KELSEYVILLE >> Noah Lyndall is as smart and nice a kid as you”ll ever meet. That he also is a standout athlete at Kelseyville High School is purely a bonus. That he can still grip a baseball given the injury he suffered three years ago while playing football is a miracle of modern medicine.
Not surprisingly, the 17-year-old junior hopes to return that favor one day as an orthopedic surgeon.
“I want to fix people the same way Dr. Bowen fixed me,” Lyndall said one day before he began a two-week baseball odyssey in Australia as a member of the SSK Reds, a collection of baseball players from throughout the United States.
That journey to the Southern Hemisphere began with Lyndall”s first game on the mound Dec. 20. After playing in the western Australian city Perth to open the trip, the team took Christmas off before continuing on to the southern Australian city of Adelaide. Lyndall, one of the top pitchers for Kelseyville last season as a sophomore, will use his winter vacation (although it”s summer in Australia right now) to test out the pitch he”s been working on in earnest since the end of the high school season, a changeup.
“I”m going to play baseball as long as I can,” Lyndall said of his athletic career that will one day give way to a promising career as a doctor. If you don”t think this guy is serious about that, then you don”t know Noah Lyndall.
A 4.2 GPA student at Kelseyville, Lyndall has been pointed toward the medical field since eighth grade. While playing football that year, he shattered the index finger on his right (throwing) hand while recovering a fumble.
“My finger went straight down (into the ground), completely shattering it,” Lyndall recalled.
The extent of the injury, at first thought to be a rather bad dislocation, was not known right away and he even played in his next game. One of his coaches attempted to pull the finger out straight, which is a common remedy for a dislocation.
“It really hurt when he did that,” Lyndall said. “But I wanted to keep playing so bad I didn”t care.”
Noah”s dad, Mike, wrapped up the finger tight with bandages and a plastic cast to protect it as much as possible.
When the swelling on the finger didn”t subside – if anything it got much worse – Noah, at the insistence of mom Alesiha, had the injury checked out.
“They took an X-ray and I remember they were staring at me after looking at it (the X-ray) and I knew that wasn”t good,” Lyndall said. “They couldn”t believe what had happened to it (the finger).”
Lyndall”s knuckle had been shoved upward more than an inch and the bone was a mess.
After obtaining opinions from three doctors, all of whom said the finger would never heal properly and Lyndall”s pitching days were pretty much over, someone suggested that he visit Dr. William Bowen, MD, an orthopedic surgeon in Willits. He did.
“He examined it and said, ”Yeah, I can fix it,”” Lyndall remembers.
A planned 90-minute surgery turned into a marathon 4 1/2-hour procedure at Howard Memorial Hospital in Willits. Plates were inserted on both sides of the finger and a metal knuckle was inserted. After a lengthy healing process, the finger returned to its old self, a scar the only telltale sign that it had ever been so badly mangled. Lyndall has gone on to play football, basketball and baseball for the Knights, though he isn”t playing basketball this season because of his baseball commitment.
While Lyndall”s athletic future was saved, he also had found his calling ? to help other people the same way Dr. Bowen had helped him. And it wasn”t just an idle thought that never came to fruition.
Lyndall has spent a part of each of his last two summers working toward that goal. He spent 11 days at a student medical seminar in Berkeley following his freshman year after applying for and receiving a $700 scholarship with the help of his high school principal, Matt Cockerton. Last summer he spent 11 days at a similar function, only this time it was at prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. About a month later, he was headed back to the East Coast to attend a baseball scouting trip at Dartmouth University in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Lyndall was among 85 baseball players invited to take part in the function, where coaches from seven major universities were present to scout the group. Players were placed onto teams of different ability levels.
“I was on the second highest,” Lyndall said. “It was pretty exciting.”
The possibility of earning an athletic scholarship in baseball or possibly even a combination athletic/academic scholarship to a university back east, such as Dartmouth, would be an ideal situation for Lyndall.
“I would love to go to Darmouth, it”s a beautiful school,” Lyndall said. “But if I end up at another school, as long as I can play baseball I”ll be happy.”
Lyndall”s baseball career took a fortuitous turn this past summer when he played for the SSK Reds in Santa Rosa. His coach was none other than former San Francisco Giants pitcher Noah Lowry (2003-2007), a left-hander who won his first seven starts with the Giants and posted a career record of 40-31 before injuries forced him out of the game. Lowry introduced Lyndall to another former Giants pitcher, Jesse Foppert (2003-2005), the head coach at Marin Catholic High School in Kentfield, for some specialized one-on-one training.
“He works with a bunch of kids but the nice thing is that when you go down there, he works with you one-on-one,” Lyndall said. “You have his complete attention and I like that.”
A fastball-curveball pitcher who has experimented a little bit with a knuckleball, Lyndall describes himself as an aggressive type when on the mound.
“I like to go after people, get ahead in the count early,” he said. “If I can establish by fastball, my curveball is that much better. It”s my out pitch.”
Which is all well and good unless you plan on pitching at a higher level of organized baseball, according to Lyndall.
“He (Foppert) told me I needed a changeup, that I have to have a changeup if I want to get to that next level,” Lyndall said.
Since working with Foppert, Lyndall said his changeup has improved dramatically. “It has come a long way,” he said. “He told me I need to throw it as aggressively as I can, that the arm motion should be the same as a fastball, only you grip it different. It should come out of my hand looking like a fastball only it”s seven to eight miles per hour slower.”
Many of Foppert”s other one-on-one students are collegiate players with promising futures as well, according to Lyndall, who said he feels honored to be in their company.
“One guy was catching me who plays at Western Michigan,” Lyndall said.
Foppert”s coaching extends beyond the merely mechanical nature of throwing different pitches and all their subtleties, according to Lyndall.
“He”s put so much information into me and he”s made me so confident ? a better pitcher,” Lyndall said.
Foppert uses short sayings to pound his points home, according to Lyndall.
“”Let it fly!” is one he uses all the time,” Lyndall said. “He wants my arm motion to be the same as a fastball when I”m throwing the changeup.”
Another of Foppert”s sayings is “extension, extension,” meaning make sure the pitching arm is fully extended when delivering the pitch, a reminder not to short-arm it. “If you don”t get full extension, the pitch won”t do what it”s supposed to do.”
Short-arming things really isn”t Lyndall”s style, whether he”s playing sports or working hard in the classroom. A big fan of Southern California sports teams (Dodgers, Lakers and the former L.A. Rams now playing in St. Louis), he also wouldn”t mind ending up at a West Coast college such as UCLA or Long Beach State.
Though his athletic career and academic studies have taken him a long way in a short time and should take him a great deal farther, Lyndall said his success to this point is only possible because so many people have helped him along the way, with his parents Mike and Aleisha and brothers Payton, 10, and Deake, 5, being behind him every step of the way. That list also includes Lowry, Foppert, Cockerton, Scott Conrad, Lou Poloni, Steve Olson, Mike Davis and Dr. Kirk Andrus, MD.
Oh yeah, and don”t forget Dr. Bowen.
Taking a line right out of the 1970s cult classic the Six Million Dollar Man, Dr. Bowen made Lyndall”s finger better and stronger. And it”s that same finger pointing the way toward a bright future for a young man who can”t wait to give back everything he”s received.
