Stories from the Book – Our Need to Heal and the Case of Dave Dravecky

Good dreams need faith.  They need the faith we must build in ourselves, the faith we must create in something bigger than ourselves so that we can continue during those inevitable times when we let ourselves down, and we need faith in a better today and an even better tomorrow.

 Disappointments and setbacks test our faith.  As long as we are to the potential for new life, a weakened faith can be turned around.  It can become a faith more authentically grounded in reality and in that which will never let us down.  Let’s look at a story of a man who found just that.

 Have you ever found yourself saying, “I’d give an arm and a leg” for something?  I know I have.  It’s just a saying, but actually imagine what it would feel to lose, say, an arm.  Worse, imagine that your entire career had depended on that arm.  Imagine further if, from childhood to adulthood, your very self, your identity, revolved around the talent within that arm.  It is an arm that had brought fame and fortune.  Imagine, then, waking up one day to find the arm gone.  That’s the story of Dave Dravecky.

 He’d done his time, Dave Dravecky.  He’d played the A league, Double A, and Triple A leagues before entering the Major Leagues.  He’d also endured two miserable spells in Colombia, living in a roach-infested apartment under the constant threat of illness.  Dravecky was never going to be a legend.  He was a guy who worked hard, pursued his dream of the major leagues, and turned adversity to his advantage by channelling tough calls into a desire to prove his doubters wrong.  As he notes, however, this philosophy only carries you so far,

         Growing up, I had always been the centre of attention.  My performance had been for me, and no one else.  I had to be the star.  That kind of motivation can keep you going strong, so long as you   succeed.  But it’s not so good for dealing with failure,or with forces beyond your control.[i]

 Between 1982 and 1989, Dravecky played 121 games for the Padres and Giants, highlighted by being selected as a National League All-Star in 1983.   Along the way, he faced constant shoulder and elbow soreness which resulted in extended periods on the sideline.  He also faced the loss of his fortune when a real estate development in which he’d invested went bust.  Diagnosed with cancer in his pitching arm in 1988, Dravecky made a stunning comeback in 1989.  Having lost the three most powerful muscles in his arm, he had been told that a miracle would be required if he was ever to pitch again.  On August 10, 1989, almost 35,000 fans gave Dravecky a standing ovation in honour of his amazing return, a return preceded by day after day of painstaking rehabilitation.  During the following game in Montreal, Dravecky’s bone literally separated from his shoulder as he pitched.  The snap was heard around the stadium.  Still, Dravecky thought that he could come back once more.  Fate would decide differently, however.

 After his team won the playoffs on their way to the World Series, Dravecky joined the scrum of players and officials celebrating the victory in the middle of pitch.  Hit from behind by another celebrant, his arm was hurt again, this time beyond repair.  His career was finished.

 This time, Dave Dravecky accepted reality.  He had changed as a man, viewing life’s highs and lows as a Christian who’d learnt to put his faith in things unseen.  With this faith, Dravecky understood that some problems cannot be solved through surgery, through rehabilitation, or even through the power of a positive attitude,

             Not all obstacles can be overcome.   Each of us needs grace to handle troubles that remain even after we have done everything we can.  Some barriers cannot be broken down just by human effort and faith in yourself.[ii]    

 Life’s challenges did not end upon his retirement.  A further operation took place in 1990 to remove much of the remaining muscle in Dravecky’s throwing arm following the return of cancerous growth.  The strains of this insidious illness began to take their toll on Dravecky’s spirit and on the strength of his marriage to Jan.  The loss of the power in his arm was a metaphor for the powerlessness that Dave Dravecky felt as his life spiralled out of control.  God seemed distant.  Worse was to come.  After the deaths of her father and a close friend, Jan too faced the consequences of life when events take us beyond our capacity to cope, namely anxiety and depression.

 Things couldn’t get any worse, right?  Wrong.  An ulcerated hole appeared on Dave’s arm.  With Jan trying to keep her own life afloat, Dravecky lacked the support on which he’d relied so heavily thus far.  With the radiation treatments came infection.  His arm constantly leaked blood and other fluids.  One hole became three.  On 18 June, 1991, it was time to amputate.  Dave Dravecky had lost the pitching arm that had taken him to the majors.  He had lost part of his body and, perhaps, part of his very soul, forever.

 Dave and Jan Dravecky didn’t wake up one morning to find that life had returned to being a bed of roses.  One part of their healing came with the realisation that it never was and never would be.  Another part came from the tears and expressions of anger and questioning that the grieving process demands.  The support of true friends and the recreation of a new Christian faith grounded in the realities of God rather than a belief in a fairytale faith that can never lasts also helped, as did the support that can come from good counselling.  In the end, the Draveckys learnt to trust in the messiness and chaos of their lives, lives that raise just as many questions as answers.  They learnt that some questions may never be answered, at least in this world.

 The journey of faith is not an easy-to-follow map.  It is a one-step-at-a-time kind of experience…God doesn’t promise us a life full of mountaintop experiences.  There’ll be valleys to go through too.  Dark valleys.  Disorienting valleys. Valleys of depression and despair.  What He promises is not a road map that will give us a detour around those valleys, but that he will walk through those valleys with us.  When we emerge from those experiences, we look back and realise that that is where the growth is.    It isn’t on the mountaintops, above the timberline; it’s in the valleys.[iii]    

[ii] Dravecky (1990), p.212.

[iii] Dave & Jan Dravecky, (with Ken Gire) (1992) When You Can’t Come Back, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, p.71.