A long road

Michael Anton of the Cedar Rapids Kernels has a pair of 9-inning shutouts against the Timber Rattlers. May 9 and May 19.

Jeff Johnson of the Cedar Rapids Gazette has more on Anton. It's an interesting story.

Jesse Smith was working out at a Phoenix area gym one day during the winter of 2006. It was an LA Fitness, to be exact.

The former Cedar Rapids Kernels pitcher was wearing a Los Angeles Angels T-shirt, which caused a curious young man of about 20 to approach him and introduce himself.

"He came up to me and asked 'Do you play pro baseball?'" Smith remembered. "Then he asked me if I needed a catch partner. I told him 'Yeah, I could always use a catch partner.'"

That young man was Anton.

Anton was a sophomore at Virginia Military Institute the winter of 2005 when he went home to visit family in Maryland over Christmas break. Out driving alone one night, a deer ran out in front of his car. He swerved to miss it, barreling through an intersection and crashing into a hill.

Thanks to a prematurely deployed air bag, Anton said, he ending up suffering a compound fracture to his right arm. The trauma eventually forced him to quit playing baseball and leave VMI altogether.

"I tried to play that season in college, but I was hurt and ended up having to have another surgery," Anton said. "So I was pretty much out of baseball. School, it messed me up there, too. My mind wasn't where it had to be because I was always in pain every day — I'd just be laying in bed, kind of feeling sorry for myself and just trying to get through the day every day.

"But I got a second chance."

He's made the most of it.