Baseball: Conig's Comeback | TIME

His first pitch came in tight. I jumped back and my helmet flew off. There was this tremendous ringing noise. I couldn’t stand it. Just a loud shriek all over me. I was trying to find some place in my mouth where I could get air through, but I couldn’t breathe. I kept saying to myself, “Oh, God, let me breathe.” I didn’t think about my future in baseball. I just wanted to stay alive.

Thus did Boston Red Sox Outfielder Tony Conigliaro describe that terrible night of Aug. 18, 1967, when a ball thrown by California Angels Pitcher Jack Hamilton smashed into his left temple. He was injured so severely that doctors predicted he would never play professional baseball again. But Conigliaro fought an extraordinary battle to prove the doctors wrong. Last week, as the Grapefruit Circuit closed, the 24-year-old Conigliaro was not only back in uniform but whacking the ball with the gusto and effectiveness of old.

Hopelessly Blurred. The League’s pitchers have not forgotten Conigliaro. In 1965, his second season with the Red Sox, the 6-ft. 3-in. slugger from Swampscott, Mass., hit 32 home runs to lead the American League. The following year, he cracked 28 home runs. When he was cut down in Fenway Park, he was batting .287, had belted 20 home runs and had played a major role in the campaign that eventually landed Boston its first pennant in 21 years.

But there was no World Series for Tony that year. The pitched ball had fractured his cheekbone in three places and dislocated his jaw; it also left him completely blind for 48 hours after the accident. When he was released from the hospital eight days later, the imprint of the baseball’s stitches was still visible on his brow, and the vision of his left eye was hopelessly blurred.

Neither Tony nor his family would quit. His mother said novenas to St. Jude (patron saint of hopeless cases). His father offered his eyes for transplants. The experts sadly shook their heads. Tony was through, they said. The force of the blow had punched a tiny hole in his retina, thus causing a loss of depth perception, a hitter’s most valuable asset. Tony still insisted on going to spring training last year, but his performance only confirmed the medical diagnosis. In batting practice he missed pitches by a full foot. In exhibition games he struck out constantly. Finally, after fanning three times against the Washington Senators, he stormed into the clubhouse and, as one observer recalled, “nearly tore the place apart.”

Said Red Sox Trainer Buddy LeRoux: “How can you blame a 23-year-old kid who finds out he can’t see?”The handsome slugger then took a halfhearted swing at entertainment. At St. Mary’s High School in Lynn, Mass., he had proved as accomplished onstage as on the diamond, so he traded on his name to land bookings on Cape Cod and around Boston. He sang once on the Johnny Carson Show and cut several records, but it was clear that he was not destined to be the next Sinatra. Conigliaro could not have cared less. “I would rather have played baseball for nothing,” he recalls.

Swinging Ever Since. Tony made another comeback try in November—this time as a pitcher in the Florida Instructional League. “I got bombed in my second start,” he admits. In that same game, however, he lined two clean hits. Inexplicably, Tony’s vision had improved from 20/300 to 20/20, and his eyesight was pronounced normal by puzzled doctors at Boston’s Retina Foundation. “When I heard the news,” he says, “I ordered a supply of bats.”

He has been swinging them ever since. After rejoining the Red Sox this spring, Boston Manager Dick Williams says, “Tony regained his touch and started stinging the ball. He’s looked like the old Conig.” Conigliaro himself says he can now “get his eye on the spin of the ball,” recently proved it by whacking a single and a home run to lead the Red Sox to a 4-3 victory over the Cincinnati Reds. “Tony never doubted that he could do it,” says Williams, “and he made believers out of all of us.” Tony has made such a believer of Williams, in fact, that the Red Sox manager will start him in right field position this week in the season’s opener against Baltimore.

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