Weislow injury bad luck

By Joe Conroy

Published: July 26, 2008

Jonathan Weislow laid almost motionless in the Battlefield High outfield grass, his hands still stretched to full-extension. He looked up and saw the field ump, the father of a friend, and said, “I made the catch. I made the catch.”

Unfortunately for the newest Haymarket center fielder, missing the ball wouldn’t have been the worst thing to happen to him on the play that July 10.

Diving while at a full-sprint on a ball in the right-center field gap, Weislow slammed into right fielder Ben Wendell, lodging his right shoulder into Wendell’s torso.

“I was watching Jon the whole way and I could tell he was going to get to the ball,” said Scott Newell, one of the team’s owners. Newell was working as the internet broadcaster when the collision happened. “At first I was looking to see if they were moving and I could see Ben rolling a little and Jon was kicking his feet, so I knew that was good.”

Newell said the violence with which the two impacted could be heard all the way behind home plate, “like two linebackers hitting.”

Weislow stayed on the ground, unable to force his broken body to get up. He tried to roll over, but the messages wouldn’t leave his brain and travel to his limbs.

He wasn’t in pain. It was more just the shock of the sudden stop that kept him on the turf.

Emergency crews arrived faster than anyone expected, seemingly as if they were in the crowd already.

It was just Weislow’s first start with the Valley Baseball League team, arriving fresh from the College World Series as a member of the University of Miami squad. He couldn’t be hurt already.

“The first thing I thought laying on the ground was, ‘I’m done. I’m not playing baseball anymore. It’s just not fun anymore,’” Weislow said recently.

Both Weislow and Wendell were taken to Prince William County Hospital (Wendell was transferred to Fairfax when internal injuries were discovered and has since been released).

Weislow, a 6-foot-1, 200-pound center fielder, had broken his right scapula (part of the shoulder blade that connects the humerus to the clavicle), the metacarpal in his right hand and his mandible (the lower jaw), knocking nearly all his lower teeth loose.

Senators teammate Scott Krieger, one of Weislow’s closest friends on the team, arrived at the two sprawled outfielders from the dugout first trying to assess the damage.

“The first thing I said to Scott was ‘How does my grill look?’” Weislow said, referring to his teeth.

“This is my money-maker,” he added, pointing to a grin now filled with braces. (Weislow said he’ll likely need the teeth removed and replaced with implants once he’s completely healed.)

“It was one of the hardest things I’ve seen in a long time,” Krieger said. “It was really scary and before the play was over our trainer was out there, I was out there. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

It was not the first time Weislow has had to deal with an injury, unfortunately. In fact, Weislow’s list of injuries sound like a compilation of an entire team’s hurt players rather than of one player.

Since graduating from Bishop O’Connell in 2005 when he was the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference Player of the Year and an all-state first teamer, Weislow has torn his left anterior cruciate ligament with the Virginia Barnstormers in 2005, broken the hamate bone in his right hand taking batting practice the next year, and sprained his ankle in the Cape Cod League in 2007.

After the ACL didn’t heal quickly enough at George Mason University, Weislow obtained a medical red-shirt and later his release for the 2006 summer.

“I just really wasn’t ready to play,” he said. “It was weak, I wasn’t running fast at all. I needed to get healthy.”

Weislow said the process to leave GMU was not an easy one once he found out that programs such as perennial baseball powerhouse Miami was interested in his services.

In his first season with Miami Weislow batted .313 in 19 games played despite the sore hand, a marked improvement over his numbers at GMU when he hit .152.

The Hurricanes were the nation’s top-ranked team in 2008, boasting several players that would be selected in the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft. Weislow even started in left at the beginning of the season, but gave way to Dave DiNatale by game three.

“Everybody is good at Miami,” Weislow said, obviously impressed. “I mean, everyone can play there, everyone.”

The Miami coaching staff wanted Weislow to get more at-bats than just the 24 he had this past spring and they thought playing in the VBL would give him the experience he needs to take over the starting center field job for 2009. Little did they know he would get to the plate just twice while wearing a Senators’ jersey before smashing into his teammate.

“It’s almost funny,” Weislow says with a laugh. “I called my trainer (after the collision) and he answered the phone saying, ‘There is no way you are calling me to say you’re hurt.’

“It’d be easy to say that it’s the way that I play or that I’m reckless or something,” Weislow said. “But the injuries that I’ve had are just bad luck. Who swings and breaks their hand?”

That hamate break was almost the clincher for Weislow.

“I just swung the bat and my hand broke,” he said, almost not believing it himself. “They casted me for seven weeks and when they took it off, my hand was still broken.”

Doctors decided that surgery to remove the hook part of the offending bone, a common practice for baseball players with this injury.

“I even have a neat scar,” he said, showing off the distinct line running along his palm.

After this season’s injury it would have been easy for Weislow to head back to Miami or just stay with his mom, Michelle, in Herndon.

Instead he comes out to every game, working as the PA announcer during games, introducing his teammates as they come to bat or calling games for Newell online.

“Maybe if this baseball thing doesn’t work out, I’ll have another career lined up,” Weislow said, smiling confidently.