Travis Shaw returns to Brewers after daughter's open-heart surgery

Todd Rosiak | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

ST. LOUIS - Travis Shaw rejoined the Milwaukee Brewers on Tuesday in advance of their doubleheader with the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium in a much better place mentally than he had been.

Shaw, who missed the team's weekend series in Arizona after being placed on the family medical emergency list, revealed that his newborn daughter, Ryann, underwent a pair of heart surgeries at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

"She was born with a severe heart condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome," Shaw said. "It’s a pretty severe heart deformation. We knew this going in and I knew that she was going to have to have surgery.

"She had open-heart surgery on Friday. There were some complications and they had to go back in Saturday for a couple more surgeries. She’s been stable ever since Saturday.

"She’s making steady progress now."

Shaw said he and his wife, Lindy, learned about Ryann's condition in January, or about a month after he was traded by the Boston Red Sox to the Brewers in a package deal for reliever Tyler Thornburg.

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In a stroke of good luck, Milwaukee is home to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, which specializes in the type of surgery and medical care that Ryann required.

"It just kind of fell into our lap when we started looking at this in January, where we were going to go," Shaw said. "Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin was third in the country in this. Super-convenient.

"Kind of fate, a little bit, getting traded here and having this fall right into our laps."

Ryann was operated on by Viktor Hraska, the medical director of cardiothoracic surgery at Children's. Shaw praised the care his daughter has received from Hraska and the rest of the doctors and nurses at the facility.

"Ten years ago, 15 years ago, she probably wouldn’t have made it," he said. "But medicine has advanced."

Shaw, hitting .298 with 10 home runs and a team-leading 42 runs batted in for the season, started Game 1 of the doubleheader and batted cleanup. He went 0 for 3 with a walk.

Returning to the field and the daily routine baseball provides should be good for Shaw, but his mind isn't straying too far from his family.

"It became really real this last week. It kind of puts everything into perspective," he said. "There’s a lot more important things than just baseball. I tried to block it out as much as I could until it happened, but now it’s here and it’s going to be hard.

"Being here will help break my mind from it, but at the same time I’m always going to be thinking about how she’s doing, if she’s doing all right. It just really puts things into perspective."

Manager Craig Counsell said he and the rest of the organization are glad to have Shaw back in the fold.

"Travis has had a difficult week," he said. "A great week in the sense that it’s the birth of your first child and then a difficult week with some health issues with the newborn. He’s back and he’s happy to be back, I think.

"It’s normalcy and being able to get the health of his daughter to the point where he’s comfortable being here, and we’re ecstatic to have him back and in good spirits."

Outfielder Brett Phillips was optioned back to Class AAA Colorado Springs to clear room for Shaw on the roster.