Seeing through rose-tinted glasses: QND baseball product overcomes freak accident and can now succeed at his favorite game

QUINCY – The afternoon sun was high in the cloudless sky above an empty parking lot, and it was impossible to escape its brightness.

Ethan Rose did not shy away from this, even if brightness is his nemesis.

“There’s nothing like sight,” he said. “It’s something you take for granted. Right now I look around and I’m grateful for everything. You don’t realize what a gift it is until it’s taken from you for the time it was taken from me. There’s nothing like it.”

And no way to replace it.

“This is scary,” Rose said.

He knows what such fears feel like. For weeks in the spring of 2023, the former Quincy Notre Dame baseball player sat in the darkness of his family’s home, his swollen right eye covered, wondering if he would ever see again. His world had been reduced to sounds, smells and feelings by a freak injury during a day off from training.

Rose played with a baseball throughout his recovery, wondering if his career was over before it had even begun.

“For a moment I thought, ‘How the hell am I going to do this when I can’t even see?'” Rose said. “Thank God I was able to play again.”

He too was successful.

Just over a year after doctors feared he might lose his right eye, Rose is now an All-Star and will represent QND on the Illinois team in the Missouri-Illinois All-Star Game, which will be played at 7 p.m. Saturday at Veterans Field in Hannibal, Missouri.

“It’s an honor to have this opportunity,” Rose said.

And a lesson in perseverance for everyone else.

“My eye was full of blood”

About six weeks before the start of the 2023 season, Rose had a high fever for no apparent reason until doctors discovered appendicitis. They performed an emergency appendectomy that put him out of action for four weeks but gave him enough time to recover and be ready to contribute in the Raiders’ bullpen or as a midweek starter.

He appeared on the mound twice: on March 27, he threw 1.2 innings as a starter against Arlington Heights Hersey and on April 12, he threw two hitless innings as a relief pitcher against Pittsfeld.

Shortly afterwards the lights went out.

Rose was preparing for a weekend tournament in Beardstown and was using Jaeger bands to stretch when the band came loose and slapped him in the face. The clip hit his right eye while the band hit his left eye.

The pain was immediately noticeable, but the severity of the injury was not initially clear.

Even when Rose’s father, Jeremy, took him to an optometrist the next day, they had to wait and see ophthalmologist Dr. Eric Sieck. In the meantime, swelling around the right eye raised concerns that the right eye might not be salvageable.

“It was pretty painful,” Rose said. “The eye was so swollen shut that they couldn’t see it, so we didn’t know if we would have to have it removed.”

I was not immediately aware of the reality.

“I’ll be honest, I was throwing up all the time because the pressure and trauma in my eye was making me sick,” Rose said. “I really had no idea what was going on. When I found out what had happened and what could have happened, I was terrified. I didn’t want to lose my eye.”

His parents also tried to understand this concern.

“It was extremely scary,” said Rose’s mother Christina. “We didn’t know what was going to happen. All we knew was that his body was reacting severely to the trauma to his eye. Thankfully, Dr. Sieck knew exactly what to do for him.”

First, the swelling had to go down, which meant protecting the eye from further trauma, so Rose limited his activities and spent as much time as possible in dark rooms without light.

“He had to wear a blindfold when he was near lights,” Christina said.

It took five or six days for the swelling to go down enough for doctors to examine the eye, and the Roses learned that Ethan had suffered a ruptured pupil.

“My eye was full of blood,” he said. “And they told me it looked like I could keep the eye, but I would have a ruptured pupil for the rest of my life. That basically means I can’t perceive light.”

“For a while I couldn’t see out of that eye and thought I might never be able to see again. That was pretty scary too.”

For each.

“It was incredibly scary,” said Rose’s father Jeremy. “But he fought through it. He never gave up.”

This wasn’t easy. Everything a teenager does was taken away from him in that moment. Rose couldn’t text, watch TikToks, or watch movies. He couldn’t go to school or play baseball. In fact, he couldn’t even eat dinner at the family table with the lights on.

“They had to turn the lights off,” Rose said. “I ate mostly in my room. I kept it dark there and just rotted away.”

But never alone.

“I was sitting in there with him,” Christina said.

This helped him to stay mentally fit and spirited.

“My family has done a really good job of keeping me from losing my mind,” Rose said.

The key was to stay busy.

“I played a lot of solitaire, hung out and listened to the radio,” Rose said. “Sometimes I would just turn on the TV and listen.”

