A pitch to the face nearly ended Nick Podkul’s career. Here’s how the Phillies minor leaguer found his way back.

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Aramis Garcia will never forget the sound he heard on July 28, 2023. It was a loud pop, almost like a gunshot. He turned toward the field and saw his Lehigh Valley teammate, Nick Podkul, flat on the ground. Blood was seeping into the dirt.

Podkul, an infielder for the triple-A IronPigs, remembers it well. He remembers the pitcher — Syracuse Mets right-hander Jeff Brigham — and the pitch — a 92-mph fastball. Brigham is best known for his slider. It looks like it’s coming straight at you, until it breaks at the very last moment.

That was what Podkul was expecting. As he watched the ball come out of Brigham’s hand, he thought he saw a slider. But instead, Brigham threw a fastball. The pitch never broke. It drilled into the right side of Podkul’s face.

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As he lay there, across home plate, he tried to figure out where he’d been hit. He spat to see if any teeth would fall out. None did. He felt blood streaming toward his mouth, and wondered if he’d been struck in the nose. If that were the case, he wouldn’t be too concerned. That would be fixable.

What worried him most was his vision. When Podkul opened his eyes, everything looked blurry. He later learned that his right cheekbone had been shattered, damaging the nerves around his right eye. In that moment, one thing was on his mind.

“I don’t know how I’m going to be able to see,” he thought. “And if I can’t see, how am I going to be able to play?”

With the help of a trainer, Podkul slowly walked off the field. He took an ambulance to a local hospital and when he arrived, he opened his phone camera. He could barely recognize himself. His nose was flattened. His right eye drooped down. Podkul compared it to a “poorly drawn cartoon character.”

Six months have passed since that day, and Podkul still looks different. His face remains swollen, and his right eye is slightly bigger than his left. There is a small scar above his mouth. A week after he was hit, he underwent facial reconstruction surgery. He’d suffered fractures to his nose, his forehead, and his orbital bone. The doctors inserted plates and splints to piece his face back together.

Podkul began his rehab four weeks later, at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown where the IronPigs play. By September, he was taking batting practice again. Now, Podkul, 26, is in big league spring training with the Phillies for the first time in his career. He has yet to face live pitching. He knows it will be a challenge. But he believes that his eyesight was spared for a reason.

“If it happens again, it happens again,” he said. “I am just trying to get over that fear because I don’t want to play scared. And I probably will be a little scared when I see a live pitch again. But I’m going to try not to overthink it.

“The game could have been taken away from me that night. Luckily, it wasn’t. This is another chance.”

Fourteen days before his face was shattered, Podkul stood in that same box, at that same ballpark in Allentown, and drove a four-seam fastball 375 feet into the IronPigs’ bullpen. It was his first game of the season at triple A — which was an accomplishment, considering he’d started the year on the development list. As he jogged around the bases, he pumped his hand in the air. He used to try to hit home runs. Now, his swing felt effortless.

“This is it,” he thought. “I’m going to run with this.”

Podkul’s journey to this point had not been easy. Even in college, he had to earn his spot. He joined Notre Dame’s baseball team in 2016 as a walk-on. He quickly made an impression, showing positional versatility and a mature approach at the plate.

By his sophomore year, he was the everyday second baseman, batting third in the lineup. He ranked second on his team in slugging percentage (.439), third in average (.285), and third in on-base percentage (.386).

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Former Phillies utilityman Matt Vierling was Podkul’s teammate at the time. They roomed together in their freshman and junior years. In 2018, Podkul was drafted by the Blue Jays in the seventh round, and Vierling was drafted by the Phillies in the fifth.

Their trajectories couldn’t have been more different. Vierling was playing in Citizens Bank Park by the summer of 2021. Podkul was still in double A that year, batting just above the Mendoza Line. He struggled to find consistent success in the Blue Jays’ system. His stretches of hitting well were interspersed with troublesome slumps.

Toronto released Podkul in August 2022. It was difficult to process at the time. He moved back home, into his mother’s basement in Indiana. He wasn’t sure if another team would call.

He took up journaling and worked on getting back to the swing that he had at Notre Dame. It was simple and direct and helped him get on top of the baseball. He also did some self-reflection. Podkul realized that when he was with the Blue Jays organization, he was trying to do way too much. He didn’t get a lot of playing time from 2021 on, so when he did play, he found himself pressing.

“I was trying a little bit too hard to hit home runs,” he said. “I was swinging uphill, and I was just late or behind everything. I tried to be Superman a little too much. And, mentally, I wasn’t as strong as I am now. It was kind of feeling sorry for yourself, when you’re not playing every day.”

