Menhart ready to return for Stars after freak foot injury

Paul Menhart removes his sock and displays the scar.

There, on the top of his right foot, is a two-inch line that cuts across the top of his ankle. It is an ever-present reminder of just how quickly a promising baseball career can almost be derailed because of something as fluky as getting up and answering the door of your hotel room.

It was early the morning of June 22 and Paul Menhart was watching television in the Metairie, La., hotel room of teammates George Arias and Charles Poe.

"We had a real early flight that morning (to Omaha), so instead of going to bed for a couple of hours, we decided to just stay up, watch TV and eat a few potato chips and get our sleep on the plane," Menhart recalled.

But when Menhart got up to answer a knock at the door, a seemingly harmless night of TV watching took a drastic turn for the worse.

Menhart cut the top of his foot badly on a metal bracket that he says stuck about three inches out of one of the bed frames. What followed was not a very pretty scene.

"Blood just started gushing out all over," Menhart said. "I mean, it was just geysering out of there. I smoked it real bad."

Menhart said Arias and Poe had earlier joked about stumbling over the sharp metal rod a few times themselves. This time, however, wasn't a laughing matter.

"I went into the tub and put (the foot) in warm water right away," Menhart said. "But the blood just kept gushing. Then I laid down on the floor and elevated my foot and wrapped it up real good while waiting for an ambulance."

A short time later, the bleeding had stopped enough for Menhart to see just how badly he had cut his foot.

"You could see the tendons and everything in there," Menhart recalled following the Stars' 3-1 win over Fresno on Wednesday night, his first night back off the disabled list. "It kind of looked like a smile. It was unbelievable."

So was the hotel room afterward.

"It was just a bloody mess," Stars manager Jerry Royster said. "It looked like a murder had been committed in there. There was blood all over the walls, everywhere."

"The floor was just disgusting," Menhart said.

It took nine stitches to finally put the top of Menhart's foot back together again. Because of the number of nerves that were severed, it could be a year before most of the pain goes away.

"I still get a lot of shooting pains down there, even when I'm just walking," Menhart said.

But the 29-year-old right-hander, who compiled a 5-4 record with a 4.79 ERA and two saves before the injury, is finally back on the mound again for the Stars.

"I can't believe he can even put his shoe on again," Royster said. "That was such a nasty-looking cut. (Stars trainer George Poulis) was concerned he might have severed a tendon. Luckily he didn't."

The timing of the accident couldn't have been worse. Menhart, who has spent parts of three seasons in the big leagues, was pitching well enough that Royster said he just missed getting called up the Padres twice in the weeks preceding the injury.

"When (the Padres) called up (Carlos) Reyes and also Donne Wall, Paul was very much in the equation both times," Royster said. "There were a couple of times after where he might have been called up, too."

"It's definitely put me back a lot," Menhart said.

Menhart said he hasn't ruled out future legal action against the hotel, the Best Western Landmark.

"Basically, this is the hotel's fault that something like this could happen," Menhart said. "Talk of legal action has been brought up. You have up to five years to do it. A lot depends on how I can come back pitching-wise. If I come back and it's hurting me to the point where I can't pitch effectively again, then I've got something concrete to go on."

For now, Menhart keeps his fingers crossed that the injury won't keep him from returning to the big leagues again.

"My first priority is to get back on the mound and pitch as well as Brad Kaufman did tonight," he says with a smile.

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