Rick O'Brien: Losing an eye but not his will to play again

If Sean Cross is filled with anger and self-pity, understandable considering what recently happened to him, those emotions are bubbling way below the surface.

"There's no need to stress myself over it or get worked up all the time," the 17-year-old said. "I just have to deal with it and move on with my life."

On March 29, less than two days after starring in Abraham Lincoln's 9-8 baseball win over Northeast Philly rival Swenson, Cross was riding his Rino bike down Frankford Avenue near Knorr Street, with teammate Shane Lafty standing on the back pegs, around midnight.

From out of nowhere, the two became victims of a drive-by paintball shooting. Lafty was hit twice, in the back and back of the head. Cross got the worst of the random and senseless act of violence. He was struck in the left eye, and, he found out later, under the left arm.

"I felt pain and then I held my hand against the eye," Cross said. "When I took it away, there was just darkness. I took my hoodie off, used the bottom of my shirt to catch the blood."

Cross, who lives near Frankford and Devereaux in the Tacony section, just blocks from the incident, called his grandmother, Joyce. She drove to the scene and transported him to Frankford Hospital's emergency room.

"They cleaned the eye out as much as they could, and then I was taken downtown to Wills Eye Hospital," Cross said.

About 12 hours after the shooting, Cross underwent surgery. He spent a couple of days recovering at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. When doctors finally arrived to tell him of the results, the word was not good.

Said Cross: "They said: 'There's no way we can repair your eye. You're not going to be able to see out of it again.'

"When they first told me that, it really didn't hit me that hard. It was after I left the hospital, when I got in the sunlight and started walking around a bit, that I kind of broke down. You see what it's really like to just have use of one eye."

In two to three weeks, he will undergo surgery to have a glass eye inserted. For now, he wears a ball-shaped ocular implant.

"My depth perception is really messed up," said Cross, a strong-armed rightfielder for the Railsplitters. "It's hard for me to judge how near or far something is from me, say, when I'm reaching for something on a table."

The 5-foot-7, 145-pounder is the second in his family to lose an eye. His grandfather, now deceased, was struck in the right eye with a dart when he was 2.

Cross' injury, of course, was not accidental. According to police, there was another paintball attack that night, on Castor Avenue near Magee. In that ambush, a 17-year-old male was struck. The vehicle in both incidents was reported as a dark- or red-colored minivan.

Cross' love affair with baseball began when he was a 6-year-old T-baller. "If you'd ask the kid to run through a brick wall for you, he'd do it," John Larsen, Lincoln's seventh-year coach, said.

Despite the severe injury, Cross, a senior, wants to play again. Not down the road. This season.

"I thought I'd be back already, but the doctor wants me to wait until I get the glass eye," he said. "He doesn't want any dirt to get in there or for bacteria to develop."

Said Larsen: "He wants to get right back into it. He's not scared, doesn't feel sorry for himself. He just wants to get back to his normal routine and playing baseball."

Larsen is just as eager to see that happen. On a locker-room board, the coach posted a copy of an article for Cross and his fellow Railsplitters to see about former Red Sox southpaw Abe Alvarez. Alvarez, legally blind in his left eye, pitched for the club from 2003 to 2008.

"It's there to remind Sean that he can play with one eye," Larsen said. "It'll take adjustments, but he can do it."

No one believes that more than Sean Cross.