John Barnes rolled a bright new baseball in his left hand and eyed the pitcher’s mound in front of him.

In a few moments, the 50-year-old police officer would toss out the first pitch in front of a crowd of 40,000 at Minute Maid Park Sunday.

“I just want to get it to the mitt,” he said.

In the scheme of things, it was a small challenge.

Certainly nothing like the challenge of May 18, when Barnes and other police officers at Santa Fe High School tried to stop a gunman who opened fire on students and teachers early that morning. The massacre left 10 people dead and Barnes and 12 others wounded; a high school junior indicted for capital murder; and the small southeastern Texas city of Santa Fe forever changed.

GALVESTON COUNTY: Alleged Santa Fe shooter indicted by grand jury

Certainly nothing like the feverish rush to the hospital after the gunman shot an approaching Barnes at close range with a sawed off shotgun, severing his brachial artery, and in the words of his wife, turning his elbow into “a jigsaw puzzle.” Barnes nearly bled out in the school hallway.

Certainly nothing like 33 days in the hospital after the shooting or his recovery since.

But it marked Barnes’ first appearance in public, the accumulation of weeks of physical therapy, a painstaking effort to strengthen the grip of his right hand and to regain the use of elbow, which remains immobilized with a brace and sling.

And besides, he’d played baseball in high school and college and wasn’t about to goof up the throw in front of thousands of people.

On Saturday, he’d tossed a few practice throws with his 14-year-old son, Luke.

“For his left hand, it was pretty good,” Luke said, smiling. “He got it to me.”

Barnes — who played ball in high school and college — scoffed at the suggestion to throw underhanded.

“I’m not doing that.”

Behind home plate, Barnes’ wife Ashley, and their children — Luke and 11-year-old Riley — watched players warm up and snacked on pretzels and blue cotton candy. More than a dozen friends and relatives sat elsewhere in the stands, there to show their support.

At 12:48 p.m., an Astros official waved him onto the verdant field. He stopped perhaps 20 feet from home plate, where Astros catcher Cionel Pérez crouched, waiting.

Barnes reared back, then let the ball fly.

It skipped once, then burrowed into Pérez’ mitt, as the crowd cheered.

Barnes stopped for a minute for photos with Orbit and Pérez, then walked back to his family.

It was game time.