“The wall won.” That’s how retired
Chicago White Sox minor-leaguer Greg Shepard recalls the life-changing night in
2000 when he violently crashed into the left-center field wall while trying to
run down a fly ball.
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| Wall Collision |
Most people would’ve done exactly what his then-wife implored — rush to
an emergency room — when he woke up the next morning basically paralyzed. “I
couldn’t lift my body out of bed, turn my head, or move my right arm,” he says.
But not Shepard.
“I told her, ‘Open the telephone book and find me a chiropractor.'”
And that, in a way he didn’t fully realize at the time, was the
life-changer.
Shepard so feared “losing my job” from a prolonged absence on the
disabled list — can you relate to that? — that he decided to stick with that
same chiropractor even after the neck-and-spine surgeon his team sent
him for a second opinion recommended surgery to repair the damage done to his
neck in the collision. “Once he set my occiput back into place, my arm started
working. A few days later, I could turn my head and fully look at the pitcher
again. I was amazed.”
He never missed a game all season after that.
And one reason he knows
“occiput” refers to the back part of the neck is that today — after years spent
doing things like coaching and motivational speaking when his own baseball
career finally ended — Shepard is actually pursuing a dream he’d kept in his
back mind ever since the crash-up: He just finished his first of several years
at a chiropractic college, and joins the ranks of other athletes like NFL
legend Jerry Rice as a big supporter of the Foundation for Chiropractic
Progress.
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