 | | Richmond resident Justin Humphries continues to strive for the Major Leagues.
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| Justin Humphries thought this was going to be his year. His dedication to the books and baseball would finally pay off.
A student at Wharton County Junior College in the last two off-seasons of professional baseball, Humphries recently completed 62 hours of credit and graduated at the top of his class, being presented with The Dean's Award with a 4.0 GPA, the only student to have a perfect record.
He was immediately accepted into the University of Texas, Texas A M University and Tulane and has applied to Columbia and Georgetown in the northeast.
But Humphries, 25, a resident of Richmond and a former Lamar Little League all star, still has a burning passion for baseball and was convinced that this season - his eighth in professional baseball after being drafted out of high school by the Houston Astros - would catapult him back to Major League affiliated baseball.
He was healthy last season for the first time since 2002, playing every game at catcher or first base for the Shreveport Sports in the strong American Association of Independent Professional baseball. He was a dominant player, finishing in the top 10 in the league in a host of categories including extra base hits, home runs, doubles, triples and On Base plus Slugging.
The Shreveport club gave him a pass on spring training so that he could finish school. His car was packed and ready to go Š and as soon as he finished his final exam at Wharton he hit the road to join his team for the start of the season on May 8 against the Diablos in El Paso.
Batting clean-up, Humphries went on a tear in the first three games - hitting three home runs with 9 RBIs with a batting average of .462, an on-base percentage of .500 and a slugging percentage of 1,071.
Then the game tore him up. In just the fourth game of the season, Humphries twisted his knee and collapsed in tremendous pain after trying to evade a tag. An MRI last Friday showed that he had a 90 percent tear in the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his left knee. It will require surgery - replacing the ligament with part of one of his tendons, a hamstring or a donated Achilles tendon - and six months of rehabilitation before he could be a full-time player again.
Humphries was despondent and thought it was the end of his career.
But after physical examinations in Shreveport and Houston, two top specialists, Dr. David Lintner, the official doctor of the Astros, Houston Texans and the Houston Dynamo soccer team, and his protˆ©gˆ©, Dr. Shane Barton, who practices in Shreveport, were both surprised he had a tear.
The ACL is a stabilizing ligament in the knee and normally with a tear the knee joint is very loose. But Humphries' dedicated workouts to prepare him for catching helped to build muscles which greatly stabilized the knee. Only the MRI told the real story.
Because of the stability, both doctors recommended Humphries could play designated hitter for his team for the rest of the season. The long-term risk of further damage was limited, even if he fully tore the ACL. Running straight ahead would not be a problem, but pushing off the knee to switch direction could be trouble. He could therefore be a designated hitter and wait to have surgery at the end of the season and rehab before 2009.
Dr. Lintner asked Humphries in Houston this week if he wanted to “test drive” the knee and see if it held up as a DH. He didn't have to ask twice.
“I have to rehab it for two to four weeks and see how it reacts, but the way I feel right now I have no doubt I will put on a knee brace and be back with the team as DH in less than a month.”
Four Major League clubs - the Cardinals, Cubs, Phillies and Brewers - worked him out in the past 12 months. “I just needed to stay healthy, put up good numbers and wait for something good to happen,” he said.
“Now I am back to square one. But I intend to continue to chase my dream until it is absolutely dead in the water. I am not there yet. I am 25 and I have just figured out this game Š as much as you can figure it out. I will go out on my terms. I still think I have a shot,” he said.
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