Vanity and insecurity filled me by the time I reached the Major Leagues. Whenever I struggled, I wondered, How must this look to others? What will others think of me when they find out I've failed? You can imagine, then, what being diagnosed with Parkinson's at age 22 must have done to a psyche constructed on a foundation of sand. -- May 31, 2011

Petrick is enjoying himself immensely as he scarfs down some pizza and Cold Stone ice cream while watching Game 6 of the World Series. For one thing, he knows and played with a lot of the Cardinals and Rangers. For another, he more or less predicted the two teams would be in the Series when, on his blog in July, he asked this theological question: "What might happen if Josh Hamilton plays against Lance Berkman in the World Series this October? Both are devout, so whom does God favor?"

On this night, Berkman and the Cardinals are favored in rather unbelievable fashion, with St. Louis winning 10-9 in 11 innings. "Was that a great game or what?" Petrick asks, before succumbing to off mode.

Ten years ago, Petrick was not about to go so quietly. Parkinson's was attacking his control of the muscles and nerves that make hitting and catching 85 mph sliders possible, but he clung to his career like a baseball bat. He so desperately wanted to preserve not just his dream but also the dreams of his family and friends.

His immediate problem was that the lifestyle of baseball does not lend itself to the recommended regimen of prescription drugs. To control the Parkinson's symptoms, he began taking Requip, a drug that tricks the brain by mimicking dopamine. But long hours at the ballpark, day and night games, time zone changes and buses and planes made any sort of routine impossible. Plus, the Requip made him sleepy. "So there I was, popping pills like sunflower seeds, trying to stay awake as we go over the scouting reports of the other team, trying to pretend nothing was wrong," Petrick says. He wasn't so much deceiving his teammates as he was deceiving himself.

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While most people in the Rockies organization were unaware of his situation, Petrick did confide in a select few people. Keith Dugger, the Rockies' head athletic trainer now and an assistant then, knew about Petrick's symptoms and that he took medication, but he never knew the extent of the disease or had experience dealing with it. Plus, his priority was always Petrick.

"Although we work for the team, there is a confidentiality between us and the players not unlike the doctor-patient relationship," says Dugger. His roommate Butler and a few other players also knew, but as Butler says, "When someone would notice him shaking or carrying his arm funny, Ben would totally downplay it. Besides, he was performing at a high level."

That was the thing. Even though, as Petrick points out, "there were 10 other catchers in the organization waiting to take my job," there's a place on a major league team for someone who can work and block the plate, run like a deer and hit home runs off the likes of the Big Unit. Petrick was also immensely popular with his teammates, thanks in small part to his barbering skills. "Basically, I gave crew cuts," he says, "but I was pretty good at it." (Helton begs to differ. "There was one spring when I didn't take my hat off," he says.)

As for his meds, let's not forget the era in which he played. Quite frankly, Petrick wasn't the only Rockies player taking drugs. The difference was that the others were making themselves better than they had a right to be, while he was doing it to be normal. At one point, underwhelmed by Requip's effectiveness, he switched to another drug, Sinemet, that proved more helpful. Even though he always passed his annual physical, Petrick's trusted few occasionally noticed a delayed reaction. "When he was catching, the high inside pitch would sometimes get by him for a passed ball because he couldn't get his glove hand up in time," says Dugger.

Petrick recalls other incidents that nearly blew his cover. In one, a sliding opponent spiked his left forearm, causing his left hand to shake so badly that he refused to remove his glove. In another, he took a pitch off his helmet. During the concussion test, "you have to put your hands out in front of you, spread your fingers and touch your nose," Petrick says. "But I couldn't spread the fingers on my left hand. I had to use my right hand to pry it open while trying to act normal."

Petrick wasn't normal though, even if he couldn't admit it, and he blamed himself for his shortcomings. In a telling 2005 story in The Portland Tribune, Petrick described his state of mind as a player when "things didn't click." He would ask himself, "Was it the disease or was it my skills or a combination?" He wasn't the only one ignoring the elephant in the room. "We denied the impact: 'Hey, Ben, you're in a funk, you'll turn it around,'" Rian admitted.

In hindsight, says Nutt, "I am amazed that he was able to accomplish as much as he did." At the time, the Rockies could see only that he wasn't the full-time catcher they thought he would be. In July 2003, still thinking Petrick's symptoms were minor, the Rockies traded him to the Tigers for righthanded pitcher Adam Bernero. The Tigers were given his medical file and asked about the tremors during his physical. But because the symptoms weren't noticeable -- he had taken his meds -- he passed the exam, as he always had.

His stay in Detroit lasted only 43 games, though he did hit four homers and make two sensational outfield plays -- throwing out Frank Thomas of the White Sox at the plate from center and going over the wall in left at Detroit's Comerica Park to rob Twins infielder Chris Gomez of a home run. However, Petrick felt increasingly guilty about deceiving his teammates -- "that maybe by me playing I was making our team worse," he says.

By the following spring, with his dyskinesia worsening, Petrick was released from a minor league contract after he went 0-for-10 to start the season with the Tigers' Triple-A affiliate, the Toledo Mud Hens. As he drove back to Oregon, he made up his mind to quit -- until he got an offer from the Padres' Triple-A affiliate in Portland. Though he managed to hit two more homers, the struggle had become too much. In May 2004, Petrick announced his retirement and openly revealed that he was suffering from young-onset Parkinson's.

While that was that for baseball, the rest of his life beckoned. And that life involved Kellie Starkey. The two attended the same high school but were four years apart. They didn't meet until her senior year; the following fall, the Rockies called him up. "So here I am," he says, "a major league rookie in love with a beautiful hometown girl, when all of a sudden, my body starts telling me something I don't want to hear."

"I remember Ben saying he didn't think he could ask Kellie to marry him with Parkinson's and all," Marci Petrick says. "And I said, 'Why don't you let her make that decision?'"

So shortly after she received her master's degree from the University of Oregon and he retired from playing, Kellie and Ben married in Hawaii and honeymooned on a cruise to Alaska. "I knew what I was getting into," says Kellie, who is a third-grade teacher at her old elementary school. "Well, maybe not everything."