This also meant no homework or occupational therapy.

“I really couldn’t do anything until I got back to school,” he said.

Yet he still managed to finish the semester with a 3.8 GPA, despite being unable to do anything for five or more weeks.

“His teachers just had to give him grace because he couldn’t access his iPad,” Christina said. “We were literally sitting in our living room in total darkness listening to audiobooks because he wasn’t allowed to have any lights nearby.”

Yet he was never completely discouraged.

“The cards always seem to be stacked against him, but he’s willing to fight through it and hopefully that will take him far in life after baseball,” Jeremy said.

“I was never particularly depressed about it”

While Rose recovered, the Raiders continued their path to history heading into the 2023 season, posting 32 consecutive wins, a school record, and making their third state tournament appearance in program history, finishing third in Class 2A with a record of 36-2.

He was there every step of the way in the dugout during the postseason.

“I missed baseball in general,” Rose said. “I love playing so much. I love pitching every day. I like the little things. I missed going to practice and talking with the guys and pitching and working on things. I missed the sport and the team and the guys.”

But he never lost his instinct for it.

The entire time he was home, Rose had a baseball in his hands.

“I was playing around with the handles and sitting there thinking about things,” Rose said.

It didn’t matter which room in the Rose house he sat in.

“Everywhere he sits there’s a baseball,” Christina said. “There’s one on the coffee table and the end table. I find them on the sofa and I find them in his bed. He always has a baseball in his hand.”

The desire to do it again was just as strong.

“I was never particularly depressed about it,” Rose said. “I knew there was light at the end of the tunnel. I stood firm. It happened and now I have to move on and be the best version of myself. That’s all I could do.”

Seven weeks after the injury, he was allowed to stretch and do limited training again. Eight weeks after the injury, he began throwing again.

“I needed someone to catch the ball for me,” Rose said. “My depth perception was so off.”

Although he was willing to lend a hand, he also became the target of friendly taunts from his teammates.

“They made me laugh,” Rose said. “I got it from them, no matter what. They didn’t hold back, but I needed it. I was just so happy to be back among everyone.”

Your presence throughout the entire ordeal helped.

“They checked on me pretty regularly,” Rose said.

By the summer of 2023, he was able to throw at a high rate again. By the fall, he had impressed coaches at William Woods University enough to earn him a scholarship, which he accepted, and will join the Owls’ program on August 17 when he heads to campus in Fulton, Missouri.

He didn’t pitch for the Raiders last spring because he suffered a pinched nerve in his neck, but he found a role as a first baseman and designated hitter. Rose was named All-West Central Conference as he posted a .400 batting average in conference play and finished the season with 12 runs scored, 11 RBIs and four doubles.

And all this despite the fact that he wore sunglasses in both good and bad light.

“Everything is pretty much back to normal,” Rose said. “I had to get anti-reflective sunglasses to make it legal. I just have to wear sunglasses everywhere and I look a little silly, but that’s OK with me.”

The All-Star award showed that it was worth it.

“I worked insanely hard on the things I could do when I was told I couldn’t play,” Rose said. “I couldn’t be part of this great team and play with my friends, but I worked really hard to get back to where I could play and do that.”

“It meant something more to me. I wanted to prove to people that I could play.”

His parents’ pride in his determination and results is immeasurable.

“He has a toughness that I probably don’t even have today,” Jeremy said. “It was an inspiration to me to watch him fight through everything he had to go through. He didn’t even know if he could keep his attention, let alone play again or even dream about hitting again. And then to hit as well as he did, it’s unbelievable.”

“From a normal child to one who has to sit in the dark in our lounge because the light makes him nauseous, that’s just heartbreaking for me as a parent to watch. But I’m so proud of him that he just wants to keep fighting and fighting and fighting his way back.”

When his mother talks about her son’s strength, tears come to her eyes.

“I get emotional when I think about what he had to go through with courage and perseverance,” Christina said. “I get emotional that he had something like that inside him, that he dug deep inside himself. He also relied a lot on his faith.”

She knows that nothing will get him down.

“The good thing is that he can say: If I get through 2023, I can get through anything,” Christina said.

The challenge is to look forward and never back.

“With my luck and all these weird injuries, you think, ‘What’s next?'” Rose said. “But you can’t dwell on it. You just keep going.”

Rose will do this with her eyes open.

“It’s a blessing,” he said. “They didn’t think I would ever be able to see again, but I can. God is good.”