The last game of the season, the day before he returned home for the summer, Matt Neumann felt the pop.
On the second-to-last pitch he threw on May 8, he thinks he partially tore his UCL. On the next pitch, the entire ligament gave out.

Neumann was forced to undergo Tommy John surgery to repair his damaged left ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow.
“I was upset about it,” Neumann said. “… I understood that I needed to do it … Once it sunk in that I was not going to be able to play potentially ever again, it was weird because I’ve been playing for the last 16 years of my life.”

The junior pitcher on the Syracuse club baseball team is still unsure whether he’ll return to the diamond. With eight more months left in his recovery, he could play one final season in the fall of his senior year, 2017. In the meantime, he’s learned to cope with his injury.

His reasoning for undergoing the surgery stemmed from a simple thought.

“‘If you want to be able to toss a football with your friends or have a catch with someone, you’re going to need to get surgery,’” Neumann recalled his doctor telling him.

That was the moment Neumann realized it was necessary.

Neumann’s father, Bob, agrees with that motivation. He hopes Matt will be able to throw three hours of batting practice to his children, just as Bob did for his son.

The first few months after the surgery on June 16 were burdensome for Neumann. He couldn’t straighten or bend his arm all the way. He even needed help taking a shower.

“I remember giving him a bath as a kid,” Bob Neumann said, “but I wasn’t really prepared to do that with somebody who’s probably 3 or 4 inches taller than me and 50 pounds heavier. It sort of brought back memories.”

Matt has suffered a serious elbow injury before. When he was 6, he fell off the top of a slide. He hit the ground and severely broke his elbow. Neumann likes to tell people he was pushed off, but Bob insisted he simply fell.

While Neumann recovers from his second significant elbow injury, his Syracuse teammates wish he was still able to play.

“Not having Matt is a pretty big hit to our rotation,” sophomore outfielder Biko Skalla said. “He’s a phenomenal lefty and when he’s on he can really eat up a lot of innings. That’s huge when we’re playing three games in one weekend against great hitters.”

Even with an optimal recovery, he only has one season left to play. But Neumann hopes to make it back.
For Neumann’s collegiate baseball career, it’s next fall or bust.

Published on October 26, 2016 at 9:42 pm

Contact Billy: wmheyen@syr.edu | @Wheyen3