By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN — The tendency is always to forget that behind that storm cloud that hangs so menacingly in the sky sits the bright, warm sun and that, in the end, we will all be bathed in its warmth.
This is especially true when you see a gifted athlete like Da’Sean Butler crumble onto the court under his own basket, his team far behind in the biggest game he has ever played, his face contorted in pain, his body wiggling on the floor like a flounder than has just been pulled into the boat.
At that moment, as his coach, Bob Huggins, leaves his bench and comes out onto the floor, fully aware this is something more than just a cramp or a sprain, an arena filled with more than 70,000 fans is filled with the fog of grief and the sound of silence.
Da’Sean Butler’s pain suddenly becomes all our pain, those wearing the blue of Duke and all the entire Mountaineer nation that has lived through four years of thrills provided by Butler, who suddenly seems so vulnerable after never having missed a game.
It is the nature of the beast to think of the worst, to forget we live in an age of miracles. If Butler were proved human and vulnerable at that moment, if his spot in the National Basketball Association draft was suddenly eradicated, it does not mean his spot in the National Basketball Association goes with it.
When the news came out Thursday that Butler had undergone reconstructive surgery on the tattered ACL in his left knee and that such surgery was performed at The Andrews Institute in Gulf Breeze, Fla., the first ray of sunshine began peering from behind that ominous cloud.
This is the Mecca of orthopedic surgery, Dr. James Andrews’ gift to the world of athletics.
It is where broken bodies go to heal.
We’re not talking about your beer league softball player, although he, too, is welcome.
We’re talking about the likes of Tom Brady and Brett Favre, a pair of quarterbacks you may know, who have spent much time having the gifted Dr. Andrews’ work with them on their injuries. After his throwing arm was nearly torn from his shoulder, a quarterback named Drew Brees went to have Dr. Andrews perform his miracle.
Whether Dr. Andrews or one of his protégés operated, Da’Sean Butler can rest assured this wasn’t a case of the all the king’s men putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. This was the chicken who would lay the egg anew.
Roger Clemens had his shoulder repaired by Andrews in 1985 and won 95 percent of his games after that. John Smoltz went in for shoulder surgery and two years later saved 55 games. Thousands have had Tommy John surgery performed by Dr. Andrews, who can claim more pitching victories than the 10 greatest winners of all time put together.
If he could fix the ACLs of Jerry Rice and Carson Palmer, he and his people can give Butler all of the best chance to recover that he can get.
Once upon a time such an injury was a death sentence for a basketball career or a football career.
Today, though, they do these things the way they used to remove tonsils. In you go, they build you a new ACL, stitch you back up and they get you into rehabilitation almost before you come out of the anesthesia.
The hope for athletes being put together again began in Los Angeles with Dr. Frank Jobe, who in 1974 took a tendon from a different part of the body and used it to replace a torn ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow, saving an untold number of careers as he invented Tommy John surgery.
The surgery was so successful that it led Cincinnati’s Pete Rose to comment after facing John:
“I know they had to graft a new arm on Tommy John, but did it have to be Sandy Koufax’s?”
To this day John marvels about one thing that came out of his revolutionary surgery.
“You know what I’m most proud of? What I’m most proud of, and I don’t know if anybody from surgery can say this, but I pitched 13 years after the procedure and I never missed a start. Not one iota of trouble. I’d like people to remember that about me,” he said.
The point is that it is not over for Da’Sean Butler, that there is a career out there waiting for him to play out from start to finish, performing on as high or on a higher level than he did this past year.
“In my experience, high-level athletes often come back from injury better athletes than before their procedure. The reason, I believe, is that these athletes focus their rehab on areas of strength that have often been neglected. By focusing on rehab, elite athletes can gain a competitive advantage,” orthopedic surgeon Dr. Jonathan Cluett wrote recently.
And so it is that the sun will come out soon for Da’Sean Butler, perhaps brighter and warmer than ever.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
