Monday, Jun. 29, 2009

Armed for success: Triad High senior fights back from disease; goes from lefty to righty

When a debilitating disease threatened to rob Logan Eader of his baseball future, the Triad High senior didn't succumb to its clutches.

He decided to fight back. With his opposite arm.

Diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis as a sophomore, Eader was ordered by doctors to stop throwing or risk further damage to his already deteriorating left shoulder.

For a kid who played the outfield his entire life and harbored dreams of landing a college scholarship, the news was devastating. Eader could still hit and be a designated hitter, but it wasn't the same as playing in the field.

"All I've really ever wanted to do in life was go to college and play baseball," Eader said. "To me, being a designated hitter is not the same as playing the whole game. You have to experience everything in battle, and that's playing defense."

On the day he received the news -- it was Jan. 28, 2008, a day his family will never forget -- Eader decided on a radical course of action.

He would reinvent himself. As a right-hander.

"When he found out he could no longer throw with his left hand, all he did was go out to the garage, grabbed a couple of balls and gloves and said 'We have some work to do,'" said Joe Eader, his father.

Months of practice, clinics, training and lessons followed as Eader doggedly worked to become ambidextrous. The transformation culminated this season when Eader returned to his regular starting spot in left field for the Knights.

The natural-born lefty now threw with his right hand, and the difference was negligible to the uninitiated. Eader caught every ball hit his way, and his throws to the infield were usually strong and on target.

"The amount of determination that he had to get back in the field and play was incredible," said Triad coach Jesse Bugger. "I know he wasn't satisfied being a DH his junior year. We watched him in practice and thought that he could be adequate doing this.

"Then, it got to the point where he was so proficient, we wondered if other teams could even notice it."

Eader hit .402 with 47 RBIs and tied for the team-lead in home runs with seven, helping the Knights go 29-10 and win the Class 3A Centralia Sectional.

He also fulfilled his college dream by landing a baseball scholarship to Benedictine University-Springfield College, an NJCAA Division II school in Springfield.

"At the beginning, it was rough," said Melanie Eader, Logan's mother. "At the end, you couldn't even tell he wasn't a natural right-hander. It just shows you with hard work, determination and a never-give-up attitude on your goals, you can do anything."

Feeling like he's 45

Logan Eader felt like an old man, and he didn't know why.

The joints in both his right and left shoulders constantly ached, and both his ankles would swell to the size of grapefruits.

The pain was almost too much to bear for the 15-year-old sophomore, who tried to soothe it by gulping Ibuprofen by the fistfuls. He could barely lift himself out of bed some mornings. After a long, painful day at school, his bed seemed like the only refuge.

"I'd come home from school and just lay in bed because I hurt so much," Eader said. "I didn't want to do anything because it was so painful. It was pretty bad.

"It's no fun thinking you're 15 years old and you feel like you're 45. I told my parents once that I felt like I was older than they were."

Eader continued to play through the pain, but his arm strength got progressively weaker throughout his sophomore season with the Knights. A battery of tests and blood work were ordered.

Eventually, Eader was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that affects approximately 50,000 children under the age of 16 in the United States.

"When I found out that I had it, it was a shock," Eader said. "I thought arthritis was for 60-year-olds and senior citizens."

There are three major types of JRA -- oligoarticular, polyarticular and systemic. Eader had oligoarticular, which affects four or fewer joints. It causes inflammation of the joint lining, and symptoms include pain, stiffness or swelling, which is exactly what Eader was feeling in both shoulders and ankles.

Eader was put on twice-monthly IV infusions of the treatment Remicade at Children's Hospital in St. Louis. The infusions last for two hours and brought some much-needed relief for Eader.

The pain in both ankles and his right shoulder dissipated. However, it persisted in his left shoulder. An MRI was ordered, revealing significant structural damage to the joint and ligament.

Doctors ordered him to stop throwing. He could still hit left-handed, but playing the outfield was no longer possible. Eader was crushed.

"The possibility that my baseball career was over crossed my mind a couple of times," Eader said. "But, you can't give up on your dreams. They'll end when you want them to end."

From left to right

Eader didn't wallow in self-pity for very long. He soon formulated his plan to become ambidextrous, a trait that he now shares with two of his relatives.

He worked with a trainer at Triad on a daily basis and took lessons from former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Scott Terry, who honed his mechanics and taught him the nuances of throwing right-handed.

"Going from doing something you've done all your life to doing something totally different, it's not an easy task," Bugger said. "Learning how to throw is one thing, but catching is another. He worked on a daily basis until he was good enough to do it. At first, there was a thought if it was going to be possible, but he made it possible."

Bugger used Eader strictly as a designated hitter as a junior, and he led the team in batting average (.427), home runs (five), RBIs (31) and doubles (18).

In the summer, Eader played for the SEMO Cherokees, a select team based out of Cape Girardeau, Mo. His coach, Lindy Duncan, a former All-American shortstop at Missouri, continued to work with Eader and eventually put him in the outfield for the first time as a right-hander.

"It was more mentally challenging than it was physically challenging," Eader said. "I'm so used to hitting spots. If you put a target up, I could hit it 10 times out of 10 with my left hand. With my right hand, it would go all over the place at the beginning."

By the time Triad had its first practice in March, Eader had nearly mastered the transformation.

"At the beginning of this baseball season, it really started to click for me," he said. "My ball started to carry a little farther and a lot of people were giving me comments on how natural it looked."

Crowning moment

While Eader's plight was well-known to his family, friends and teammates, Bugger tried to keep it under wraps as much as possible.

He figured the more opposing coaches knew about Eader's ambidextrous shift, the more they would try to run and take an extra base on balls hit his way.

"You have to do what you have to do to take care of your own team, so I wouldn't have blamed anybody who tried to run on Logan," Bugger said. "That was the biggest reason why we didn't publicize the story. It was one of those things where you wanted to tell people about how cool it is, but you had to protect him a little bit."

Eader had a relatively uneventful season in left field, throwing out two runners during the regular season. His defensive highlight came in the sectional title game against Althoff.

Midway through the game, an Althoff player sliced a single down the left-field line and tried to stretch it into a double. Eader cut off the ball and threw a strike to second base to nail the runner.

Tied 3-3 at the time, the Knights scored four runs the next inning and beat the Crusaders 7-3 for their second sectional title in school history.

"It was a huge play in the game," Bugger said. "Seeing him throw a guy out, it was one of those neat moments that I think you'll remember for a long time."

On the sidelines, Triad fans exchanged high-fives and hugs with Eader's parents. The significance of the play and the sacrifices it took to get Eader to that point were not lost on anybody.

"It was very emotional," Joe Eader said. "Everybody recognized it right away. To know what he's endured and put himself through ... it was really a defining moment."