The ‘Lucky’ one: Despite end of professional baseball career, Kentlake’s Ryan Voelkel just happy to be alive

He received a second chance on the baseball diamond.

And it could have killed him.

Instead, it saved Ryan Voelkel’s life.

“I never really felt sorry for myself,” said the 6-foot-6, 230-pound Voelkel, a 2006 Kentlake High graduate who went on to establish a home run record at Green River Community College in 2008 and play professionally in the Atlanta Braves organization the same year. “I never thought, ‘Why me?’ It was more of a, ‘Damn, this wasn’t how I thought it was going to be.'”

Jesse Marunde, a former American strongman, could have said the same thing as Voelkel.

So too could have former college basketball great Hank Gathers. Same for Reggie Lewis, a forward for the Boston Celtics in the late 1980s and early ’90s.

None of them received that chance as each collapsed and died while participating in their respective sports.

Voelkel?

He’s the lucky one.

While he was diagnosed with the same incurable heart disease as Marunde, Gathers and Lewis — hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) — Voelkel today is as alive and well as he will ever be. He’s coaching youngsters on the finer nuances of the game at the Grand Slam baseball camp, which comes through the Kent Valley on an annual basis, and he’s working in a catering business until the end of summer, when he will attend Central Washington University.

Life, however, has changed for the 22 year old.

He has his health — and a future. But playing baseball professionally will remain a part of the past.

“I really do miss the game,” said Voelkel, who hopes to shift his talents into coaching while at Central. “I’m sad about it. It took a while (after I was diagnosed) until I could really watch it on TV. It’s still sometimes tough. But I can’t change it and I have realized that over the last year. Unless I can swap out my heart with a new one …”

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a disease in which a muscle in the heart (the myocardium, which is the middle of the three walls that form a layer around the organ) is thickened for no apparent reason. It is the leading cause of cardiac death in young athletes and has symptoms that include shortness of breath, chest pain, uncomfortable awareness of the heart beat, lightheadedness, fatigue and fainting.

“You look at the list of symptoms, and he had none of them,” said Ryan’s dad, Mike Voelkel, who was a ninth-round selection of the Toronto Blue Jays in 1982. “The only thing the doctors were able to come up with was a heart murmur. It was irregular.

“But we still get to see him every Christmas, which is a good thing.”

An even better — or, rather, luckier — thing might be that Voelkel’s heart problem was found before it was too late.

A three-sport star at Kentlake (football, basketball, and baseball), the big guy took more physicals than most during his prep days. The same procedure followed him to Green River in 2007 and 2008, where he blossomed into one of the top college prospects in the state after batting .319 with 36 RBIs and a wood-bat record 10 home runs two years ago.

HCM was never detected during those routine physicals.

Meanwhile, Voelkel’s physical exertion increased every step of the way. A slightly overweight three-sport star for the Falcons, Voelkel ballooned to 290 pounds by the time he graduated. At Green River, Voelkel would be whipped into shape much in part due to a seven-mile run that has become a tradition for the baseball team.

“If I was going to die anywhere, I was going to die on that (Lea) hill,” said Voelkel, who plans on getting a business degree at Central. “I remember panting on that hill. I think back now, and realize I could have.”

It wasn’t until a year after turning professional that doctors within the Atlanta Braves organization discovered the condition. And even then, the circumstances that led to the finding proved to be as much a combination of Voelkel’s skill as it was pure luck and happenstance that he was in the organization to begin with.

“It was a miracle,” said Ryan’s mom, Donna Voelkel. “We were extremely fortunate that he hooked up with the right organization, the right doctors.”

That miracle almost didn’t happen.

In fact, Voelkel came within an eyelash of never playing professionally. Though he showed his prospect status on the diamond as a sophomore at Green River, Voelkel’s name surprisingly was not called during the two-day, 50-round Major League Baseball first-year player draft in June of 2008. So Voelkel shifted his attention to Division II Georgia State College and University in Milledgeville, where he had a full-ride scholarship in hand.

“I really thought I was going to (get drafted),” Voelkel said at the time. “My name didn’t get called and I was a little bummed.”

Less than 24 hours after the final selection was made — after a player who was selected by the Braves backed out — Voelkel got the call. In the blink of an eye, his bags were packed and ready for Florida, where he would sign his first professional contract and play for Atlanta’s Rookie League affiliate.

In the following months, Voelkel would rub elbows with major leaguers Hideki Matsui (Anaheim Angels), Mike Hampton (Houston Astros), and Rodrigo Lopez (Arizona Diamondbacks). He would even double off of Anthony Lerew, who now is a starting pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, and smash the first professional home run of his career in his first start.

“First-pitch fastball, middle away, and I just ripped it,” laughed Voelkel about the home run. “It was a line shot. I put my head down and just started running. I hit it into the bullpen and all the guys signed the ball. I gave the ball to my dad.”

Voelkel would hit just one more homer as a pro — not because he wasn’t good enough or couldn’t hack it at the professional level.

Instead, the Braves were forced to release Voelkel after finding the heart condition in April of 2009 after a series of tests, including an MRI and an echocardiogram. Such tests are not administered during physicals at the high school or college level, which helps explain why Voelkel’s condition was never detected.

At the time, the news was a mixture of stunned disbelief and bittersweetness for Voelkel, who promptly went out and got a second opinion that bore the same result.

After a little more than a year to reflect, Voelkel can see the big picture now.

“I feel lucky that I got to play one year down there. If I didn’t get to play one year, maybe I would ask, ‘Why me?'” he said.

“I’m the lucky one.”