By Adam McCalvy / MLB.com
08/27/09 2:00 AM ET
MILWAUKEE -- Mitch Stetter, the lean Brewers lefty, has a 10-inch scar that snakes along the back of his left leg at the knee. If a teammate notices it in the clubhouse, Stetter will fib and say it's a shark bite. Sometimes he spins a yarn about a childhood chainsaw accident. If the unsuspecting teammate believes the tale, Stetter lets the ruse go on for a while.
"I've seen him get guys with that one," said fellow reliever Todd Coffey. "But it's a case where the real story is just as good."
Stetter figures that only half of his teammates know the real story, which began in 2003, when he noticed a nagging ache behind his left knee. Less than a year later, Stetter was in the hospital for surgery to remove a tumor lodged in the joint.
The mass was only a quarter-inch around, but it threatened to cost Stetter his leg and his baseball career. If doctors found it to be malignant, they would have had to immediately amputate to keep the cancer from spreading.
"There were a few days there where you're thinking, 'Baseball is over for me,' " Stetter said. "And that was the least of it. It makes you think about what some people have to go through.
"I remember the doctor waking me up by saying, 'Mitch, you have two legs.' I was still kind of out of it, but it was such a relief to hear that news."
Five years after his experience, Stetter still feels like he's in a fog. He's spending his first full season in big leagues.
"It gives you perspective," he said. "I'm blessed to play this game every day. The bad days can be pretty bad, but when you sit there and think about some of the things that have happened in my life, I can be thankful that I even have the opportunity to go out there and be bad."
Stetter's big league future was anything but certain back in 2003, when he was pitching for the Indiana State University Sycamores. His left knee already felt "funny" then, but it didn't bother him when he pitched, so he kept quiet about it.
He was poised to pursue a teaching career had baseball not panned out, but the Brewers drafted him in the 16th round, No. 459 overall. The team's top Draft pick that year was Southern University batting champ Rickie Weeks, who signed a Major League contract that guaranteed him $4.8 million. Fifteen rounds later, Stetter got a $1,000 signing bonus and a ticket to Helena, Mont., home of the team's rookie league affiliate.
Still, the knee ached. He couldn't bend it all the way, and after the season, Stetter went to a doctor back in Indiana for an MRI scan that revealed some wear and tear. He underwent arthroscopic surgery in the fall to clean up the knee, and doctors didn't encounter the tumor.
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"I still think about what it would be like to wake up with one leg," Mitch said. "It would have been the end of baseball, obviously. I love the game, but there's more to life than baseball. Sometimes we forget about that when things are going poorly. You lose focus on what life is all about."
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-- Mitch Stetter
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The ache went away, maybe because he was on painkillers. Stetter returned to Indiana State that winter for the nine credit hours he needed to finish his degree, and was bounding up the steps of his house one afternoon when he tripped. He collapsed -- "butt to heel," is the way he explains it -- bending his knee all the way for the first time in months.
"It was awful," Stetter said. "I laid there for 15 minutes and had no feeling at all in my leg. One of my roommates finally came out and found me and I told him, 'Just let me lie here.' "
It was obvious that something was still wrong. Stetter contacted Brewers medical staffers and they summoned him straight to Milwaukee for more tests.
By this time it was January 2004, and a more complete MRI scan revealed the tumor. Stetter got the news from Dr. William Raasch, the Brewers' longtime head team physican.
Raasch is still the Brewers' doctor today, but could not discuss Stetter's surgery because of privacy issues.
"Something like that never even crossed my mind," Stetter said. "I mean, a tumor? They had a specialist there in the room, and he said they were 90-something percent sure it was benign. But they couldn't say for sure."
It was the other 10 percent of that equation that raised Stetter's eyebrows. They would open the back of his knee to biopsy the growth.
If it proved benign, they would simply remove the tumor and stitch him up. But if it was malignant, the cancer would spread so quickly that they would have to take the leg.
"We had to sign papers saying it was OK for them to amputate if necessary," said Stetter's mom, Susie. "It was definitely scary. We had some tears, that's for sure."
"I tried not to think about it," Mitch said.
But that was impossible. Stetter's father, Blake, did research about prosthetics, and the family had a frank discussion about the very real possibility that Mitch's life could change.
"I thought he handled it pretty well," Susie Stetter said. "He didn't appear broken down by the possibility that he could lose a leg. He knew that it was a life-or-death situation, and if he had to lose his leg, he would have to deal with it."
Mitch wondered if he had already used up his luck. In high school, he fell asleep at the wheel of his Camaro and narrowly missed a pair of head-on collisions before crashing into a guardrail. Most of the car was crushed, but somehow Stetter escaped with only a few marks from his seat belt.
The very next day, one of his classmates died in a wreck.
"It makes you think, 'Why her and not me?' " Stetter said. "I feel like I've had a couple of those instances in my life."
Blake and Susie Stetter accompanied their son back to Milwaukee for the surgery. An hour and a half into the procedure, the Stetters got word: No cancer.
"What a weight lifted off of our shoulders," Susie Stetter said. "Five years later, it feels like we're in the clear."
"I still think about what it would be like to wake up with one leg," Mitch said. "It would have been the end of baseball, obviously. I love the game, but there's more to life than baseball. Sometimes we forget about that when things are going poorly. You lose focus on what life is all about."
That renewed focus has helped Stetter of late, because he hasn't been nearly as effective since the start of July as he was during an early-season run of success. He'll have a cheering section next week, when mom travels to St. Louis for the finale of a Brewers-Cardinals series at Busch Stadium. The whole family will then gather in Milwaukee for Labor Day weekend.
"It's been a great part of our life," Susie Stetter said. "Mitch is such a humble athlete, and he's never let any of this get to his head. We're so proud of him for being that way."
Adam McCalvy is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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