Stillwater Baseball Player Returns to the Field After Near-Fatal Car Accident

After Alex Joy suffered critical injuries in a car accident in January, the Stillwater Area High School alumnus and Hamline University freshman thought he might never play baseball again. On Saturday, June 4 he proved to everyone that he was wrong and pitched in his first game since the crash.

The Loggers, Stillwater’s amateur league baseball team, won the game 7-0 against the Osceola Braves.

“I knew right away that it would all come back,” Joy, 19, said. “It felt really good to be back out there.”

Joy was driving home from Iowa on Jan. 17 with his girlfriend, Jenna Albert, when their SUV hit a patch of ice and rolled over.

They had been visiting friends in Iowa and left early in the morning so Joy could make it back to St. Paul for baseball practice. “The weather was so bad I tried to get out of practice by saying I was sick,” Joy said, “but it didn’t work.”

Joy was thrown from the car and suffered a broken orbital floor in his left eye and internal injuries that required the removal of his spleen and appendix. His body was also covered in cuts in bruises. But Joy has no recollection of the crash.

“The next thing I knew I was in the hospital,” he said.

Joy was treated in Albert Lea. Although he was released from the hospital after only three days, his injuries affected him in the long term. He was unable to play baseball during his freshman year at Hamline, where he was a varsity pitcher.

Joy decided to do all his physical therapy on his own.

“I don’t really like to listen to people telling me what to do,” he said. But the recovery was challenging and at times Joy thought about giving up.

“The process was taking too long,” he said. “I wanted to quit baseball altogether.”

But he didn’t quit, and Joy’s hard work paid off. At Saturday night’s game he had nine strikeouts in four innings and no runner made it past first base. Joy also chipped in offensively two singles and scored a run at bat.

“Just 4 1/2 months after this horrific accident, his comeback is nothing short of miraculous,” said Chas Joy, Alex’s father.

The game was made even more special by a surprise visit from Albert and her family.

Albert said she wanted to make the night especially memorable for Alex.

“I think he might have played a little better after seeing me there,” she said. “It was amazing to see him play and see how far he’s come.”

After all that he has been through, Joy’s family and friends are relieved that he is alive and well.

The accident happened on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but as Chas Joy said, “We now refer to it as ‘My Lucky Kid Day.’”