs out, breaths deeply, then steps back to the plate. He begins to connect, slapping hits. He increases the speed of the pitches as he gains confidence.

"This is a challenge for Manny," Julio Davila says. "He's still asking himself a lot of questions. But I've told my son that I will always be there. He can always count on me. The important thing for Manny is not to concentrate on the past. We can't change the past."

Wednesday, Manny Davila took another step, a big one, on the road back. He played in a baseball game again.

In the bottom of the sixth inning against Timberline, Davila went to the plate as a pinch hitter for River Ridge. His heart leaped when his coach told him in the top of the inning he was going to bat.

"I was so scared," Davila says. "All those dreams of that ball hitting my eye came racing back."

As he walked to the plate, a handful of parents watching and players applauded.

"I nearly cried," Arko says. "Honestly, I didn't think he'd be able to do this. Not this fast. Most people would have given up, but not Manny. I'm so proud of him."

The first pitch is inside, brushing Davila back. Two players had already been hit by a pitch during the game.

"I'm just hoping he doesn't hit me," says Davila, who wore a helmet with a face mask.

He fouls off the next pitch, then hits a grounder to third base. It's an out in the game, but it's also a human triumph.

"I was surprised I even hit the ball," Davila says. "I'm glad that's behind me. Next time, it will be easier."

Encouraged, Davila has told his father not to scratch him from a summer all-star team that will play in Panama.

As a Christian, Davila draws strength from God, saying that "When I walk through the gates of heaven, I'll have sight again."

He tries to see a purpose in his injury.

"You know how there are track runners with one leg?" Davila asks. "There are people who play basketball in wheelchairs. Maybe I'm just like them. Maybe I'm the baseball player who gives hope to the child born with a birth defect. Maybe I'm their hope. Maybe I'm the one giving little kids hope."

But the doubts are continual.

Davila is quiet before speaking again.

"That's what I want to do, but ... it's so, so hard," he says in a near whisper. "I just don't know if I can do it."

Gail Wood covers sports for The Olympian. He can be reached at 754-5432.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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