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Bad hop nearly took baseball player's life, but not his spirit

The high school senior didn't have time to react, and the ball hit him in the middle of the face.
Credit: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press
Waterford Mott senior Grant Johnson, left, talks with his coach Collin McGran before a game against Lake Orion in Clarkston on May 29, 2018.

WATERFORD, Mich. - The third baseman couldn't breathe and was turning blue. Blood gushed from his mouth and nose.

The shortstop held his long-time buddy in his arms and screamed for help.

The woman who is trained in CPR and works in cardiology stood on the hill, watching the commotion. She rushed onto the field and checked for a pulse, not knowing she was working on her own son because he was covered with so much blood. She looked into his eyes. They were gray and glazed. She saw death.

The Lakeland baseball coach lifted the young man’s head, keeping it off the field as he started to seize.

The Waterford Mott coach held the player's arms, trying to keep him from flailing around. The rest of the team knelt on the field, wrapping their arms together and bowing their heads in prayer.

But from this frightening, horrific near-death experience, something beautiful happened. An intense sports rivalry melted away. A baseball community came together on social media, offering prayers and support, and these teenagers showed how much they love and care.

It revealed something about all of them.

Something pretty amazing.

Grant Johnson was hit in the the face by a baseball during a game on May 8, 2018. Waterford Mott's coach, a teammate and Johnson share what happened. (Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press)

'It was horrific'

The varsity baseball field at Lakeland is tucked at the back of a sprawling school complex, in the woods, far off the main road in Livingston County. It’s a first-class facility with some stadium seating and a sound system that blares music between innings. Many parents sit on the hill, in lawn chairs, behind home plate, with a panoramic view of the field.

It feels like the field is set in a bowl.

It was May 8, and the sun was setting behind the trees. Just enough time for another inning or so.

Grant Johnson, a Mott senior, was playing even with the bag at third base. It was the second game of the three-game series, and the conference title was on the line.

Lakeland’s No. 9 hitter, who had been smashing the ball all day, came to the plate. He ripped a vicious line drive. Johnson reacted instantly, reading the ball off the bat. He took a step to his right and reached out his glove, leaning over. He remembers diving, though others thought he simply bent over. The ball took a nasty bounce.

Johnson didn't have time to react, and the ball hit him in the middle of his face, between his nose and upper lip. The ball ricocheted towards the Lakeland dugout, and Johnson went down.

Waterford Mott senior Carlos Moyet warms up before a game against Lake Orion in Clarkston on May 29, 2018. (Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press)

Carlos Moyet, a senior shortstop, ran to Johnson. They have been friends for years. They played on the same little league team, the same travel team, and have shared countless rides to practices and games. Moyet thought the ball had hit Johnson in the chest.

“As soon as it hit him, he fell to the ground, crawling on his hands and knees, almost as if he was confused, looking around, like he didn’t know what was going on,” Moyet said.

Moyet checked on Johnson.

“I went up to him and patted his back like, ‘Hey Grant, you good?' ” Moyet said.

Johnson looked at Moyet briefly.

“When he looked at me, the veins were (bulging) out of his head, out of his neck, his face, more veins than you will see on an Ironman’s arms,” Moyet said. “It was unbelievable the detail I was able to see in his neck and face. His pupils were very, very small.”

Johnson said Moyet’s name as Johnson's eyes rolled to the back of his head.

“That’s when all of the blood came out of his nose and mouth,” Moyet said. “It got all over my hands and my pants and my cleats. It was horrific. I’ve never seen anything like that. Nobody else saw what I saw. It was hard.”

Johnson started shaking violently.

“He went straight as a board, fell into my arms and just started seizing,” Moyet said. “I was just screaming his name, ‘Grant! Grant!’ I started waving for people to come. I was asking him to ‘Stop! Stop!’ and he wouldn’t.”

When coaches arrived, they made Moyet let go.

“I went to the side,” Moyet said, “and I was going berserk.”

'There was a lot of blood'

Lakeland coach Brad Farquhar was in the third-base box.

“I’ve seen kids get hit a million times,” Farquhar said. “I figured he would shake his head a couple of times and get up.”

Farquhar was the first adult to reach Johnson.

Blood was gushing out of Johnson’s nose and mouth. His tongue swelled and his jaw clenched from the seizure. Johnson couldn’t get any air and his face turned purple.

“It was pretty chaotic,” Farquhar said. “He had started to choke on his own blood. There was a lot of blood.”

Farquhar searched for a pulse and Johnson was non-responsive.

Eventually, Farquhar found a pulse and they moved Johnson on his side, a decision that probably saved his life.

