Back on track

It was December 2005, four months after his shoulder surgery, and Richie Gardner -- the former Maria Carrillo High School baseball star -- was horsing around with his wife, Heather, at their home in Sarasota, Fla.

The couple has citrus tress on their property, and Heather playfully tossed an orange to Richie. When he tried to lob it back, the Cincinnati Reds' 2004 minor league player of the year felt his arm lock up before he could bring it even with his head. The fruit fell harmlessly to the ground.

Richie didn't say anything to his wife at the time. She didn't say anything to him. Months later, reflecting on the moment, they realized both had been overcome with the same certainty: Richie Gardner would never pitch again.

"It was serious emotional trauma," Gardner said by phone from Florida recently. "It's like if you were a carpenter and they took away your hammer, and told you to build a house without a hammer. My arm is my livelihood."

But the Gardners were wrong.

After a grueling rehabilitation and a solid 2007 season at three different minor-league levels, Gardner finds himself on the Reds' 40-man roster. On Feb. 16 he'll report to spring training at the team's facility, two blocks from his house, where he will compete for a major-league roster spot.

"I think he'll probably be pitching in Triple A (in 2008), but stranger things have happened," Reds director of player development Terry Reynolds said. "The great part about the 40-man invite is you get to prove yourself in front of the people who really count -- the manager and the GM."

Gardner's big-league opportunity must seem almost predestined to those who watched him grow up. "I've known him since he was like 10," said Steve Tagnolli, his coach at Maria Carrillo. "I remember seeing him at the Little League park in Rincon Valley. He'd have a 5 p.m. game, and at 10:00 in the morning he'd be walking around in his uniform."

After starring for three seasons at Carrillo (he was part of the Pumas' first varsity baseball team in 1997), Gardner pitched well at Santa Rosa Junior College and then the University of Arizona.

The Reds selected the right-hander in the sixth round of the 2003 amateur draft, and the next year he won the Chief Bender Award as the organization's top minor leaguer after going 13-5 with a 2.53 ERA and striking out 139 at Single-A Potomac and Double-A Chattanooga. Heading into the 2005 season, Baseball America ranked Gardner as the third-best prospect in the Reds' system.

"He was an excellent competitor between the lines, almost to the point where he was a little obstinate at times," said Bill Moloney, who was Gardner's pitching coach at Chattanooga and now works for the Columbus Catfish of the South Atlantic League. "His attitude was, 'My stuff is good enough to beat you,' and you want that. On the flip side, we would clash a couple times. He was not belligerent, but he was not afraid to say, 'I'm gonna pitch this way.' "

But even as Gardner was earning accolades and exuding confidence, he knew that something was wrong with his pitching shoulder. He showed up to spring training in '05 in less-than-optimal pitching shape and found that his velocity had dipped from about 92 mph to 87 or 88, and his ball had lost some movement.

Gardner pitched in 2005, but he no longer looked like a hot prospect. His ERA ballooned to over 7.00, and he gave up more than 14 hits per nine innings.

The Reds twice put him on the disabled list, and he eventually recaptured his speed. But the shoulder still felt wrong. Finally, the team ordered an MRI exam, and it revealed torn labrum cartilage, a slight tear of the right biceps muscle, a fraying of the rotator cuff and a cyst below the biceps.

Just like that, Gardner's career was in doubt. He had surgery on Aug. 3, 2005.

The Reds' training staff told him he'd be out six or seven months, a time frame that could get him back for spring training in 2006. But others in the organization told him it would take at least a year and a half. That proved to be the accurate prognosis.

Gardner dove into his rehab with typical enthusiasm, but there were times, like the orange toss, when his confidence bottomed out. Worst of all was 10 months into his recovery.

He had started to pitch again, and was generally getting people out at high Single-A Sarasota, though he still wasn't cracking 86 on the radar gun. Then he had one terrible start, and was called into a meeting with the team manager and several representatives from the wider Reds organization. They told Gardner they were sending him down to the low Single-A Gulf Coast League.

"I just broke down," he said. "I was so distraught, because I couldn't do what I wanted to do. That night, I'm not ashamed to admit it, I was crying. My wife and I talked about it for days, and I almost quit."