Nobody has to convince Georgia catcher Mason Meadows that miracles do indeed exist.
It was 11 days ago that the redshirt sophomore was batting against LSU. He fouled a ball off his face, almost directly into his right eye, and it sent the Roswell native to the dirt, as head trainer Sean Boland and head coach Scott Stricklin rushed to the field.
Foley Field grew eerily quiet.
An immediate surgery was thought to be the plan, with Meadows given a slight chance to return some time before the end of the current baseball campaign.
Fortunately, that prognosis turned out to be untrue.
Thursday, there was Meadows, taking batting practice, having been cleared by Georgia doctors for this weekend’s huge series against Vanderbilt.
“I didn’t think I’d be standing here at all,” said Meadows. “I tell you what, a little bit how I was feeling, when I opened my eye I couldn’t see anything. I really thought for a second it was an all-over-type-of-thing. You think the worst there for a second. I thought my career might be over, but the Lord is good, I had a lot of people praying for me, we’ve got a great staff here at UGA, great doctors—something healed me pretty fast.”
The way Meadows sees it, there’s no other way to explain his rapid healing. He had some help from above.
Sunday after arriving at Piedmont Athens Regional, Meadows was told by doctors that surgery was required and it was going to happen quickly.
However, two days later, those expectations totally changed.
“I saw the facial doctor on Tuesday and he said, ‘Mason, I’m surprised. I heard about what happened to you on Sunday, and I was planning on putting you under the knife pretty quickly.’ He said, ‘I looked at your scans. It's kind of a miracle, but I don’t think you’re going to have to have surgery.’”
Meadows, his dad Drew, and his mom Nita could not believe their ears.
“I think my mom about fell out of her chair. My dad was sitting there, kind of dumbfounded. We were looking at the imagery, and I was feeling sick, there was no way this just happened,” Meadows said. “But it was just a total, answered prayer. You hear about, and you’re raised to believe that the Lord answers prayers. It was just great to be part of one.”
The injury was one rarely seen.
Players have fouled balls on bunts, or off the plate, which have bounced up and struck the hitter's face. Few, if any, can recall anyone fouling a ball directly off the bat and striking a batter like it did Meadows.
Stricklin said he will wait and see if Meadows is able to play in this weekend’s series against No. 5 Vanderbilt. As of Thursday, it was still too early to tell.
“When you’re away for 8-9 days, your eyes slow down,” Stricklin said. “That 90-95 fastball is pretty hard to track anyway, and when you haven’t seen it for 8-9 days, you’ve got to get up to speed.”
Meadows - who will wear a specially designed protective helmet while hitting - said he tried to avoid watching replays of the injury, until he was basically forced to catch a glimpse during last Thursday’s televised game at Kentucky,
“I’m sitting at home watching the Kentucky series on my couch, ice pack on my face, and they (the announcers) were like, ‘Yeah, Mason Meadows got hit last week,’ and threw it up on the screen. I was, yep, that’s me, here I am,” he said. “It was weird seeing it for the first time. It gave me the heebie-jeebies a little bit. It was weird seeing yourself getting hurt. It’s not something you want to see on TV.” Meadows’ parents learned of the injury while driving to Athens after attending church earlier that Sunday morning.
Although mom Nita was watching on her phone, the game was on a one-minute delay when all of a sudden, sounds of incoming texts caused immediate alarm.
“They were at the gas station, and you’ve got Riley King’s mom, Cole Wilcox’s mom texting, saying, 'We’re praying for Mason, keep us updated,'” Meadows said. “The messages kept coming in, and they were like, ‘What happened, what happened?’ and then they finally saw it.”
Following a phone call from Boland, the couple headed to the hospital to meet their son, whose presence behind the plate for the Bulldogs is a huge key to the efforts of the nation’s fourth-ranked team.
Meadows caught some bullpen during Wednesday’s 7-6 win at Kennesaw State, and was slated to catch more bullpen Thursday, along with some extra batting practice.
Assuming all goes well, Meadows will be back on the field sometime during the series against the Commodores.
“Basically, it will be up to him. That’s what I told him. I completely trust him, so if he looks me in the eye and tells me, 'Coach, I’m ready to go,' he’ll be ready to go,” Stricklin said. “I think he knows that he’s not quite ready to go, but he’s close,” Stricklin said. “I wouldn’t be shocked that he’s in there, but to be honest, we were expecting three or four more weeks. We were just hoping he’d be 100 percent but we got an early Christmas present. He’s available this weekend and going to play sooner rather than later.”
