re: Isaiah Austin's Basketball Career is Over

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The root of Austin's disability started with an accident while he was playing a position he had never experienced before: first base. Austin had been attending a summer baseball camp in 2005 when he was 11 years old, and he was placed at first base because of his height.

"I think they thought I was older just because I was so tall, so they put me in the older kids' group," the soft-spoken Austin said over breakfast recently in Arlington, Texas, near where he resides. "I was on first base, and I remember the pitcher kept faking it to me. I was like, 'What is he doing?' I really hadn't played baseball that long, so I didn't know that the pitcher can throw it back to first and try to get the person out.

"So he faked the pitch and he threw it, and I put my glove up like a half-a-second late, and the ball just smashed into my eye."

Austin went to the hospital because his eye swelled up and his contact lens got stuck. Doctors said he had a loose retina. But no surgery was required; he was simply told to monitor any pain. Little did he know, his eye would gradually get worse.

In February 2008, everything came crashing down. It was the last game of his middle school basketball career, and Austin had never dunked during layup lines. That's because there was a strict rule against it: two technical fouls, and you're out of the game. But working off of adrenaline, Austin took off, cuffed the ball back with his left hand and jammed it down.

The crowd went wild and a double tech ensued, but no one but Austin knew what he immediately saw out of his right eye: red. It was blood. The powerful nature of the uncontested dunk had detached his retina, which was the diagnosis the next morning when he went to the emergency room.

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