Day after day last season, as each member of Real Salt Lake completed their workout and walked out to the fields of the Herriman training facility, Tony Beltran sat and watched.
It’s all he could do. The 31-year-old veteran was recovering from a devastating knee injury that was scheduled to keep him out at least nine months. It was agonizing for him watching every teammate that walked freely outside and onto the pitch where they would run, cut and jump effortlessly.
“I felt like half a man,” Beltran said earlier this month as he sat next to his wife, Teal, in the dining room of their Sugar House home while his infant son, Kaito, slept soundly in the next room.