Gamecocks' ace prepares for Heels
Lorenzo Perez, Staff Writer

South Carolina pitcher Arik Hempy woke up on March 12 wondering how his left arm had fared overnight.

Rolling out of bed, Hempy detected some soreness in the shoulder, but it was a familiar ache that he suspected would fade as he reacquainted those muscles with the mechanics of throwing a baseball. More important, the junior felt no pain in his reconstructed elbow the morning after throwing 48 pitches in his first start in almost 12 months.

"That's when I knew he had attached everything pretty good in there," the Garner High graduate said Wednesday, joking about his surgeon.
Only 14 months have passed since the Gamecocks' left-handed ace underwent ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction -- known commonly as Tommy John surgery, named for the major league pitcher who was the first to have the surgery 33 years ago.

Armed with a 6-3 record this season and a 3.38 ERA Hempy, 22, is expected to start Saturday night for the Gamecocks in the second game of their best-of-three NCAA super regional series against North Carolina. (Another South Carolina pitcher with Triangle ties, junior Harris Honeycutt of Fuquay-Varina, is scheduled to start the first game Friday night.)

Hempy's family moved from Ohio to the Raleigh area before he started high school, in part, to expose him to better baseball competition. His American Legion coach from his high school days, Garner Post 232 coach Moe Barbour, said it was easy to see the potential in the tall, hard-throwing left-hander.

"You might get one like him every seven, eight years," Barbour said. "He was very coachable, never the type that had enemies. He knew what he could do, but he wasn't cocky."
At 6 feet 4 and 240 pounds, Arik (pronounced "Eric") Hempy has a husky frame built for throwing hard, and he relied heavily on a fastball that approached 95 mph when he first arrived in Columbia, S.C.

Hempy was voted to the 2004 SEC all-freshman team after finishing with 49 strikeouts and a 3-1 record that included a complete-game shutout of Mississippi that took 144 pitches.
Shoulder issues limited his sophomore season to 11 games, but he decided against having offseason surgery.

He returned to school for his junior season expecting his spring to serve as an audition for an early-round selection in the Major League Baseball draft.
A pop in his throwing elbow during a March 31 start at Louisiana State ended his season, however, and landed him on the operating table of Dr. Timothy Kremchek, chief orthopedic surgeon for the Cincinnati Reds.

"It was like a shot to the heart," Hempy said of the surgery. "But you've got to dig down deep and think, 'What else can you do with your life if this doesn't work out?' " Hempy said.
The Tommy John surgical procedure involves removing a tendon from the patient's wrist and grafting it into the injured elbow. The procedure has evolved into a career-saving operation for major league pitchers and younger pro prospects. The recovery and rehabilitation still can prove grueling, however.

Hempy remembered the difficulty he faced the first two months after the surgery just bending and unbending his elbow to regain something approaching full extension of his arm.
Starting with some brief throwing sessions in the bullpen, Hempy stretched his pitch count this spring from 50 in March to 75 up and past 90.

In South Carolina's 12-8 win over Charlotte on Sunday, he struggled with his control -- five earned runs, six hits and five walks in 5 1/3 innings -- but he threw 97 pitches.

His fastball can travel about 88 mph, a few ticks slower than before the injury, Hempy said.
The injury has forced him to concentrate more on developing his changeup and on regaining control of his curveball.

Kremchek said it is not uncommon for pitchers who have had the surgery to regain their velocity in 18 to 24 months and said some pitchers pick up speed.

After Hempy struck out 10 batters in six innings in a May 4 win over Kentucky, South Carolina coach Ray Tanner said it was hard not to root for his comeback.

"He was looking like he was going to be a top pick before he got hurt, and he was a special guy. I'm hoping he can get back to that point before the season's out," Tanner told The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier.

Now the comeback tale takes a homecoming turn through Chapel Hill this weekend, and, in a welcome change for Hempy, he's on the mound healthy enough to write his own closing chapters.
Staff writer Lorenzo Perez can be reached at 829-4643 or lorenzo.perez@newsobserver.com.