When the Phillies signed him to a minor-league contract in December 2022, he felt rejuvenated. He showed up to spring training with added muscle, a better swing, and a refined approach. He was assigned to minor-league camp but made a few appearances in big league camp, hitting .364/.417/.545 in 11 games.

Despite a good showing, Podkul was added to the development list. But this time, he didn’t feel sorry for himself.

“When you get released, it stinks,” he said. “No one likes to lose their job. But it kind of puts things in different perspective. So, it was I can either feel sorry for myself and be upset about being on the development list, or I can try to work my way out of it.”

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He chose the latter. Double-A Reading activated Podkul on April 27. He hit .285/.396/.588 with 12 home runs in 45 games. He was promoted to triple A on July 14, where he hit .280/.471/.560 with two home runs. His swing decisions and production were some of the best in the minor leagues. He feasted on fastballs and crushed lefties, to the tune of a 1.434 OPS in 75 at-bats against southpaws in Reading.

The Phillies noticed.

“I think you put up loud numbers like that, and it’s hard not to get people’s attention,” said Phillies general manager Sam Fuld. “So, for people that weren’t aware of his background and the work we did to acquire him, it might have caught them off-guard a little bit. But for us, who had at least some exposure and awareness of who he was, I think it didn’t shock us that he had the year that he did.

“He had as good an offensive year as anyone in our system last year, in many ways.”

It felt like everything was clicking for Podkul. When he thinks back on last season, one word comes to mind.

“Free,” he said. “It was a free feeling.”

Podkul missed the rest of the 2023 season after his injury at the end of July. He was almost amused at the comically bad timing, joking that he wished he’d been slammed in the face with a baseball when he was struggling.

With Podkul cleared to play in 2024, his goal was to have as normal an offseason as possible and be ready to go by spring training. It was ambitious. He had trouble eating over the first month of the offseason because the surgery had gone through his gum line. Garcia brought him a blender from the clubhouse. Garcia went through a similar injury — a knee to the face while sliding into a bag in 2016 — and knew how important it was to keep on weight.

Garcia continued to guide Podkul through the rehab process. Podkul saw the 31-year-old catcher as tangible proof that he could make it through. Garcia made his big league debut in 2018, less than two years after his facial injury. He hit 14 home runs in 53 games with Lehigh Valley last season.

“He had a great year in 2023,” Podkul said, “Having a guy who’s been through a similar situation has been really helpful.”

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Another source of help was Brea Hapken, one of the Phillies’ mental performance coaches, who introduced to Podkul to visualization. She recorded audio tapes for him to listen to before he went to sleep — or before games or practices — so he could better calm his nerves.

The idea was to put him in the moment. In one audio, Hapken walked through Podkul’s first game back. She described him arriving at the ballpark, walking into the clubhouse, getting ready for the game, and taking the field on defense.

Then, she described him walking to the dugout, waiting in the on-deck circle, and walking into the box.

“It’s just trying to get you to feel like you’re there,” Podkul said. “She made me one for games this year because it could be scary playing again. She made one before I went through surgery, too. It’s been helpful. I like it.”

When Podkul learned that he’d been invited to big-league camp, he showed up early. On the first day, he saw Larry Bowa and infield coach Bobby Dickerson hitting grounders on the half field. He asked if he could join.

At first, it was daunting. Dickerson kept telling him to “stop trying to be an infielder,” and Podkul had no idea what that meant. But then he thought about it, and realized what Dickerson’s message was.

“He just wanted me to not try to do too much,” Podkul said. “And that’s kind of the microcosm of baseball, right? It’s a pretty simple game, down to its core. It’s not an easy game, but it’s simple: See ball, catch ball, throw ball. That’s what he was preaching. And I really liked that.”

Hitting coach Kevin Long has been preaching the same thing. He approached Podkul in the clubhouse about a week ago. They began to work on quieting some of his movements, specifically his head.

Long hopes that the benefit will be twofold: Podkul will be able to see the ball more clearly — which will ultimately lead to even better swing decisions — but he will also be able to react if a ball is veering his way.

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“If he’s still, he can react,” Long said. “If he wants to calm down some body movement stuff, he can get himself in a position where his head is not moving. Before, his head would kind of move and crash forward, and by the time the ball was released, he was losing some precious moments to react. This should help him see it the way he needs to see it.”

The Phillies’ first spring training game is on Saturday. Fittingly, it’s against the Blue Jays. There’s no guarantee that Podkul gets an at-bat, but if he does, he will close his eyes and visualize it about 30 minutes beforehand. He will walk into the box with gratitude. He has never felt luckier to play this sport.

“I’m just trying to keep it in perspective,” he said. “It could have been much worse. I was terrified that I wasn’t going to play again. Now, my focus is to just get ready for next year. And try to do the same thing that I did the year before.”