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Some scary thoughts raced through Austin Meadows’ mind when it happened, and rightfully so.
“A lot of fear, definitely,” he said. “With an eye, it’s scary.”
Playing catch during spring training – 120-foot long toss, to be exact – an errant throw hit off someone else’s glove nearby, ricocheted and drilled Meadows in the right eye.
“Pretty freak thing,” he added.
Meadows is a good-looking kid, just 20 years old. He’s an elite prospect, ranked No. 22 in the minors this year by Baseball America. He has, industry insiders believe, an incredibly bright future.
When that ball hit him in the eye seven weeks ago, it put everything in danger.
“I had a lot of stuff going through my head,” Meadows said. “But once they calmed me down, I had a better understanding of what was going on.”
Fortunately, Meadows was able to avoid serious injury. He suffered a fractured orbital bone that required surgery and kept him out of action for a few weeks, but all in all, he was lucky.
So lucky, in fact, that Meadows had to miss less than three weeks of the Curve’s season.
He did his rehab work in extended spring training, made it to Altoona on Sunday and was on the field for the first time during Monday night’s 3-0 loss to Erie before 2,185 fans at Peoples Natural Gas Field.
“It was great to get back out there,” Meadows, the No. 9 overall pick in the 2013 draft, said. “I enjoyed the time down in extended, worked hard to get back to this point, but I’m really looking forward to the season with these guys.”
Meadows played center field and batted leadoff for the Curve, going 1-for-4, as they had their three-game winning streak snapped. He beat out an infield single to second base in his first at-bat of the season, then followed with a strikeout and two groundouts.
Asked if there was any rust for him, he said, “I feel like I’m in a good spot right now.”
Meadows will be a primary focal point of the Curve all season, given his prospect status, and will be challenged in his first extensive taste of Double-A. He spent six regular-season games and the playoffs with Altoona last year, playing well and showing glimpses of why he’s so highly rated.
“He’s a good player, and we expect big things out of him, no doubt,” manager Joey Cora said.
It might take a little bit of time, Cora added, for Meadows to get acclimated to this level, just as with any youngster in Double-A.
For now, Meadows is having to wear a face guard on his batting helmet and protective glasses, which got a little foggy Monday.
“I’ve just got to get used to it,” he said. “I’m not sure how much longer I’ve got to wear it, so we’ll see what happens.”
Meadows didn’t show any rust playing the outfield Monday, running down a ball in the left-center field gap on a nice play to end the top of the ninth.
“I don’t know if I got lucky, but I felt like I made a pretty good route to the ball, just kind of stuck my glove out,” he said.
Meadows is an impressive defensive center fielder, but that’s not the only position he will play this season. Cora wants to make sure the youngster develops in all aspects, so he will play him at the corner outfield spots on occasion.
“It will be good for him,” Cora said. “You never know what the big league team will need by the time he’s ready.”
Meadows has played some corner outfield in high school and the Arizona Fall League, so that won’t be totally foreign to him.
“Any way I can help the team out, it doesn’t matter where they put me,” he said.
The fact that he only had to miss about three weeks of the season is amazing given how bad things could have been for Meadows. But looking at him now, there are no physical signs of the eye injury at all, and he’s back to just being an everyday baseball player.
“Everything’s 100 percent, everything’s back to normal, so it’s good,” he said.
SUBHD: Game recap
Key player: Erie RHP Tommy Collier allowed only three hits in seven shutout innings for Erie.
Key play: CF Jason Krizan’s two-run double in the seventh inning stretched the SeaWolves’ lead to 3-0.
Key stat: CF Austin Meadows went 1-for-4 with an infield single in his first game of the season.
SUBHD: How they scored
Top 6th: Green solo homer (0-1).
Top 7th: Bortnick doubled, Nunez singled, both scored on Krizan double (0-3).