Former Phillies prospect Matt Imhof retires after losing his right eye

Matt Imhof, the Phillies minor league pitcher who lost his right eye in a freak accident after a game last season, announced his retirement on Wednesday morning in an emotional essay posted on ESPN.com that detailed his injury and the challenges he has since overcome.

Imhof lost his eye when a resistance band he was using after a Clearwater Threshers game snapped off the wall and the metal latch smashed into his face.

"I was facing the wall, about 25-30 feet away from it, with a band in each hand. I pulled them back hard above my head so that my right hand was above my right ear and my left hand was above my left ear. As I got to the top of my motion, I felt the tension break," Imhof wrote. "It's a surreal moment; the moment you realize you're screwed and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it."

Imhof, 23, was rushed to the hospital and then flown to Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, where he had surgery to repair his eye, and after that did not work, surgery to remove it.

"I'm not going to lie, it made me angry. I was depressed. I was confused. But mostly, I was scared," Imhof wrote. "I felt like I had lost a lifetime of work. But it was more than that. I hadn't lost it, it was taken from me. I wasn't Matt Imhof anymore; I was a shell of him. The real Matt Imhof died in that training room along with his future. The only thing that defined me now was an injury."

Imhof said he was motivated by Dr. Wendy W. Lee, who performed the second surgery and as Imhof wrote, is a "certified badass." She told Imhof that his surgery was life-altering and not life-ending. He was still able to do whatever he wanted. Imhof, still upset, did not want to listen. But a week later, Imhof said the message clicked.

"I had two options," Imhof wrote. "I could let this injury define me. I could be angry — no one would blame me for that. I could be depressed, feel sorry for myself and live in the past. I could let the rest of my life be defined by the worst day of my life. Or, I could pick myself up, dust myself off and move on."

Imhof noticed when was out in public that people looked at him with a "sad, confused look." He hated it. The only way, Imhof said, to have people see him without the injury was for him to see himself like that first. He embraced the struggle, he said. Imhof is now working as an as undergraduate assistant pitching coach at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as he finishes his degree in business finance.

"I have never doubted my ability to be successful in life and I don't plan on starting now," Imhof wrote. "Whether it's a baseball field or a boardroom, I know my future is bright."