Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apts
Classifieds
Shop
BLUFFTON – Of course you can talk to the Parker boys. First things first, though.
First they gotta hug their grandma, because she didn't get to see them much this summer.
Then there are friends and neighbors and family and acquaintances to greet, because the Pizza Hut's full of them this night – breath-drawing proof that when you go forth from a place as bound by community as Wells County, you go knowing it has your back and then some.
And after all that?
Well, there's a local internet radio show to do, Glory Days Sports Talk on www.wellscountyvoice.com, which has been covering Wells County since last spring.
You say you want to talk to the Parker boys, Jarrod and Justin?
Of course you can. Just get in line.
"So I guess the obvious first question would be, how's the elbow?" you ask Jarrod, after all the hugs and handshakes and how-ya-doin's have been taken care of.
Jarrod looks down at his elbow, encased these days in a Rube Goldberg contraption of straps and gray plastic and a wheel/gear/pulley thing in the middle that enables him to bend his arm.
"I'd say we're doing pretty good," he says. "But it's just a long process where you've got to be patient."
Parker can say that again. After injuring the elbow in July, the former Norwell flamethrower and ninth pick in the 2007 draft had Tommy John surgery three weeks ago. Now he faces 8 to 12 months of rehab; he won't even begin throwing again, he says, until late February or early March.
"I'm actually doing pretty well," he says "I'm almost at full range of motion with extension and bringing it in. (Now it's) just rehab and throwing and getting some of that stuff out of the way. Just being real particular with what we're doing and real hands on."
The elbow checked out on him during a July 30 start down in Alabama, where Parker was having a breakout season for the Mobile BayBears, the Arizona Diamondbacks' Double A affiliate. Strange thing, though. It didn't check out on him all at once, with a lot of oh-God-I-just-blew-out-my-arm drama.
"I never had any symptoms, really," Parker says. "It just didn't feel like normal elbow pain."
Not normal at all, it turned out. And here is where Justin enters this tale, because Justin's always been part of the tale where the Parkers are concerned.
They'd already been talking "roughly once a day," Justin estimates, just two brothers at different way stations on the way to the same dream. Jarrod was the high-priced arm, the prospect, coming out of Norwell; Justin, his older brother, was All-State as a senior at Wayne, then went on to college at Wright State. He was drafted by the Diamondbacks in the seventh round in 2008.
This summer he played in South Bend, in the Midwest League. But when Jarrod got hurt, he was there for him.
"I'd been through the whole surgery process before in college, so I knew what it was gonna take as far as dedication and patience," Justin says. "When he went down, as close as he was to realizing his dream, it was tough for him. So I was there for him just as more a positive influence."
A positive influence, the man says.
Look around. Got a whole room full of that here.
