Le Moyne‘s sophomore pitcher Jack Sheridan is currently rehabbing after Tommy John surgery.
After pitching in a game in March 2018, Sheridan injured his elbow. “I felt a tingling in my elbow and it streched down to my forearm and fingers,” Sheridan said. The pain forced Sheridan to step away from the game, having to undergo Tommy John surgery in May.
Le Moyne Head Baseball Coach, Scott Cassidy, noted that the Tommy John surgery has become a common injury in baseball now. The elbow injury isn’t going to be a simple recovery, Cassidy says that it should take him about a year to recover, if it is done correctly. “I think he’s got the make up to do it with relative ease compared to what he’s been through,” Cassidy said.
Jack Sheridan has been through worse than this injury. In 2014, during his sophomore year of high school, Sheridan was diagnosed with leukemia. A few days before he found out, he said wasn’t feeling very well and went to his physician to get blood work done. The fatigue soon led to shortness of breath running to first base.
When the dreadful day came when Sheridan found out about the diagnosis, he was in gym class when his mom excused him out of school. He explained in that moment he knew something was wrong, observing his mother having packed a overnight bag for him in the car. He recalls the moment, repeating his morther’s words, “we’re going to the hospital, because the doctors think you have leukemia.”
“Sheridan’s courage and strength is so unbelievable that you can’t really put it into words,” sophomore pitcher Sam Byrns said. “Nothing in Sheridan’s life will ever phase him again because he’s so prepared for any scenario because of this near death experience,”
Sheridan says that even though rehabbing his elbow hasn’t been easy, it doesn’t even compare to what he went through with beating cancer. If anything, he believes that being diagnosed with cancer will help him fight this injury even harder.
Through this life-changing journey, Sheridan believes that he has grown a better appreciation for life and no longer takes things for granted after beating cancer.
