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'It's so hard knowing you're done'

The Rays' Tony Saunders tearfully acknowledges that his baseball career is over.

By JOHN ROMANO

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 27, 2000

[Times photo: Lisa DeJong] His injured left arm wrapped, Tony Saunders tries to hold back tears as he announces his retirement from baseball.

ST. PETERSBURG -- The tattoo is drawn on the top of the left shoulder. Its design is elaborate, yet the message is simple. Two words -- My World -- written in script above a hand holding a baseball.

It was drawn less than two years ago, but it might as well have been in another life. Back in a day when Tony Saunders really believed the world rested comfortably in his left hand whenever he picked up a baseball.

Now the tattoo will forever mock the arm on which it belongs.

At age 26, that part of his world is gone. Saunders acknowledged that Saturday morning, announcing his retirement in a voice choked with sobs.

The world shattered for Saunders Thursday night, just inches below that tattoo, when the humerus bone in his left arm snapped for the second time in 15 months. He had been in the middle of authoring one of the most remarkable comeback stories in sports when the end was rewritten without his consent.

"It's so hard knowing you're done," Saunders said.

He knew it though. Just as surely as he knew the bone had betrayed him again. Saunders rolled on the mound at Florida Power Park on Thursday night and knew that his playing career already was turning into a memory.

"I can't do it again," Saunders said. "It's just ... it's not physically or mentally, but I don't know what can happen. And I want my health ... I want to quit while I'm ahead."

As Saunders talked about these things at a news conference at Tropicana Field, his wife, Joyce, stood in the back of the room. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, as if to protect a heart that surely was aching.

Joyce was worried. Not for Tony. Not for his career. He is strong and he will move on, she said. When she was trying frantically to catch a flight from Baltimore after getting the news Thursday night, Tony called her from a cell phone in the ambulance to let her know everything was going to be all right.

Instead, at this moment, Joyce was worried about their daughter. Samantha was back home in Baltimore with Joyce's parents. They had not wanted her to see the graphic videotape of Tony's arm breaking in mid-pitch, but she had caught a glimpse on television.

The first time Saunders broke his arm, on May 26, 1999, in a game at Tropicana Field, Samantha was 21 months old. For weeks to follow, the toddler would kiss his cast to make the boo-boo better.

As Saunders began his comeback this year, first pitching simulated games to Devil Rays hitters and later pitching a handful of innings at a time in minor-league games, Samantha would say the same thing when he left the house.

"Daddy don't break your arm."

Now they were returning to their home outside of Baltimore. The home built on the fortunes of his left arm. And Saunders was returning in a cast.

"Everybody there is devastated," Joyce said. "I can't imagine what it's going to be like when we get home."

For that matter, neither did Saunders. Days removed from a life-altering moment, he said it was too soon to plan a new future.

Devil Rays managing general partner Vince Naimoli has said Saunders always will have a job in the organization if he wants it. Saunders said he appreciates the sentiment, but he has no idea of his next direction. He will remain in Baltimore, he said, until he's feeling a little better and then will return to Tampa Bay to discuss his options.

"They're still standing behind me," Saunders said. "I'm not going to win them any more baseball games, but they're still going to be there."

The last time Saunders broke his arm, he suffered nerve damage that affected his hand and fingers. The recovery ran most of last year. Within minutes of breaking his arm, Saunders said he knew this was not as severe. He could move his fingers, which meant no nerve damage. He also was not in nearly as much pain.

Even still, Saunders said he has no thoughts about attempting another comeback. Three other pitchers have suffered similar injuries in the past decade and none made it back with any success.

Saunders believed he could defy the odds because he was younger than the others and his break had not required surgery to repair. He had thrown thousands of pitches this year as he rebuilt his arm strength and worked on his curveball and changeup.

Doctors had told him there was no reason to believe his arm would break again and he carried their words like a shield on his chest. Even now, after his arm broke inches from the original injury, doctors say there is no rational explanation.

"I didn't want to think about (the possibility). It wouldn't have let me do what I needed to do to get myself back," Saunders said. "I told myself the whole way, if this is going to happen, I want to do it going after it and not being passive.

"There's nothing else I could have done. Nothing. I did everything they asked me to do and a little bit more. It's just one of those things, I guess. You can't explain it, just deal with it."

This is a different Tony Saunders speaking than the one who was selected by the Devil Rays from the Marlins with the first pick of the expansion draft in the winter of 1997. That Tony Saunders was coming off a rookie season in which he beat the defending NL champion Braves three times and earned a World Series ring.

That Tony Saunders was cocky to the point of arrogance. He did not suffer fools gladly and was determined to maintain his macho persona at all times.

If time healed his wounds last year, it also soothed his soul. Teammates and club officials agree that Saunders has mellowed since the first injury. He has become more accommodating and less wary of showing his emotions.

He and Joyce had another baby and Tony spent more and more time talking of his family and their times together.

"Tony said very candidly, having the time away and having gone through this, he realized that he reorganized his priorities," Rays manager Larry Rothschild said. "And while he loved baseball and wanted to have the comeback, and did everything he could to have it, he realized where it stood in his life and what his family meant. He got a different perspective on things."

Around the time he got the tattoo on his left shoulder, Saunders had another imprinted on his right. This one was a portrait of Samantha.

He did not have the same message written by this image, but then maybe it wasn't necessary. The intent was the same.

My world.

- Staff writer Bruce Lowitt contributed to this report.

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