By Jason Molinet
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
Ryan Martello squared to bunt, but the high-and-inside fastball forced the Carle Place senior to lurch backward.
Fall baseball is simply a way of keeping sharp. But at that harrowing moment, it became a life-defining event for Martello and two coaches whose quick thinking saved his life. That’s because the pitch bore in on Martello, glanced off the top of the wood bat and hit him in the chest.
Martello has played with a congenital heart defect since he took up hockey at the age of 5. So the teenager wasn’t concerned one day last month when he opened his baseball duffel and discovered a key piece of gear missing - his heart guard.
As a goalie, pucks routinely pepper his body. All the padding is simply part of the job. But body armor for baseball? When was the last time you saw a big leaguer nailed in the chest with a pitch? It simply doesn’t happen.
“I just rushed out of the house and didn’t have it in my baseball bag,” Martello said. “I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal.”
After a 1-for-3 performance in the first game of a doubleheader on Sept. 17 at Clarke, Martello stepped to the plate again in the top of the fifth with runners on first and second base and one out. Martello was told to bunt.
But when the ball hit him in the chest, Martello lost consciousness and slammed face-down to the ground.
“My first thought was ‘He got the wind knocked out of him,’ ” said Clarke baseball coach Tom Abruscato, who rushed from the opposing dugout to help the fallen player. “When I rolled him over he was unconscious. Then I leaned down to check his pulse.”
There was none.
Commotio cordis - a sudden disturbance of the heart rhythm through blunt force trauma - is an all-too-familiar term among Long Island high school administrators. Northport lacrosse player Louis Acompora died in 2000 when he was struck in the chest with a ball, an event which drove home the need for portable defibrillators at high school events.
Carle Place coach Mike Bello, who arrived a split-second later, knew of Martello’s heart history. He placed an open palm on Martello’s chest and gave it a sudden push, mimicking a chest compression. Martello coughed, then started to breathe, slipping in and out of consciousness for 10 minutes.
All coaches must be certified in CPR. This is the first time Abruscato or Bello ever needed to put the training into practice. “You think when you take these classes, ‘I hope I never have to do it,’ ” Bello said. “But it makes me feel good that it works and I didn’t freeze.”
Martello was taken by ambulance to Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, where he was treated and released that night. Such a close call might have been enough to end someone else’s athletic career. It might have sent another back into the protective bubble.
Not Martello, 17, who returned to the lineup two weeks later. “Sports is what represents me in school,” Martello said. “I never thought about not playing. Sports is my life.”
Not everyone gets a second chance. One Carle Place teenager has. And upon further review, he wouldn’t change a thing.
“He wanted to be like everyone else,” Martello’s father, Steven, said. “He wants to live life to its fullest and you have to admire him for that.”
You don’t have to be a father to appreciate that outlook.