TEMPE, Ariz. – The faint scar on the back of Jon Wilhite’s neck stretches just above the collar of the red Angels warmup shirt, the shirt that all coaches are wearing this spring at Tempe Diablo Stadium.
It’s the scar Wilhite got in the April 9, 2009, car crash that killed Courtney Stewart, Henry Pearson and Angels phenom Nick Adenhart.
Wilhite used to be so afraid to show the scar that he hid it by growing shoulder-length hair. The onetime college catcher also used to be so reluctant to get on a baseball field that he left a fun invitation from Angels manager Mike Scioscia – an invite to come and be a guest instructor during spring training – open for several years.
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Until this week.
“I just wasn’t ready,” said Wilhite, standing on a warning track Wednesday, watching Angels pitchers Jered Weaver and Garrett Richards play catch.
The accident’s injuries were more than skin-deep. Among other things, they forced him to love baseball from a distance. He can be in Angel Stadium for about a dozen games a season. He has delivered ceremonial first pitches. His TV is always tuned to MLB Network or the Angels games.
He struggled through the April 9 anniversaries and avoided some painful triggers.
To spend a week around the Angels and Adenhart’s former teammates, being on the field during workouts, dressing in a uniform and even putting on a glove? He needed to work up to that.
But here was Wilhite, now 30 and the newest Angel in camp, reclaiming more of the game he grew up playing. With every moment, he restored a little more of the life he had before the accident.
He dressed at his own locker in the coaches room, no longer afraid to go bare-chested and expose the tats that memorialize so much of what happened that night six years ago.
Over his heart, in cursive script, is the phrase “Forever Remembered” above the names of Pearson, Stewart and Adenhart.
On the inside of his right arm is a firefighter’s crest, honoring those who rescued him from the mangled Mitsubishi Eclipse. Wilhite and his friends were headed to celebrate Adenhart’s first start of 2009 when a drunken driver ran a red light and plowed into their car at 65 mph.
With his brown hair now cut short, Wilhite also shows the scar.
It’s 2 inches long, pink and bulbous, but healed. It runs from the base of his skull over the C3 vertebra and finishes at the tattoo of his surgeon’s signature, “Dr. Nitin Bhatia,” next to the date “4-15-09.”
The accident left Wilhite internally decapitated, meaning his skull was ripped from his spine and hanging in place only by his neck muscles and skin. The injury is almost always (95 percent) immediately fatal or, when it isn’t (5 percent) it results in quadriplegia.
Wilhite is a victim of neither. He underwent a five-hour surgery on April 15, 2009, led by Bhatia, UC Irvine Medical Center’s chief spine surgeon, and a 30-person team. They reconnected Wilhite’s spine with a titanium plate, rods and screws. When they were done, and when he lived and moved, Wilhite became known as Orange County’s first survivor of an internal decapitation.
It’s why the Angels have taken to calling Wilhite “a walking miracle.”
“Just seeing him here, walking around and getting back to baseball, has been special for me to watch,” said Angels relief pitcher Vinne Pestano, Wilhite’s friend and a former roommate when they both played at Cal State Fullerton.
“It just shows how much of a competitor he is,” Pestano said. “And I know how much baseball, and being here, means to him.”
Pestano had dinner with Wilhite on Tuesday night. Hours earlier, the Angels had beaten the Texas Rangers in a Cactus League game; Wilhite dashed out of the visiting dugout exclaiming, “This is the best two days I’ve had in the last six years!”
“It’s the best three days now,” said Wilhite a morning later, having just jogged down the first-base line in red, white and blue size 11 ½ Nikes given to him by Pestano.
Wilhite also brought out the black Easton glove that has sat idle for so long. He stood on alert behind Weaver during morning warmups in case the Angels ace let a ball pass.
“Being around the guys has let me feel part of a team again,” Wilhite said, his voice cracking with emotion.
“They’ve made me feel at home again.”
Wilhite caught up with Weaver, who named his son, Aden, to honor his former friend and teammate. Wilhite got in a workout Wednesday morning with Angels pitcher C.J. Wilson, who asked about Wilhite’s mental and physical recovery.
“After six years, it’s easier to talk about,” Wilhite said. “I’ve come a long way to get here.”
He has rebuilt his strength. He can run and lift weights. He can throw and catch.
He can speak more quickly and clearly, the slurring almost gone. He can drive using an adapted vehicle with mirrors to give him the places his neck can’t allow him to see.
He works with his brothers at his father’s company, which handles the logistics of heavy freight transport.
And, now, he plays baseball again.
A former catcher, Wilhite has been shadowing Angels bullpen coach Steve Soliz, doing everything short of crouching down behind the plate to catch fastballs.
“That might be a little much,” said Wilhite, laughing.
He grew up in Manhattan Beach wanting to be a catcher like his boyhood hero, Scioscia, then with the Dodgers. This week, they share a field.
On Friday, Scioscia had Wilhite take part in the exchange of lineup cards before the game against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
This week Wilhite feels one fewer scar. He’s back in the game.
Contact the writer: masmith@ocregister.com
