With one badly located pitch during a practice, Braden LaRuffa’s life and baseball career were forever changed.

“Blood was coming out of his eye everywhere. It was pretty scary. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said junior leftfielder Karson Cullins.

During a fall team scrimmage at Mike Miley Field in Metairie, La. in October 2011 LaRuffa was hit by an inside pitch as he squared to bunt. The pitch shattered his orbital bone as well as the left side of his face including his cheekbone, orbital floor and his eye socket. LaRuffa’s injuries required that he receive three different surgeries on his face including a rebuilding with prosthetics and plates. Today he has limited mobility in his left eye and that side of his face.

“I see double and I see triple when I look left, down, right and up. The only time I can only see one image is when I’m looking straight ahead. You can’t really play ball when it’s hard to see,” LaRuffa said.

LaRuffa is a former infielder who played shortstop and second base for Loyola for two seasons. He was a walk-on his sophomore year who redshirted his sophomore year and worked primarily with charts in the clubhouse. In his second season as a junior, he primarily came off of the bench as a designated runner.

“He was always doing whatever he could do to be the best teammate,” Cullins said of LaRuffa.

Coming back to the game was difficult.

“It took about, I would say, almost half a year for me to really get accustomed to it and being able to really get back to feeling comfortable to understand that it was what it was, and that’s not really changing much.”

Currently, as an assistant coach, Brady helps the team in a variety of ways. Hitting ground-balls to outfielders during warm-ups, working with base runners and being a first base coach during games are just some of the responsibilities that LaRuffa has on the team.

“Besides the in-house stuff he takes care of as far as sending out e-mails to the players, checking their schedules. All the little tedious work that no one sees, he’s the one that take care of that for us,” head coach Doug Faust said.

His transition from being one of the players in the clubhouse to being amongst the coaches has not been difficult for the players to adjust to. He also provides the team energy during games.

“There’s no real issue with respect. It’s more along the lines of they know where I’m coming from,” LaRuffa said.

“If we need a quick pump up speech Brady will be there to say ‘Hey you know what, sometimes y’all need to sit back and realize that y’all are still lucky to play the game,'” Cullins said.

Baseball has been a lifelong passion for LaRuffa that extends beyond the diamond at Segnette Field. He started playing baseball near the age of six and, outside of his coaching duties with the Wolf Pack, LaRuffa interned with Pittsburgh Pirates working with their Florida operations this past summer on the business side. Since then, he has been hired to be a video scouting intern for the Pirates on the minor league level in Jamestown, New York. He said that it was a wonderful learning experience, but he is unsure of coaching in the future.

“It’s all gonna be right place, right time and what I feel most comfortable with,” LaRuffa said. From his injury, LaRuffa has gained a better appreciation for the game of baseball and realizes that a long career is not guaranteed.

“This game comes and goes really quickly. It could be there today, but tomorrow it’s not,” LaRuffa said.

Etefia Umana can be reached at [email protected]