When Shelton Beard arrived in Owensboro, Ky. For his baseball team's world series, his teammates showed their solidarity in an unusual way - they lined up in the parking lot to get their heads shaved.

"He was beaming from ear to ear when he saw everybody doing that," said Steve Watson, the assistant coach who shaved the players.  Shelton was bald, too, but he had shaved his hair off because of brain surgery at Le Bonheur after a life-threatening blow to the head with a baseball.

"It was a kind of show of support by all being the same - not just as a team but also to show that it's not that big a deal to lose your hair," Steve said. "We were playing for the world series, but we were also playing for Shelton."

Shelton got in the game for one play to be on the record as a player for the Germantown Redbirds 11-year-olds team in the U.S. Specialty Sports Association tournament in July 2002.  "His teammates got to clap for him and told the story to the other team," Steve said.

The story they told began three weeks earlier when the team was practicing a drill with Shelton on first base.  A thunderstorm brewing in the north diverted his attention.  A player on second base threw the ball, accidentally hitting Shelton on the left side of his head just above the ear.

"I was across the field," said head coach Murray Beard, Shelton's father. "It sounded like somebody was hitting a baseball with a wooden bat with it hit his head.  I couldn't believe he wasn't out cold."

After he had been home for about 20 minutes, Shelton complained that his head hurt.  Murray told Shelton's mom, Wendy, that they should get x-rays because it was such a hard hit.

About five minutes after that, he was having trouble keeping his eyes open and staying awake.  He was slurring his speech and mixing up words.  He was real agitated," Murray said.  "I kept saying, 'What's wrong Shelton?' And he would say, 'I'm fired.' He was trying to say I'm tired but he couldn't get it out."

Murray and Wendy realized they had to get Shelton to the hospital.  "He couldn't walk," Wendy said.  They drove him to Methodist Le Bonheur Germantown Hospital and carried him into the emergency room.

"I saw the CT scan and knew we had a problem," said Murray, president and chief executive officer of EagleVision Inc., a medical equipment sales company.  Shelton had a skull fracture and an intracerebral hematoma, a blood clot inside his brain tissue.  Doctors said Shelton needed surgery at Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center.

"I had absolutely no clue it was that serious," Wendy said.  "Our world changed."

An ambulance took Shelton to Le Bonheur. Minutes counted.  "They were on a wire because he was going into a coma by the time they called me," said Dr. Rick Boop, a pediatric neurosurgeon.

At about 2 a.m., he performed an emergency craniotomy.  He removed a section of Shelton's skull, suctioned out the blood clot, stopped the bleeding and replaced the bone, securing it with small plates and screws.  Shelton's head had 58 staples.

After the surgery, Murray wanted assurance that Shelton was fine. But Dr. Boop said, "Not by a long shot."  The medical team wasn't sure if Shelton would wake up.  The mortality rate for a traumatic intracerebral hematoma in children was 30 percent.

"His case was a very close call.  If there had been much more delay in getting him to surgery, he might not have survived," Dr. Boop said.

Shelton made remarkable progress.  Two days after the surgery, he left ICU and a week after the accident he went home.  He had physical therapy for about six weeks and quickly recovered his coordination and balance.  He also had speech therapy because the injury affected the part of the brain that processes speech. "Physical therapy was pretty fun," Shelton said. "Speech therapy was really boring, and I had to do to longer so it was worse."

Sometimes Shelton couldn't come up with the words he wanted to say, but he looked for creative solutions.  For example, when Shelton couldn't think of the word "snake," he said "reptile with no legs."

Wendy said, "We had giant game of charades for about six weeks because he would try to convince us of something and we'd have to figure out what he meant.  He's a very determined and very competitive.  A lot of children would have shut down at this point.  He talked constantly." Shelton's high level of motivation was one of the most important things in his recovery, Dr. Boop said.

By August 2002, Shelton was determined to go to school.  The Beards met with administrators of St. George's Day School, a psychologist and a tutor to discuss how to meet Shelton's needs.  He entered sixth grade, shadowed by a tutor for two weeks.

"It was a lot of hard word on everybody's part," Murray said. "If we had kept him at home it would have been hard on him socially and from a recovery standpoint, because he wouldn't have been challenged."

Less than a year later, Dr. Boop cleared him to play baseball again.  Shelton was very happy.  "I didn't think it was going to happen."

He made an excellent recovery, Dr. Boop said.  The only long-term damage is a slight lack of vision on the lower right quadrant of both eyes. "He's learning to compensate," Wendy said. "It's like having bifocals."

Shelton would not have made it without Le Bonheur, Murray said. "Le Bonheur is one of the things that attracts top doctors to this area," he said. "There aren't that many pediatric neurosurgeons in the country.  We are lucking to have some of the best ones."  Murray also was impressed by the efficiency of the emergency room and the nurses in the intensive care unit.

"If we had put him to bed, he would have died in his sleep," Wendy said.

Please  click here to read more about other special children whose lives were saved by Le Bonheur's excellent care.