ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 2, 1996 TAG: 9608020005
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RALPH BERRIER JR. STAFF WRITER
LUTHER HACKMAN is trying to put a scary injury behind him and get back to winning games for the Salem Avalanche.
It was tough for Luther Hackman to look at himself in the mirror.
The sight of himself turned his stomach.
He remembered his nose used to sit in the middle of his face, pointing forward like everyone else's.
An hour before, as the 8 p.m. hour approached on May 31, he had been standing on the pitcher's mound for the Salem Avalanche, laboring through a start. He had struggled. By the third inning he already had allowed five hits and two walks to the Frederick Keys.
He threw a fastball to Frederick's Eric Chavez and saw it coming right back at him even faster than he had delivered it.
He remembered the ball striking him in the face, and little after that.
``I remember throwing the fastball,'' he said, ``and as soon as I let it go it came right back at me. ... I got dizzy. I laid down. I don't remember anything after that. I felt a little pain. Not much.''
He doesn't remember the ball rolling to first baseman John Fantauzzi, who recorded the putout then ran to the mound. His memory of manager Bill McGuire and trainer Bill Borowski running to the mound are hazy. He doesn't remember the blood pouring down his face.
He does remember, though, the first sight of his own visage at the hospital.
``My nose was sitting on the left side of my face,'' he remembered. ``It was under my eye. It kind of startled me. I felt kind of sick.''
Hackman's nose was surgically repaired and he was back on the mound within a few weeks. The question was whether his psyche could be straightened out as easily.
Physically and mentally, Hackman is still recovering. After losing the first game of a three-game series at Frederick, he is 4-5 on the season, still seeking his first win since May and still seeking to shake the memories of May 31.
``I'm kind of over it,'' said Hackman, who also suffered a broken right cheekbone. ``Then again, [the memory of the accident] still shakes me up a little bit. I think I'm over it. Hopefully, nothing like that will happen again. That'll teach me to keep my fastball down.''
Sixty feet, six inches are all that separates a pitcher from a batter. When a pitcher throws the baseball nearly 90 mph and a hitter reverses its direction at speeds even higher, the distance seems closer.
Pitchers do not let themselves think about their proximity to the hitters and the split-second it would take for a line drive to be rocketed at their heads. They'd never be able to perform if they thought about such things.
``You never think about it,'' said Bill Champion, Salem's pitching coach, ``until you see it happen to someone else.''
The most famous incident of a pitcher being hit in the face occurred in 1957, when Cleveland's Herb Score was felled by a line drive off the bat of Gil McDougald. Score, the American League Rookie of the Year in '55, never regained the brilliance he had shown in his first two seasons when he led the AL in strikeouts both years.
``When you get hit like that, it would be understandable if you had a fear of getting back in the box,'' said McGuire, who saw a teammate in the minors take a line drive in the head. ``That can screw with a kid's head. Luther has shown no signs of that, which is good.''
If the incident is nothing more than a road block in Hackman's development as a pitcher, he should consider himself lucky. The 21-year-old right-hander from Columbus, Miss., has a live arm and had made steady progress since getting off to a slow start last season in Asheville (N.C.). There, he was 3-8 at one point before finishing 11-11.
He should be used to tough luck. He threw a two-hitter against Charleston (W.Va.) last year and lost 1-0. He threw nine scoreless innings against Hagerstown (Md.) but didn't get a decision when his team won 1-0 in 11 innings.
After getting off to a 4-2 start with an ERA under 4.00, bad luck struck again. This time in the face.
If he gets up off the deck again, who knows how far he'll go.
``I just need to get a win,'' he said. ``That would make everything better.''
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: headshot of Hackman KEYWORDS: BASEBALLby CNB