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One season after Travis Phelps taught himself how to pitch again, and a little more than a year after a tumor in his inner ear left him bedridden and near death -- the relief pitcher for the York Revolution signed a contract with the Detroit Tigers organization.
Phelps signed a free-agent minor league deal. He will report to minor league spring training near the end of February in Lakeland, Fla., hoping to make the Tigers' Triple-A club.
"I'm ecstatic right now," Phelps said, "especially after the way I finished the season. I knew I was so much stronger than I had been in years."
The right-handed reliever went 3-3 with a 3.82 ERA in 351/3 innings. He held opponents to a .194 batting average, and he pitched shutout relief in 16 of his final 17 appearances for York.
"There is still something left in there," Phelps said, "it was just a matter of seeing if someone would let me prove it.
"This is my opportunity to prove it."
Phelps began his professional baseball career as a fast-rising prospect in the Tampa Bay Rays farm system. He moved from rookie ball to Triple-A in four short years -- despite being an 89th-round draft pick. And he pitched three seasons in the majors, compiling a 3-5 record with a 4.34 ERA, with stops in Tampa and Milwaukee.
Sent to the minors in 2005, Phelps thought he would return to the majors as soon as he fixed some mechanical problems and regained the mental confidence he needed to pitch at the highest level. It didn't happen, in part because of a tumor several doctors failed to diagnose.
Bothered by a pulsation in his left ear at the end of the 2006 Atlantic League season, Phelps suffered through a trying 2007 season when a series of doctors could not find the cause for his increased discomfort and pain. At one point he collapsed and went into convulsions.
He was diagnosed with an ear infection. He was told he had mononucleosis. The turning point came when a specialist in New Jersey agreed to see him on less than 24 hours notice. The doctor recognized the name, because Phelps had pitched against the Yankees years earlier. That meeting led to exploratory surgery, and the discovery and removal of a benign growth called a cholesteatoma.
The tumor had destroyed his inner ear canal, mastoid bone and part of his orbital bone. The growth caused a loss in hearing, and doctors used ear cartilage to rework portions of his inner ear.
"I had been to so many doctors and told them how I felt, and they would blow it off," Phelps said during the season.
The benign growth can be fatal if left untreated, and Phelps believed he would have died had doctors not completed the 71/2-hour procedure when they did.
Unable to train last offseason, Phelps had to
Phelps called the independent Atlantic League. Turned down by other clubs because they had a full 25-man roster, the Revolution offered Phelps a contract when one of their relief pitchers left the team for personal reasons.
Even then it didn't look good for Phelps. He developed a muscle strain near his arm pit that no one understood.
"I've never heard of that injury before," York pitching coach Tippy Martinez said in August. "Nobody's heard of it."
Phelps returned to York's bullpen July 5. So much had changed. His wife, Erin, gave birth to the couple's first child, Emerson, weeks before. And the velocity returned to his fastball, the movement returned to his slider and curve.
Phelps developed into the Revolution's most reliable middle reliever during the final three months of the season.
And when doctors performed a second surgery on his ear in October, they found no signs of any new tumors.
"We had good reports on him," Revolution Director of Baseball Operations Adam Gladstone said. "We understood the injuries and issues he had in the past. We knew he was a guy who had pitched in the big leagues, and we knew he was a guy who wanted to get back to the big leagues."
jseip@ydr.com; 771-2025