“We had to turn him over and he had to throw up some blood,” Farquhar said. “Luckily, we got the airway cleared.”

Farquhar held Johnson’s head, as the seizure continued.

“He convulsed for a while,” Farquhar said. “I just held his head from keeping it bouncing off the ground, as you are supposed to do. Kind of let him ride it out.”

Mott coach Collin McGran held Johnson’s arms.

“I had his hands, so they weren’t flailing all over the place,” McGran said.

Somebody called 911, and the field was dead silent. Many feared the worst.

The Lakeland players went behind their dugout.

“The players on the side weren’t sure, in that instance, if he was going to make it, just how crazy it was,” Farquhar said.

Johnson went in and out of consciousness.

“He wasn’t in control of his tongue or anything like that,” Farquhar said. “It’s as scary a situation that I’ve ever seen on a baseball field.”

Waterford Mott senior Grant Johnson, looks on during

Waterford Mott senior Grant Johnson, looks on during a game vs. Lake Orion in Clarkston on May 29, 2018. (Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press).

'Oh my God, it's Grant!'

Colleen Johnson was on the hill that overlooks the field. She didn’t expect her son, Grant, to play in the second game of the doubleheader. He had pitched in the first game.

“We were only half paying attention,” she said.

Colleen watched Moyet run to the third baseman and start waving frantically.

She assumed the ball had hit the player in the chest and it was a heart issue. She is trained in CPR and works in Farmington Hills, doing cardiac testing. “I went out on the field, wondering if I could help, still not knowing it was my son,” Colleen said.

The injured third baseman was on the ground, surrounded by people.

Farquhar was still holding his head, while McGran had his arms and legs.

“He was coughing up blood, kind of coughing it all over everybody,” Colleen said. “I remember feeling for a pulse in his neck. I went to his wrist. A guy next to me says, ‘I’ve got a pulse.’”

There was so much blood and confusion, and she still wasn’t sure who it was, so she tugged on his jersey, looking for his number.

They leaned him back, trying to clear his airway.

“Oh my God, it’s Grant!” Colleen said.

His eyes were wide open.

“He has blue eyes but they were gray and they were glassy,” she said. “The only people who I’ve seen, in my field, who look like that are dead. I hate to say. I lost it. It was not one of my finer days.”

She started screaming and crying.

“He was blue,” she said. “He wasn’t moving and his eyes were gray. They had this shimmery glassy look.”

It took paramedics only 6 minutes to arrive, according to both coaches.

The school was also holding a track meet that day, on the other side of the complex, but Lakeland’s trainer was on the scene within 2 minutes, according to Farquhar.

“There was a couple of moments where I wasn’t sure if Grant was going to make it,” McGran said. “It was the longest 6 minutes of my life. It felt like forever.”

Waterford Mott senior Grant Johnson, left, shares a laugh with teammates before a game against Lake Orion in Clarkston on May 29, 2018. Johnson was hit in the middle of the face by a baseball during a game May 8 that resulted in a grade-three concussion and a broken nose and bone on his cheek. (Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press)

'Praying ... as hard as we could'

After the paramedics arrived, both teams started to comfort one another.

“Our whole squad got together, got on one knee, took our hats off and started praying,” Moyet said. “Praying as long as hard as we could.”

They were locked together in a tight circle near home plate, their arms wrapped around each other, their heads bowed.

Moyet led the prayer: “I said, ‘Please God! Don’t this be Grant’s last day! Please bring strength to the doctor’s hands to bring him back. He’s too young and too good of a kid. Don’t bring him home right now. Let us have him a little longer. We don’t want him to go away.’”

He said the Lord's Prayer and Hail Mary.

The game was suspended, as Johnson was taken to the hospital.

“I woke up in the ambulance,” Johnson said, “and I wondered where I was at.”

'A baseball play that went bad'

Johnson was diagnosed with a Grade 3 concussion, which is the most severe.

His nose and a bone in his cheek were broken.

But he started to recover quickly at the hospital after the seizure ended and he could get enough oxygen.

Several people started messaging Johnson. And the Lakeland players and parents were sending him love and prayers on Twitter.

“I had multiple texts, from a bunch of different coaches, checking in to see how he was doing,” McGran said. “It was cool to see how supportive all the coaches were in this area.”

The player who hit the ball felt horrible, according to Farquhar.

“It was just a baseball play that went bad,” Farquhar said. “That night, he was not in good shape. He was not in a good place.”

'You honestly look better this way'

Moyet went to the hospital to visit Grant.

He walked into the room with Johnson’s twin sister, Lauren.

