Being back in Omaha this week for the College World Series has to be pretty special for Robin Ventura. He's been part of the ESPN broadcast team for the CWS and will be in the booth for Wednesday night's game between Vanderbilt and North Carolina.
Though college baseball's championship is no longer played at Rosenblatt Stadium ? it's been moved to the new, corporately tagged TD Ameritrade Park ? Ventura thrived on the sport's biggest stage. As a sophomore in 1987, he extended his NCAA Division I record-hitting streak to 58 games and helped Oklahoma State to the final, where it lost to Stanford.
Ventura might have an even greater appreciation for being back around the game (in July, he'll rejoin the Chicago White Sox organization as a special advisor and roving minor league instructor), if for no other reason than he'll be able to walk on his feet pain-free. As he shared with both the ESPN Baseball Today podcast and Los Angeles Times recently, Ventura underwent ankle transplant surgery a few years ago that finally alleviated the pain he dealt with ever since breaking and dislocating his right ankle in the spring of 1997.
That Ventura was able to play for eight more years ? including a 32-homer, 120-RBI season in 1999 with the New York Mets ? is a testament to his perseverance and the effectiveness of painkillers. But dealing with an arthritic condition months after his playing career ended in 2004 became unbearable.
As Ventura remembers it, "I told my wife, 'I am at the point where if I have to cut it off, I'll cut it off,' because it hurt that bad. 'Take it right below the knee. I don't care.'"
Fortunately for him, a surgeon offered a much less severe�? but perhaps no less drastic ? solution. The procedure, called an ankle allograft (warning: that link contains some graphic medical photos toward the end of the page), involves replacing the damaged joint with healthy bone and cartilage harvested from a cadaver.
Call it a bionic ankle, Franken-ankle or whatever, but being able to walk and drive himself around again has allowed�Ventura to embrace a new career in baseball. In addition to his ESPN broadcast duties and his pending job with the White Sox, Ventura also works as a volunteer coach at a California high school. That certainly beats having to use a cane at the age of 43.
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