School of hard knocks

One spring day back in 1991, Angel Whatley woke up and found herself "as bald as Kojak." Her beautiful red-auburn hair had all been shaved off. And that was the least of her problems.

The Mississippi coed had just been through emergency brain surgery. (It has since been described to her as "110 percent brain surgery.")

She had come very close to dying, all because of a freakish accident in a college sports stadium. She had been hit in the head by a baseball.

The prelude to this near-tragedy was almost comic. Ms. Whatley was a "diamond girl" at her college's baseball games, retrieving balls that came her way, and on this day she was having an especially fun time.

But with the crack of his bat, the ball sailed in her direction as if it were a guided missile and struck her down before she had a chance to move. "The batter never noticed. He was too busy circling the bases."

At first the injury did not seem too serious, and Ms. Whatley was told that she would recover without major treatment. Fortunately, her mother was a nurse and soon recognized that things were going very wrong. She rushed the girl to a hospital in time for the lifesaving surgery.

Ms. Whatley has long since made a complete recovery. And the injury did not diminish her love of sports: She is a skydiver and has tried out for the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.

But she has never forgotten what happened to her. She is an activist for sports safety, and her efforts have led to changes at some athletic events in Mississippi.

Every time she looks in the mirror, she sees a reminder of that dramatic
day. It's her hair, black and curly. "That's the way it grew back," she
says. The straight red-auburn tresses are gone forever.

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