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Hardworking Salt Lake Bee pitcher toils in silence | The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Bees pitcher Ryan Ketchner was settling into his seat behind home plate, getting ready to chart pitches for a teammate last month before a game in Oklahoma City, as he traditionally does between starts. As he readied his radar gun, clipboard and pen, he glanced out at the field and saw a group of students from the Oklahoma School for the Deaf signing the national anthem as it played before the first pitch.
The scene brought a smile to Ketchner’s face as he watched Francis Scott Key’s lyrics interpreted into sign language.
He couldn’t hear the music, either.
The Salt Lake left-hander, you see, is also deaf. And with just one more call-up, a promotion from the Bees to the Los Angeles Angels, the parent club, he would become the first deaf pitcher since 1908 to play in the major leagues.
In the deaf community, Ketchner is already a star. After learning he was in their midst that day, a teacher at the Oklahoma school asked the Bees hurler if he would join the students for a few minutes after the game. Ketchner happily obliged.
“Is that him? Is that him?” Kristen McCurdy recalled her small group of students asking when Ketchner approached. “They were in awe of him. Excited to meet him.”
Ketchner had a simple message for the youngsters. He is living proof, he told them, that someone sharing the same hearing disability could achieve great things.
He said, “You can do anything you want,” McCurdy recalled.
It’s the same message Ketchner received years ago from his mentor and friend Curtis Pride — the first deaf position player in the modern era to make it to the majors.
“We have had to work much harder than most hearing ballplayers just to get the front office to ignore our disability and focus more on our ability and how we can help the team win,” said Pride, now the head baseball coach at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a school for the deaf and hearing impaired.
Pride, said Ketchner, “taught me to work hard and to believe in myself.”
Even setting aside his disability, Ketchner’s road through professional baseball has been challenging. Arm and shoulder injuries have sidetracked him at various points in his career.
“I watched a lot of baseball on TV, wishing I was playing,” Ketchner said.
Yet he has made it this far, to Triple-A, because of a competitive streak that makes him formidable not only on the mound but also off the field in Bees’ team pingpong tournaments.
Which is another way of saying that Ketchner is just one of the guys, happily taking, or dishing out, insults during the tournaments with a look or a sound, taking particular joy in impersonating an opponent’s ragged serve.
Similarly, on the field, there is little thought given to Ketchner’s deafness. When the lefty and Salt Lake catcher Kevin Richardson meet on the mound, or Bees manager Keith Johnson pays a visit to the hill, they share easy verbal communication.
Salt Lake Bees pitcher Ryan Ketchner was settling into his seat behind home plate, getting ready to chart pitches for a teammate last month before a game in Oklahoma City, as he traditionally does between starts. As he readied his radar gun, clipboard and pen, he glanced out at the field and saw a group of students from the Oklahoma School for the Deaf signing the national anthem as it played before the first pitch.
The scene brought a smile to Ketchner’s face as he watched Francis Scott Key’s lyrics interpreted into sign language.
He couldn’t hear the music, either.
The Salt Lake left-hander, you see, is also deaf. And with just one more call-up, a promotion from the Bees to the Los Angeles Angels, the parent club, he would become the first deaf pitcher since 1908 to play in the major leagues.
In the deaf community, Ketchner is already a star. After learning he was in their midst that day, a teacher at the Oklahoma school asked the Bees hurler if he would join the students for a few minutes after the game. Ketchner happily obliged.
“Is that him? Is that him?” Kristen McCurdy recalled her small group of students asking when Ketchner approached. “They were in awe of him. Excited to meet him.”
Ketchner had a simple message for the youngsters. He is living proof, he told them, that someone sharing the same hearing disability could achieve great things.
He said, “You can do anything you want,” McCurdy recalled.
It’s the same message Ketchner received years ago from his mentor and friend Curtis Pride — the first deaf position player in the modern era to make it to the majors.
“We have had to work much harder than most hearing ballplayers just to get the front office to ignore our disability and focus more on our ability and how we can help the team win,” said Pride, now the head baseball coach at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a school for the deaf and hearing impaired.
Pride, said Ketchner, “taught me to work hard and to believe in myself.”
Even setting aside his disability, Ketchner’s road through professional baseball has been challenging. Arm and shoulder injuries have sidetracked him at various points in his career.
“I watched a lot of baseball on TV, wishing I was playing,” Ketchner said.
Yet he has made it this far, to Triple-A, because of a competitive streak that makes him formidable not only on the mound but also off the field in Bees’ team pingpong tournaments.
Which is another way of saying that Ketchner is just one of the guys, happily taking, or dishing out, insults during the tournaments with a look or a sound, taking particular joy in impersonating an opponent’s ragged serve.
Similarly, on the field, there is little thought given to Ketchner’s deafness. When the lefty and Salt Lake catcher Kevin Richardson meet on the mound, or Bees manager Keith Johnson pays a visit to the hill, they share easy verbal communication.