Brady Nolen knows only one way to play baseball.
And it could have cost him his life.
The 2025 Festus High graduate was tracking down a fly ball to right center field while playing for Festus American Legion Post 253 in a tournament June 26 at De Smet when he dove to make the catch. Post 253 was trailing the Inevitable A’s American 18/19U team 8-1. Instead of letting the right fielder make the play, Nolen did what Nolen does.
“It was awfully stupid of me,” he said. “This guy hit a high fly ball to deep right center, I made a jump on it and it was more the right fielder’s ball. I laid out and when I hit the ground, I skipped off (it) like a rock. As soon as I hit the ground, I knew something was wrong.
“I caught my breath but I couldn’t get comfortable. No matter what position I was in, it hurt. Straight from the game, we went and got checked out at urgent care and they thought it was a fractured rib or I’d punctured my lung. The X-Ray and CT scan were negative. We came home for a couple of days.”
Then his symptoms progressively got worse. He didn’t know it, but he was literally bleeding to death internally because of a ruptured spleen.
“I slept on the couch. I got dad up about seven times the first night we got home. I passed out twice standing up Friday night. We thought they were symptoms we were dealing with from a fractured rib, but my blood pressure dropped really low. We didn’t think it was my spleen.”
Nolen’s grandmother is a retired nurse practitioner and she took his oxygen, blood pressure and heart rate, and told her grandson something wasn’t right with his face.
“I was extremely pale,” he said. “All the blood was in my abdomen.”
The family concluded it must be his spleen. On Sunday, June 29, Brady was taken to Mercy GoHealth Urgent Care in Festus. It was determined he was bleeding internally and his family drove him to Mercy Hospital Jefferson.
“They took my vitals and walked in with a wheelchair, rolled me (away), got an IV, got a CT scan. They put contrast in my blood. I got sent back to a room. The doctor walks in and says, ‘Not to scare you, but your spleen has a hole or crack.’”
He was transported by ambulance to Mercy Hospital South in St. Louis County, where he said more than a dozen medical personnel were ready to take his case.
“The surgeon came in and said, ‘From the looks of the CT, 25 percent of your spleen was functional.’ They drained two pounds of blood out of my abdomen.”
Surgery to remove the organ took an hour and 15 minutes. The spleen fights invading germs in the blood with white blood cells; controls the level of blood cells (white and red, as well as platelets) and filters the blood, removing any old or damaged red blood cells.
Nolen spent three days in the hospital recovering.
“The doctor said your hemoglobin is supposed to be 14-16 and he said mine was 4.8. My blood count was extremely shot. He told me if it wasn’t for me being an 18-year-old healthy boy, and if we didn’t go in Sunday, I probably wouldn’t have seen Monday.”
Recovery typically lasts six to eight weeks. At the two-week mark, Nolen will get the staples in his abdomen removed. After that he faces the challenge of regaining his weight, which dropped from 192 to 176 pounds. The six-week post-op mark is Aug. 10. Nolen is signed to play for Crowder College and he reports to Neosho on Aug. 15. He said Crowder’s coaches are aware of his injury and ongoing recovery.
I wondered why new high school graduates with college scholarships in their pocket take the chance of being injured playing American Legion baseball. While Legion ball is struggling mightily to remain relevant, in Festus, the top players stock the Festus lineup every summer and the post, the players, volunteer coaches and the community all believe it’s important. Ironically, this was Nolen’s first year playing Legion ball. He’d been doing the select/travel circuit in summers past.
“Growing up, ever since I was younger, the 253 logo set it apart and it’s very distinctive,” Nolen said. “I wanted to say I played one time (for Festus). Being down (in the injury game), we weren’t going to play on Sunday (in the tournament). It was a meaningless game. I called off the right fielder.”
I asked him, if the same play happens at Crowder, would he do the same thing again?
“Oh yeah, I’m sure I (would). It’s going to matter then.”
The Nolens were extra thankful as they spent the Fourth of July holiday together.
“We’re happy I’m still here,” he said. “It was a life-changing weekend.”