'It's an absolute blessing': Drakes' Starick returns to baseball after head-on collision

Jul. 14—Joseph Starick was never supposed to be in Marysville.

In fact, at one point, Starick was thought to never be on a baseball diamond again following a head-on collision sustained as a college sophomore on a two-lane highway.

Starick suffered multiple injuries in the crash, including a broken bone in his throwing arm, lacerations to his kidney and liver and a torn posterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, among other issues.

According to Starick's recollection of the medical report, he inhaled glass from the broken front windshield following the crash on Highway 4 headed to Stockton.

"It's an absolute blessing," Starick said. "Coming from a near death experience where they told you that you are never going to do the things that you lived your whole life doing is very humbling. It's a day-to-day experience (that) I make sure I don't take anything for granted. I enjoy every single day out on the ballfield."

Following many surgeries and temporary apparatus implants placed into his arm, Starick made a full recovery and was able to return to the baseball field, where he played multiple years of college baseball and is in his second year in the professional independent baseball league.

Starick transitioned to the Marysville Drakes this summer, made the Pecos League Pacific Division all-star game and is among the team leaders in several offensive categories. Currently, the left-handed infielder is second on the team in batting average (.396) and on-base plus slugging (1.136) and first in on-base percentage (.595) for the 19-18 Drakes.

"I think we are going to make it interesting in these (next) three weeks to finish the season," Starick said.

Marysville, which to date is percentage points out of the playoff chase with 13 games left in the regular season, has a big weekend ahead with a pair of single-game home sets with Bakersfield Saturday and Dublin on Sunday at Bryant Field. Both games are set for 6:35 p.m. Bakersfield is in second place in the Pacific Division at 23-11.

For Starick, he is just glad to be playing baseball again.

"It made me grateful for everything that I have. Grateful for my family, my friends, my teammates and people I come across," he said. "Life is so fragile and all we have is the present moment. The more we take advantage of the present and embrace it is the biggest blessing we can get."

Rehabilitation process

Starick said it took four arm surgeries in the span of two-and-a-half years to be fully healed from the early morning crash suffered the night before Thanksgiving.

He said that morning he was traveling in a dense fog when for unknown reasons the other crash victim decided to move over into oncoming traffic to try and pass a slower vehicle.

"We didn't see each other and I'd say (in) about three seconds of reaction time head-to-head collision," Starick said. "I was extremely lucky. After impact, from what I remember, I woke up probably two or three minutes later, but I was stuck in the car (with) the frontend completely peeled onto me (and) some of the frontend inside my left knee. My upper arm and left hand were snapped in half ... I couldn't see my fingers move."

Even after Starick was medically cleared, he said it took a while for him to get back in the saddle of everyday life.

"It made me afraid to use it. When your arm breaks and is hurting for two years straight (where) you can't do a push-up or throw a baseball 15 feet without excruciating pain it puts some mental breaks in your head that take time to get over."

Starick eventually returned to the diamond and hit .400 in his first year back playing for Napa Valley College. Starick moved onto William Jessup University, spent one year with the Lincoln Potters and is now with the Marysville Drakes in the inaugural season at Bryant Field.

Drakes Field Manager Bill Rogan is thrilled to have his "Sacramento strong boy," in the lineup each night for Marysville as the team competes for a Pecos League world championship.

"He is a miracle story, he almost died and then he wasn't supposed to play baseball," Rogan said. "You can come back and be very pedestrian, (but) he has come back to be a terrific player. You would never know (today) that he nearly died."