A Close Look in at Ben Wessel - Wessel's Words and Talents
As a redshirt athlete in any sport, sitting out a season is a painful undertaking for the simple fact that they are denied the ability to play their favorite sport for their collegiate team for an entire season. A player that went through this process is Rhode Island redshirt senior and starting pitcher, Ben Wessel. Sadly, on top of redshirting, Wessel has had the misfortune of dealing with the injury bug multiple times. It is highly unlikely that any player in any sport has never dealt with an injury but the Maine native has had a worse run-in with injuries than the average athlete.
On May 15, 2012, the right-handed starting pitcher felt the pain of a torn UCL in his throwing elbow and he had to deal with the unfortunate fate of Tommy John surgery. The UCL injury caused Wessel to have to take a medical redshirt in his freshman season. After showing improvement throughout three consecutive seasons of college baseball with the Rhode Island Rams, Ben Wessel was crippled by the same injury on January 27, 2017, with just three weeks remaining until the start of the college baseball season. I do not need to verbalize the brutality of a situation like this because everyone can just imagine suffering the same injury in the sport that you love two times within a span of approximately five years.
Ironically, Ben Wessel has his own blog on Rhode Island baseball, named "Wessel's Words". Blogging is certainly a joyful hobby for an athlete but everyone needs to understand the pain that Wessel has to endure when he blogs and knows that he cannot physically contribute on the mound, where he belongs. The news of Wessel's injury for the 2017 season did not signal the loss of "Wessel's Words" but it did represent the loss of a solid starting pitcher. In a season in which Ben Wessel tore his UCL and fellow starting pitcher, Tyler Wilson, suffered a labrum injury, Raphael Cerrato's pitching staff is hurting.
To measure the impact of losing a player of this caliber, one must evaluate his accomplishments as a Rhode Island Ram. As expected, there were a couple of growing pains on the mound is his redshirt freshman and sophomore seasons but it amounted into a strong starter in his redshirt junior season. In the 2016 season, Ben Wessel had a 6-5 record, totaling 54 strikeouts and averaging 6.13 strikeouts per 9 innings. Through his 14 starts, he logged 79.1 innings for his team. Most importantly, he threw a mastery of a game in the 2016 Atlantic 10 championship game against Davidson. His seven shutout innings led to the team's first NCAA tournament appearance since 2005 and helped earned him a spot on the Atlantic 10 All-Championship Team.
Clearly, no UCL injury could hold the Scarborough, Maine native down. If you think that Ben Wessel is a valuable player to his team, you thought right. Only a talented player can go from a starter on the mound to a starter out in the outfield. On April 12, 2017, Wessel started out in left field versus Holy Cross, going 1-for-4 at the plate. By and large, he is a smart man who made the best possible decisions for not just his athletic career but his life, as illustrated here:
Right now, Ben Wessel may be blogging and leading his teammates from the dugout or anywhere on the diamond but soon enough, he will be exerting his dominance on the mound again.