UF's Brandon McArthur, recovered from a head injury, returns to baseball.
By MIKE READLING
Published June 29, 2004
Brandon McArthur sat in a Minnesota hotel room Monday morning and counted the minutes on the clock next to his bed.
It mattered little that one of those minutes seemed to pass about as fast as the eight hours that stood between him and the only place he has wanted to be the past 11 months.
McArthur, 19, had waited this long, so what's a few more hours? Finally, the clock read 7:05 p.m. and McArthur walked onto Mayo Field, took his position at third base and successfully completed his return to competitive baseball.
The team he was playing for, the Rochester Honkers, didn't matter. The opponent, the Madison Mallards, was insignificant. That it all happened in the little-known Northwoods League, an NCAA-sanctioned summer league, was irrelevant.
Brandon McArthur was back in baseball, on the field, in a situation that counted in the standings.
Monday night was a night that was never supposed to happen for McArthur.
The Armwood graduate and 2003 Saladino Award recipient was critically injured in an unprovoked attack after the final day of fall practice at the University of Florida. Former UF student Jonathan Head sucker-punched McArthur outside the Grog House bar in Gainesville on Oct. 30. McArthur fell into a wall and hit his head. (Head pleaded guilty to felony battery in March and was sentenced to one year in jail.)
McArthur was rushed to the hospital, where he was comatose five days after two operations on his brain. Doctors prepared his parents for the worst as they struggled to determine how much damage one punch had caused.
McArthur said he remembers little of his time in the hospital and never felt any pain. He said he watched an ESPN feature on himself during SportsCenter on Sunday night but couldn't keep from grimacing at the hospital-bed pictures that flashed across the screen and the excerpts from the 911 call minutes after the incident.
"It was very hard to watch," McArthur said. "I was very emotional. I'd never seen the pictures. I don't know who the girl is who called 911. I realized then just how very close I was to passing away."
One of the reasons McArthur said he chose to play in Rochester this summer was because of the Florida connection. Gators teammates Adam Sanabria, Matt Eckardt, Stephen Barton and Jeff Corsaletti, who was with him the night of the attack, play for the Honkers.
"I love Jeff," McArthur said. "He basically saved my life that night. He's an angel to me. But I didn't come here because of one person. We Gators are all like a family. We're all very close, and I wanted to go some place where I knew some other players."
McArthur joined the Gators while still rehabbing. He attended every practice in the spring and was in uniform at every home game. He took batting practice and infield with the team but did not play any games because of the NCAA's strict rules governing redshirt eligibility. Now he's ready for real competition.
"I just want to go out and play like I know I can play," McArthur said. "I want to show all the people who supported me that I can do it."
- Times staff writer Antonya English contributed to this report.
