Only the unidentified voice remains. The baseball game is gone. The drive to the field vanished. That morning’s school day disappeared. The previous weeks, too. Just four words, maybe from the catcher, linger in Jared Schwartz’s memory. “Are you OK, Jared?”
Jared, then 12, was standing in the left-handed batter’s box of the local Little League park in Garnet Valley, Pa., on June 13, 2012. A fastball veered toward him. He turned back toward the umpire. The ball struck his helmet behind the right ear, and Jared fell. The next morning, he suffered immense eye pain and a severe headache.