Richie Sexson: standing tall in Seattle: Mariners slugger is back from serious injury and ready to do "whatever it takes" to return to his 40-homer status

Baseball Digest, July, 2005 by Ted Miller

ON APRIL 28, 2004, ALLISON Sexson was watching her son play baseball as she had hundreds of times before.

Unlike most mothers, she could do that from the comfort of her living room because Richie Sexson is a big league ballplayer, a fact that still flushes her with maternal pride.

There was one out in the eighth inning of a tight game between the Arizona Diamondbacks, for whom Richie played first base, and the Chicago Cubs. Flame-throwing right-hander LaTroy Hawkins had just taken the hill because Richie had only one hit in 12 at-bats against him with four strikeouts.

It was a 1-0 count. Richie was 0-for-3, and his family will tell you he tends to press when he doesn't feel like he's doing enough for his team.

Sexson thought he liked Hawkins' next pitch. Then he didn't. He tried to stop his swing.

"He just crumpled to the ground," Allison said. "I knew it was bad because he usually jumps right up. But I couldn't tell what happened."

Her husband, John, was in the shower.

"She was in tears when she came and got me," he said.

Sexson's left shoulder had blown apart. Doctors would later tell him that it was a shoulder subluxation with a bruised humeral head and a torn labrum.

Picture trying to break a fall by extending your arms. Now imagine what might happen to your shoulder if you did that after falling off the roof of your house.

Up to that moment, mapping out Sexson's athletic career would have been easy. It was a steady ascent toward stardom with almost no setbacks. He was a three-sport standout at Prairie High School in Brush Prairie, Oregon raised in a loving, stable middle-class home. He was a 6-foot-8 giant from a small town who'd made the big time.

This freakish, career-threatening injury dramatically interrupted that, a thought that crept into Allison's mind.

"This is the first thing he's had to deal with like this," she said. "I was kind of curious to see how he was going to handle it."

When Sexson made his Mariners debut last April with a pair of home runs and five RBI, it immediately made the decision to sign him for four years seem like manifest brilliance.

Of course, it's never that simple.

It was a long way from Brush Prairie to the major leagues, and the distance between that ill-fated checked swing and Opening Day glory at Safeco Field was the most arduous part of the journey.

Northwest Connection

"RICHIE! RICHIE! RICHIE SEXSON! I'm from Portland!" a fan with slightly disconcerting urgency shouted as Sexson passed by obliviously, eyes straight ahead.

Sexson heard that sort of entreaty every day during spring training in Peoria, Arizona. He never knew how many best friends he had until he won the lottery with the Mariners.

"I'll be running around and someone will be like, 'Dude, when we were six, we went hydro-tubing!' "Sexson said. "There's all these people you met when you were three who swear they were your best friend. Everyone was your little league coach. You get a lot of that. But you know who your friends are and who your friends have always been.

"You try to be nice. But there's a fine line. You can't say yes to everybody. That's the only downfall of playing near home. All these people come out from everywhere--all the people who you've ever said hello to or met. They swear they've grown up with you."

It's easy to look at this as a homecoming. Sexson, 30, has settled with his wife, Kerry, in Ridgefield, which is just north of his hometown of Brush Prairie (actually, he's from Hockinson, but Brush Prairie, population 2,400, gets all the love because it has a post office).

That's a convenient media angle, but Sexson said he returned to the Northwest to work. And win. He's not taken by the romance of playing near home.

That's part of the reason he's keeping the hype at arm's length. He changed his phone number. He's put his parents in charge of four season tickets, so he doesn't have to deal with requests. He's established boundaries with reporters. He doesn't let anything distract him from an extensive workout regimen designed to keep his shoulder intact.

This is a business, not a field of dreams. His career, legacy and a lot of money are at stake.

Before his contract was inked, he had to complete an extensive medical exam that tested his shoulder from every angle. At the time, he called it "a NASA experiment."

Though the Post-Intelligencer first reported his signing, his agent, Casey Close, continued to talk with Baltimore, just in case things didn't work out. So there was at least a bit of lingering doubt. Nonetheless, there is no provision in his contract should he re-injure his shoulder.

"(The examination) took the better part of a day and was more thorough than I even would have been," general manager Bill Bavasi said. "We have no reservations about his shoulder."

Perhaps, but how Sexson hurt his shoulder surely crosses some fingers in the front office. Jamming a shoulder while diving into a base is one thing; throwing it out of joint while performing a basic baseball movement is another.

Mariners trainer Rick Griffin, who works on the shoulder for 15 to 20 minutes, five to six days a week, admitted he'd never heard of a player dislocating his shoulder with a checked swing.