TEMPE, Ariz. — Jon Wilhite was always a baseball kid. He grew up in Manhattan Beach in the 1980s playing catcher. Mike Scioscia was his favorite player, naturally.
Eventually Wilhite became a star at Mira Costa High School and a valuable player off the bench for some powerful Cal State Fullerton teams from 2005-07. The Dodgers’ Justin Turner and the Angels’ Vinnie Pestano were among his teammates, as was veteran major league catcher Kurt Suzuki.
These days, Wilhite works with his father, Tony, who is an expert in the logistics of shipping large freights. Jon, 30, is already an expert in lifting heavy burdens himself.
Wilhite was the lone survivor of the 2009 car crash that killed Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart and two others. “Internally decapitated” was his medical diagnosis. Miraculously, thanks to the swift and diligent work of doctors at UCI Medical Center, Wilhite survived.
“I forget the odds,” Pestano said, getting emotional as he flashed back, “but the odds of him making it out of the hospital with that injury, it was pretty crazy.”
Wilhite’s story neither begins nor ends there. Monday, he will have a uniform hanging in the Angels’ locker room with a familiar number 5 on the back, the same number he wore at Fullerton. Wilhite will be in Arizona all week as a “guest instructor” in the Angels’ spring training camp.
The idea was Scioscia’s.
“Sosh mentioned it to me multiple times: ‘You need to come out to spring training,’” said Wilhite, who attended about 15 to 20 Angels games last year by his own estimate. “Tim (Mead, the Angels’ vice president of communications) said, ‘You better take him up on this.’”
The choice was easy. Pestano said Wilhite “is going to have baseball in his blood the rest of his life,” and he should know. They were roommates at Cal State Fullerton.
Pestano was pitching for the Cleveland Indians’ Double-A affiliate in Akron, Ohio, in 2009. The morning after the accident, his cell phone was flooded with voicemails. Adenhart had already been pronounced dead at the hospital.
“First thing, I called Jon’s phone. There was no answer,” Pestano recalled. “So I tried to get a hold of anybody I could, because people just knew he was in an accident. Some people said he didn’t make it.”
That day coincided with a day game for Akron, followed by a day off, followed by a night game. Pestano flew to California at night and visited Wilhite in the hospital. He flew back in time to rejoin his teammates in the middle of their night game, all with the Indians’ blessing.
“Even just to think about it now, to go back,” — Pestano paused — “but to know his family, they were awesome through the whole process. They were rocks for other family members and friends. I’m sure they had moments on their own terms, but in front of everybody else, they were just the same people you’ve known for years and years and years, making sure everybody around them was all right and taken care of.”
Pestano’s career progressed as any baseball player would dream: Triple-A in 2010. A full-time major-league job with the Indians in 2011. He was traded to the Angels in August.
Conventional wisdom holds that around 15 percent of all players drafted will some day reach the major leagues. Wilhite’s odds of living and breathing were way longer — longer even than the scar running down the back of his neck, where doctors reconnected his skull to his vertebra.
He began his outpatient rehab at a center for brain injury patients in Orange, commuting two hours each direction from Temecula. Because of an issue with his vision, Wilhite would sit in the passenger seat wearing a blindfold the length of the trip.
It wasn’t until Suzuki invited Wilhite to train with him one off-season that Wilhite noticed the most progress in his rehab.
“I felt like one of the guys again instead of a patient,” he said.
Wilhite’s neck is still limited, but otherwise his body fits the definition of a full recovery. He works out three or four days a week and jogs on the beach. Recently, he took a couple cuts at the plate at a Mira Costa High alumni game.
“He just sent me the video the other day,” Pestano said.
If there’s one area where Wilhite yearns for more, it’s finding a place in the game he loves. He watches MLB Network “24-7,” he says.
Using a specially modified car to get around, he’ll attend as many Angels games as a Manhattan Beach commute allows during the season, which typically means weekend games only.
Pestano said Wilhite occasionally made the ultimate reverse commute — Anaheim to Cleveland — to watch him pitch once he reached the majors.
On a roster full of stars at Fullerton, some of whom never reached the majors, Wilhite was not a star. He knows he got the most out of his career as a player. But he still has plenty to offer as a teammate, which is why the Angels manager didn’t hesitate to give Wilhite a uniform.
“His love for baseball is incredible,” Scioscia said. “He’s great with people. Great work ethic. We’re happy to have him work with (bullpen coach) Steve Solis and understand some of the coaching principles involved.”
Besides Pestano, only a few familiar faces remain in the Angels’ clubhouse. Pitcher Jered Weaver is one; he visited Wilhite in the hospital not long after the accident and they’ve chatted on occasion over the years. He called the spring training invitation a “no-brainer.”
“Obviously Nick was real close to our family,” Weaver said, “and Jon was real close to Nick.”
Wilhite probably wouldn’t have a locker in the Angels’ clubhouse if not for his eternal link to Adenhart. But he would have friends there and, maybe, a place in the game somewhere.
If that wasn’t clear to Wilhite before this week, it will be by the end.
“I couldn’t be more excited to be back on a ball field,” he said. “It feels like home.”
