Battle Tested: Texas Closer John Curtiss

 

By Christian Corona

JOHN CURTISS came into the game with a little pain in his wrist.

By the time the sixth inning rolled around, he felt as good as he ever had on the mound.

The sophmore right-hander was trying to keep Texas alive in the 2012 Big 12 Tournament against Kansas, but the Longhorns weren’t having much luck climbing out of a 3-0 first-inning hole. Curtiss had his slider working and was throwing in the mid-90s in the sixth inning — harder than he’s ever thrown.

Texas trailed 4-1 going into the seventh but Curtiss was doing what he could to keep his team in the game. He fired an inside fastball to the Jayhawks catcher, getting him to ground out to first for the second out of the inning.

Yet something didn’t feel right.

“I felt a twinge, not completely like a snap, but I felt like I pulled my hammy in my elbow,” Curtiss recalled. “It hurt pretty bad and I tossed one over to Erich [Weiss] at third. My arm felt good throwing at 50 mph so I figured I’d try to finish the inning.”

Two pitches later, Curtiss left the game.
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Two innings later, Texas’ season was over. The Longhorns failed to reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1998.

When Curtiss walked off the mound, he thought he had torn the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his right elbow. He was right.

Team trainer Mike West evaluated Curtiss that day and the initial UCL stress test was negative. An MRI revealed just a Grade 1 tear (out of 3) but Curtiss confirmed his initial concerns when he was playing catch with his father a few days later.

“You get to a point in your rehab where you get to about 100 feet and you have to throw the ball hard enough to where you can tell if you need surgery or not,” Curtiss said. “I was throwing with my dad and I couldn’t throw the ball 100 feet.”

Curtiss didn’t need a doctor to tell him he needed surgery. He visited Dr. Keith Meister, the Texas Rangers’ team physician, in Arlington two weeks later. Meister gave Curtiss an MRI and informed him he, in fact, had a Grade 2 tear of his UCL and required Tommy John surgery.

Unfortunately the most painful part of Curtiss’ rehab was yet to be diagnosed.

Just as he started his throwing program — four and a half months after he suffered the UCL tear — Curtiss began to feel some numbness in his forearm. His fingers tingled. His elbow and shoulder were fine but his control was not. There was something wrong but he didn’t know what.

Curtiss was diagnosed with neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome, a condition in which blood vessels or nerves between the first rib and collarbone are compressed, causing pain in the shoulder and upper arm, along with numbness in the fingers. Just as Curtiss was making significant progress recovering from one surgery, he had to undergo another, more agonizing one.

“I had to use my entire bottle of pills that week because I couldn’t breathe,” Curtiss said. “It’s difficult to talk or laugh. I was bed-ridden for a week and a half.”

Excruciating pain aside, Curtiss was forced to start his throwing program over again, pushing back an already lengthy recovery timetable. He didn’t throw a baseball for another two and a half months.

“You have to put everything on hold,” West said. “You have to let the tissue heal. You have to regain the strength you lost and then start your throwing program all over again. The initial stages of the throwing program are accelerated because you’ve already been through that. But you go backwards quite a bit.”

Adding insult to injury was the fact that Curtiss could do little more than watch as Texas missed out on postseason play for a second straight year. The Longhorns finished last in the conference — the first time since 1956.

“It was frustrating. It was difficult to watch the team struggle and not be able to do anything,” said Curtiss, who assisted pitchers in the bullpen and periodically gave the younger players advice. “Anytime you’re an injured player, your role is reduced and you have to buy into the team concept. You have to accept that you’re not going to contribute as much as an everyday starter.”

Curtiss couldn’t compete on the field, but West tailored his rehab to resemble a competition to keep him as engaged as possible. Creating the program wasn’t the hard part — keeping Curtiss from doing too much was West’s biggest challenge. When Curtiss was foolishly diving for fly balls, running into walls during practice or exerting himself too much in the weight room, West was always there to rein him in.

“Those were the times where I got upset and had to remind him that he was still hurt and to think about the big picture. Our goal was to have him throwing again — not playing outfield,” West said of Curtiss, whom he called “the ideal injured athlete.”

Curtiss didn’t slow down in the classroom either. He currently boasts a 3.85 GPA and is on track to graduate in July after just three years at Texas. Curtiss has become a mainstay on the Big 12 commissioner’s honor roll and is likely to be named an academic All-American this year.

He’s a double major in English and History with Plan I honors and recently earned the Lorene L. Rogers Award as the top male scholar-athlete on campus. Should Curtiss return for his redshirt junior season next year, he plans to enroll in the one-year Master of Science in Finance program at the McCombs School of Business. An aspiring Major League Baseball general manager, Curtiss wants to better understand the numbers side of the game if he’s not taken high enough in this year’s MLB Draft.

For now, he’s putting up great numbers as the Longhorns’ closer.

Curtiss went 2-3 with a 3.50 ERA as a freshman in 2012. Three weeks into this season, Curtiss made his first appearance for the Longhorns in nearly two years — 637 days to be exact.

Ironically it was a start, this time against UT-Pan American on Feb. 25, that marked his first outing this year. He pitched two scoreless innings, allowing just one hit while striking out two and walking one in a 2-1, 11-inning victory. He quickly cemented himself as the team’s closer, picking up his first four saves this year over a nine-day period this March.

Curtiss now has six saves in all, posting a 1.09 ERA over 17 outings this season, holding opposing hitters to a .157 batting average and allowing only two extra-base hits in 24 2/3 innings. As a freshman, Curtiss said, it took some time to get used to the pressure of pitching at Texas. Now he’s thriving in arguably the most pressure-packed role on the Longhorns’ pitching staff.

“When I go into the game, that means we have a good opportunity to win,” Curtiss said. “It’s easy to root for yourself to get in the game when your job is to help the team in the very last inning and throw the very last pitch.”

Curtiss is still regaining his form and made a few tweaks to his delivery to mitigate chances of ever suffering a severe injury again.

“No one wants to deal with injuries,” West said, “but my satisfaction comes from helping them get back to where they were competitively. Getting athletes back on the field is a huge accomplishment but having them succeed is a whole other level.”

“John’s a perfect example of that.”

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