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COLLEGES: Tech pitcher defies the odds and earns his
way back Eddie Burns is still pitching, a good story made better by the fact that he's worked into Georgia Tech's weekend rotation. That he still wears "Yellow Jackets" across his chest is the best tale of all. Take a young man's gift away, turn off his sizzling fastball, and then suggest he might not fit on The Flats any more. What's left? Surely, surrender barks as an option. Once a phenom, then stuck sniffing his sport's trash heap, the 6-foot-8 junior right-hander threw a high, hard one at that idea. He has been through more than a shredded pitching shoulder. Burns has lived in the margins. "I was given the option to sign a medical hardship, where the school would pick up the scholarship I had to help me finish, but I wouldn't be allowed to play baseball," said Burns, who will start Saturday when Tech (21-13, 9-6 ACC) plays at No. 5 Virginia (30-7, 10-5). "They also kept the option open: 'You're welcome back [to the team], but all scholarships are off the table.' I came very close to transferring. I felt I had something to prove at Tech." Burns remains on partial scholarship because Tech lost so many underclassmen. "In between his junior and senior year, Eddie Burns was probably the best pitching prospect in our state ... the guy in the recruiting battles everybody wanted," Tech coach Danny Hall said. Here's a zinger: Burns thinks he was injured at Hiram High in football. "I didn't know it had been hurt," said the former quarterback. "My senior year, in the first game I took the mound, and behind the backstop there's probably 30 guys, scouts with [radar] guns. By the third inning, they were gone. The velocity wasn't there." Burns had no pain, just dull aching and "a little pinch" upon raising his arm. Once hitting 90 and 91 mph routinely, he usually hovered in the mid-80s after the injury. "It took until April of my first year in college before I realized, 'OK, there's something seriously wrong, and it's time to get surgery,' " Burns said. One dismal appearance as a Tech freshman in 2005 sent him to a surgeon, where a torn labrum was repaired 18 months after the injury. But 2006 was no better —- one outing, three earned runs, no outs —- and Hall was reminded that Burns' return was iffy. "Most of the doctors who operate on talent like that will tell you it's 50-50 that they can get back," Hall said. "We had conversations and he was given free rein to shop himself because there were questions about whether he was going to get back to where he was." Sent home early from summer league, Burns worked out with his former summer team, the East Cobb Yankees, when "[coach James Beavers] said, 'Let's get you in a [batting practice] situation.' Something clicked," he said. "I was throwing harder and making the pitches I wanted. I realized, 'OK, it's in there.' " Now 3-1 with a 2.33 ERA in 11 appearances (five starts), Burns made his first weekend start last week at Miami. He allowed one earned run in 6 1/3 innings, striking out six. "The guy who deserves the credit is Eddie Burns," Hall said. "To be at the talent level he was, which was probably a high, high draft pick, and then fall to where you can't compete because of injury, a lot of guys mentally can't handle that." Burns, whose father, Tom, was a minor-league pitcher, did. "To have a gift to be able to just go out and throw hard and never worry about my arm, and then lose the gift and not be able to throw was hard to take," he said. "My father, shoulder surgery ended his career. "He had input, and James Beavers and I did research and found the full recovery time was like a year and a half. With that in mind, I didn't want to give...end
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