05/06 at 11:19 PM

Before the first raindrops fell on Plainsman Park this past weekend, Joseph Sanders knew a storm was on its way.
His broken jaw told him so.

When the air pressure builds up — a key sign that rain is on the way — the titanium plates and screws in Sanders’ jaw feel it. In turn, they let Sanders feel it, too.

“For some reason,” Sanders said, “it aches.”

It’s been the least of Sanders’ worries following the scary injury that’s left the remainder of his junior season up in the air.

Sanders will definitely miss this weekend’s series at Kentucky, and will not find out until Monday if he even has a chance to play in
Auburn’s regular-season finale series with Alabama.

“It’s been real tough,” Sanders said. “It’d be nice to get back out there and help out.

“It’s just a waiting game.”

For now, Sanders continues to adjust to life with a detached jaw and a mouth full of metal.

Since he took that fastball from Samford’s Kyle Putkonen right under his left earflap in an April 21 game at Plainsman Park, Sanders hasn’t had a solid bite to eat. He recently moved on to soft pieces of fish, but that’s been tough because his teeth are still sore.

“Nothing but milk shakes and mashed potatoes,” Sanders said.

The accident was unavoidable.

With the sun hanging low on that Tuesday evening— right above the center-field batter’s eyes — Sanders didn’t see the pitch before it was too late.

“It kind of got lost in there,” Sanders said. “And the next thing you know I saw it coming on me.”

Sanders knew immediately that the bone, all the way from under his earflap to the front of his chin, was broken. He could feel it with his tongue.

For a player who has never been seriously hurt throughout his career, and never even taken a punch to the face, the pain was jarring.
But it didn’t knock him to the ground.

Immediately after the smack of seams on flesh reverberated through a stunned Plainsman Park, Sanders trotted to the dugout and headed straight to the training room.

“It felt like I just got popped in the face and then it was like ‘Oh my God, I broke my jaw,’” Sanders said. “’Let’s go to the ER and get this fixed.”

Forty-eight painful, nauseating and drugged-up hours later, Sanders went under the knife in Birmingham.

“It was miserable,” Sanders said. “Absolutely miserable.”

Sanders currently has five titanium plates holding the broken jaw together — a much speedier alternative than the old-fashioned technique of wiring a patient’s jaw shut. On both sides of his mouth, Sanders has braces on his upper and lower molars. Rubberbands stretch from the top and bottom, connecting the braces and aligning his bite.

When the first stage of healing comes to a close, Sanders will likely have braces on all of his teeth.

“I had braces as a kid. It ruined all that,” Sanders said. “I never wanted them again.”

The teeth, despite Sanders having to relive some pre-pubescent nightmares, will eventually return to normal. Whether or not he will be able to regain feeling in his lower lip, which has disappeared because of a severed nerve, remains uncertain.

“Just a little cold, hard fact,” Sanders said.

Sanders hasn’t been able to do much baseball-wise since the incident.

A batter’s teeth involuntarily chatter and grind during a swing against live pitching. Sanders’ titanium plates would be at risk if he
stepped into the cages, so he’s been rendered to only hitting off a tee.

Sanders, Auburn’s best hitter in nearly every category, including home runs and RBIs, has been able to lift weights, but even that has been minimized because of the potential danger.

“I can feel it in there just moving and everything,” Sanders said.

Yet despite all the adversity, Sanders is confident he’ll see the field again in 2009 — potentially his final season with the Tigers. Sanders, a 21-year-old junior, is eligible for this year’s Major League Baseball amateur draft.

“The option is always out there for me (to sit out the rest of the season), but I don’t want to,” Sanders said. “I want to help out as much as I can.”

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