LYNCHBURG, Va. -- First pitch couldn’t come fast enough for Luis Salazar. But that didn’t mean the moment should be rushed.
Salazar’s official return to baseball here Friday night was accorded the sort of reception due a man who made cheating death look incredibly graceful.
The first-year manager of the Lynchburg Hillcats loped on to Calvin Falwell Field to a standing ovation from the nearly 4,000 people already in their seats for the home opener of the Braves’ high-Class A affiliate. He worked his way down the third-base line, fist-bumping every Hillcats player and coach. Then he crossed over home plate and shook hands with a few members of the opposition, the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, as well.
The result of the game, a 7-2 loss for Lynchburg, couldn’t diminish the significance of the night for Salazar.
Five weeks after a spring-training foul ball off the bat of Braves catcher Brian McCann had knocked him out for more than 20 minutes and ultimately claimed his left eye, Salazar, 54, was back where he was supposed to be all along.
“For me, it’s very important to get on the field and wear the uniform again,” Salazar said six hours before game time, sitting in the Hillcats’ dugout. “I’m not a very emotional guy, but I find I’m very much ... appreciative. I’ve gotten a second chance at everything.”
Second chances don’t come easily, though. Already, Salazar has endured three operations, with at least one more to come: Prosthetic eye surgery, which his doctors originally anticipated for June, now could occur as early as mid-May, if Salazar keeps healing as quickly as he has. And if he can work it into his managing schedule.
The cast finally is off his right forearm, broken when he was felled by that foul ball, but he’s throwing distances of only about 60 feet right now. And whereas most minor league managers also double as third-base coaches, Salazar will be dugout-bound — but for only this five-game homestand, he hopes, and mostly to get up to speed on signals and plays.
“You don’t have a measure,” Graciela Salazar responded almost poetically in her seat behind home plate when asked how proud she was of her husband of 33 years. “After his first surgery, I asked him ‘How do you feel?’ He said his first fear was ‘I [won’t] get back to the stadium.’”
When he did Friday, he ran straight into the local and national media. Four TV stations, the Associated Press and espn.com lined up for interviews and a Sports Illustrated photographer fired away with a camera as Salazar did the same with a fungo bat during an afternoon fielding drill.
Afterward, Salazar mostly seemed relieved to have the first game over.
"I was happy to be in the dugout and finally the time had come," he said. "It feels a little weird, but after a couple of days everything is going to be part of the game. I was feeling pleased with the way I handled the players and coaches.
"I stayed focused on what was going on on the field and I paid attention to every hitter as he came to the plate."
As for what he told the Hillcats players when he talked to them Friday, the first time he had met most of them:
"I just said, ‘I'm back down here, so look at me as a normal person. My injury is in the past, and I'm here to teach and guide you guys.'"
The Hillcats’ first season as a Braves affiliate is a big story, said Justin Feldkamp, weekend sports anchor at the Lynchburg ABC affiliate, but not nearly as big as the story of the first-year manager who nearly lost it all five weeks ago.
All the attention and distractions would be worthwhile, Salazar suggested, if it somehow ended up making McCann feel better about having hit that foul ball.
“I spoke to him about 10 days ago, and he keeps in touch with my kids,” Salazar said of the Braves’ catcher. “He’s going to be so happy when he finally sees these pictures of me getting on the field.”