“I was really nervous,” Moyet said. “I walk in and he says, ‘What up suckah!’

“How you doing?” Moyet asked.

“Please tell me I didn’t get any blood on my mitt,” Johnson said.

“No Grant,” Moyet said. “She’s fine. I grabbed her.”

“How you doing?’ Lauren asked.

“I’m fine,” Grant said.

His nose was swollen badly. His head was in a brace.

“You honestly look better this way,” Lauren joked.

On the 10-minute drive from the hospital back to his house, Moyet pulled over several times, trying to regain his composure. He kept seeing flashes of Johnson’s face, right after the accident. The veins. The blood. All the details.

“I couldn’t control myself,” Moyet said.

'We have to bounce back'

The next day, they played the third game of the series.

How would the Mott players react?

How could they get back on a baseball field?

“I went and talked to my guys the next day,” McGran said. “Between everybody here, we have taken over a million ground balls. We can’t just let one freak ground ball keep us down and we have to bounce back.”

They say baseball teaches all kinds of lessons because it is a game that forces you to deal with failure and frustration. But this? This was a whole different level. This was a real-life emergency intruding between the lines, forcing everybody to deal with something they had never seen before on a baseball field.

Grant was released from the hospital and wanted to go to the game to thank everybody for their support.

“I just wanted to show them that I was still part of the team,” Johnson said. “I wasn’t going anywhere. I was still going to be there no matter what.”

He went against his mother’s wishes.

Waterford Mott seniors Grant Johnson, right and his friend and teammate Carlos Moyet cheer on their team during a game against Lake Orion in Clarkston on May 29, 2018. (Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press)

“Needless to say, I wasn’t excited to see him go,” Colleen said.

McGran was stunned when Grant showed up to the game. He thought he was still in the hospital.

“Not much really holds Grant back,” he said. “That was huge for us, for the guys to see Grant wearing his uniform again…. It was a huge sigh of relief.”

Johnson’s presence inspired his teammates and lifted spirits.

“Having Grant in the dugout, especially the next day?” Moyet said. “I felt, we felt, unstoppable. It brought a lot of strength to our hearts.”

The Lakeland players put tape on their wrists and wrote down Johnson’s number, even before they knew he was coming to the game.

“That was totally kid driven,” Farquhar said. “I didn’t know anything about that until we got to the game.”

The Mott players wrote his number in ink on their wrists, on their hats and on tape around their shoes.

And yes, in that third game, Mott beat Lakeland, the eventual conference champion.

“They said they were playing for me,” Johnson said. “The next day, we went out and beat Lakeland. Our catcher told me that ever since you got hurt, I’ve been playing for you. I’m playing my heart out every time I’m out there.”

The loudest kid in the dugout

Johnson has not been cleared to play. His season is done.

But he kept going to every game, sitting in the dugout, cheering for his teammates.

“It is my senior season and I was looking forward to playing it,” he said. “To not be able to play anymore, it sucks, but at least I can be with them in the dugout, even if I’m not on the field with them.”

If he can’t play anymore, he figures he will be the loudest kid in the dugout.

“Knowing that I can’t do anything on the field, to help my team out, I try to be there to cheer them on as much as I can, at least give as much as I can to the team,” Johnson said.

He does this, even though he still has concussion symptoms.

“I pretty much have a constant headache, all the time,” he said. “Then, I have these dizzy spells sometimes.”

But doctors expect him to make a full recovery.

He plans to study next fall at Saginaw Valley State and doctors want him to stay on anti-seizure medication, just in case.

Waterford Mott senior Grant Johnson encourages teammates vs. Lake Orion in Clarkston on May 29, 2018. Johnson was hit in the middle of the face by a baseball during a game May 8 that resulted in a grade-three concussion and a broken nose and bone on his cheek. (Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press)

Tough boys, tender hearts

Looking back, Colleen Johnson still marvels at the compassion and love she saw on the field that day.

“All these boys, when they take a picture, they all pretend they are tough and macho,” she said. “Yet, when it comes to somebody being hit, they are all praying in a circle on a field, wearing arm bands. It’s amazing.”

It seems cliché to try to find meaning from a moment like this. Maybe, it’s better to just sit back and relish a happy ending for a change.

How a rivalry melted away. How strangers helped each other. How so much good came out of so many people. How they made so many smart decisions. How he recovered so quickly.

How the Lakeland parents sent out those tweets. How the Lakeland players honored Johnson by writing his number on their wrists.

And how Johnson went back to the field the next day, and every game after that, even though he is still suffering from headaches.

He just wants to be the loudest player in the dugout.

The kid with the bright blue eyes, full of so much life.

Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff.

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