Before Tim Kay escaped through the shattered windshield of his baseball team's bus a year ago, he was so shy he feared to speak for what others might think of him.

He opened up only with his Bluffton University teammates, five of whom died in the accident on I-75 in Atlanta, only 20 miles from his parents' home in Alpharetta.

Dave Zapotosky/The Blade (ENLARGE)

Bluffton University baseball coach James Grandey talks about the anniversary of the crash that killed five members of the Bluffton University baseball team.

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For Kay, those careful steps through the wreckage began a journey to a new personality, a different view of himself. Through bittersweet resolve, he has pursued his baseball dreams and helped lead a team of survivors praised for their response to the tragedy.

He threw the first post-wreck pitch in front of a record 2,500 fans, earned all-conference honors and excelled at a minor-league summer internship that required chatting up strangers. National media portrayed the young baseball players from the small Ohio college as men of character who worked together at the crash site and regrouped to play their season.

"The memories are difficult for everybody — the grief, the loss of friends," says Bluffton coach James Grandey, who is still numb in spots after the collision broke every bone in his face. "All those emotions we have today and have to work through when we are playing.

"There's no question that Tim's a team leader, more through his actions than words. [But] this past year he has led more verbally ... and he's showed that by how hard he worked to be the best baseball player he could be and how strong he is mentally, with the obstacles we all have to overcome."

Kay and the Beavers were on an overnight trip to a Florida tournament when their bus crashed. They were supposed to play Eastern Mennonite, a matchup that will finally take place this afternoon in Fort Myers.

The team flew this year.

Today, they plan to "gather in private to reflect and remember the events of March 2, 2007," according to a university press release.

This is what Kay, in a recent phone interview from his northeastern Ohio campus, remembers of the moment after the bus driver mistook the exit ramp for a through lane and plunged off the Northside Drive overpass: "I woke up when we hit the barrier. We were flipping for what seems like forever and then resting on the ground. It was like a roller coaster, spinning all over the place. I was still in the bus, and I followed a lot of guys through the busted windshield. I got out with a busted lip, and that was it."

Of his teammates who died, he was closest to sophomore second baseman David Betts, who lived in the same hall.

"I remember going to his room, and he beat me at Madden 360 [a video game]," Kay says.

"I think about all the guys [who died] essentially every day. It's still weird not having them around."

Kay, now 21, says he is "lucky" to not have nightmares and other post-trauma effects. A series of family crises, his father says, had prepared him for this one.

At age 7, Kay watched his mom, Robin, battle esophageal cancer and lose 70 pounds before recovering three years later.

Between ages 10 and 18, Kay attended the funerals of three grandparents — then another one far more unexpected. His mom's twin, his favorite aunt, was 49 when she suffered a brain stem hemorrhage at dinner time and was dead by midnight.

His freshman year at Bluffton, his father was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

"He's developed a maturity that way," Ed Kay says. "But when you see five close friends die in something so unexpected, that just gives you a slap across the face."

The accident accelerated Kay's maturation.

"Outside of the baseball team, I would only talk if spoken to," Kay recalls. "I used to think it was the end of the world if someone didn't like me. I was a very quiet kid."

Or as Grandey put it: "Our recruiting phone calls to him were never that long."

Kay picked Bluffton (enrollment: 1,100) over 10 schools for its sports management program and a chance to play college baseball. Kay had carried that passion since age 4, when he'd beg his dad for higher pop-ups to make him a better fielder.

Getting a toehold on a baseball front-office career, though, depends on him getting out of his shell.

He started doing that a few months before the wreck and won a summer internship with the Rochester Red Wings, a farm team for the Minnesota Twins.

"I picked him for his persistence in calling me," says Matt Cipro, the team's director of promotions, who had 100 applicants for the virtually volunteer job. "This industry is so saturated [with job seekers] that he did exactly what he needed to do to set himself apart."

The accident unexpectedly helped Kay build on that momentum, to improve his social skills and confidence.

"Just the enormity of it," Kay calls the accident's psychological impact. "One thing for sure, it made me a lot more outgoing. I pretty much stopped caring what other people thought. Life is too short. ... Now it doesn't matter if someone doesn't like me. I prefer being able to talk to people and not care."

The Beavers struggled through 19 losses and only five wins in the months after the accident.

"It was a form of relief going on the field and not worrying about [what we had been through]," says Kay, who led the team in pitching (a 2.79 earned-run average) and hitting (.459), and whose .545 on-base percentage led the NCAA Division III Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference.

His junior year ended, and Kay took his new outlook to a city where he knew no one. He made cold calls to ticket buyers and cajoled fans into between-inning stunts such as a frozen custard race.

"I don't think any intern has ever made as many sales calls as Tim did," says Cipro, a nine-year Red Wings veteran. "He didn't have a problem approaching fans. You can't be shy in this business. You have to go up to complete strangers, and you have to keep talking to them."

Kay stayed low-key about his Bluffton connection, Cipro said, declining a local interview request about the wreck.

Kay's feelings about the media attention — which his coach says other team members share — are mixed. Starring in USA Today and Sports Illustrated was a dream coming true — but in a twisted way.

In his summer job, and more recently while networking at the major league winter meetings, Kay carried Bluffton's painful, proud reputation.

"I guess it's helpful to be associated with it because everyone heard about it, and we came off well as a team," Kay says.

As for helping him find a full-time baseball job? "I don't think that's an overriding factor."

It's a career that could require a lot of travel, which for Kay is tough. On a plane, every bump of air turbulence makes him hunker down with his earphones. "Driving myself is easier," he says.

That dread, he says, may never go away. But one day, he hopes to scout the best young baseball players for a chance to make their major league dreams come true.

The accident in Atlanta won't be on his resume, but it may help prepare him. A scout's belief in the future always trumps what happened in the past.