North Cross 1st baseman also a 1st responder

They never saw it coming.

When the baseball was hit into the gap between center and right fields, the center fielder covering the play never caught a glimpse of the right fielder headed his way.

The right fielder, a sophomore who was nevertheless experienced enough to be aware it was going to be a dicey play, never thought the center fielder would keep coming.

The first baseman's mother, who was unable to attend the ballgame, never thought she was going to see what she saw when the door at her house opened about suppertime that evening.

Two dugouts and a gallery worth of highly educated and responsible Porterfield Ballpark adults never saw it coming either.

You couldn't blame them. At a school with the demographic North Cross has, anybody would have had hard time believing any Raiders athletic event would not have so much as one doctor, nurse, athletic trainer, or Boy Scout merit badge recipient present.

After the frightening head-on outfield collision, with stars and planets in orbit around one ballplayer's head and blood flowing freely from multiple locations on the heads of both parties to the crash, having somebody on hand who knew some first aid would have been helpful.

"Everybody was holding their breath," North Cross coach Eric Lawrence said

Fortunately, the first baseman took charge.

North Cross second baseman Matt Doughty was the first to reach the vicinity of the mishap. He did what a ballplayer is supposed to do in such a situation. He retrieved the baseball and fired it into the infield.

Then he turned to sprawling center fielder Jonty Chimbara and right fielder Jack Cranwell and told them to stay put.

No problem there. Those two weren't going anywhere.

Then first baseman Ben Barton, a solidly constructed and level-headed senior who can do more than field his position, reached his teammates.

Barton is a fully trained firefighter and emergency medical technician attached to Cave Spring Volunteer Fire Department, where he has almost two years' experience.

He went to work. Chimbara, a former cricket player and native Zimbabwean with a precise and aristocratic manner of speaking, was just coming to after being knocked cold. Cranwell, son of former House of Delegates Democratic floor leader Richard Cranwell, was bleeding from a broken nose and a cut under his eye.

"Basically I did what I was trained to do," said Barton, who had been on prior rescue calls but had never been the initial first responder on an accident scene.

"He jumped right in there," said Cranwell, back in uniform this week after recovering from the broken nose that didn't stop bleeding until the rescue squad that eventually responded got him to the hospital. Cranwell also suffered a cut under his eye from the sharp lower edge of his sunglasses. "I honestly had forgotten he'd had EMT training."

Cranwell remained conscious throughout.

"I think I got the best of it."

Chimbara had a bloody nose and mouth, cut upper lip, and possibly some loosened teeth. He also woke up to a splitting headache. Two weeks after getting hurt during the Raiders' April 10 victory over Virginia Episcopal, Chimbara was still out of uniform.

"Ben did a good job with me because he knew first aid," Chimbara said. "He kept holding my head so I couldn't swallow the blood."

Sanguine homecoming

The blood was the first thing Ben's mother Mary Barton saw when her son came home that night. It was all over his white baseball pants.

Mary Barton is the mother of two baseball-playing boys (she'd been at 12-year-old William's ballgame instead that afternoon ) and the wife of Dr. Ben Barton, head of cardiac surgery at Lewis-Gale Medical Center, where he was on call that evening.

Ben had already been on fire, automobile, and medical emergency calls. He doesn't wear baseball uniforms to those, though.

"What happened?"

"Don't worry," he said rushing off for the shower. "It wasn't me."

He didn't have time to chat. He was supposed to be at the fire house.

Time commitment

Once a week on a school night, Ben Barton leaves baseball practice in order to report for duty on a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift. Those days "I rest when I can," he said.

There are also regular weekend shifts. Those go 24 hours. That would tend to interfere with the presumably busy social calendar of the typical high school senior. Not an issue with Barton.

"It's fun," he said.

He did his research and decided to volunteer just after he turned 16. All through his junior year, he was involved in the six-month training program at the Roanoke County Fire Academy in Catawba. That amounted to several hours per session every Monday and Wednesday night and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and sometimes Sunday. That was in addition to the regular shifts at the fire house.

He graduated from the program with honors. Among the major calls he's been on since was the Cedar Point Apartment blaze a year ago.

"The past two years, he's put in close to 2,000 volunteer hours," his mother said.

The training and experience will come in handy later. While he's doing pre-med at the University of the South next year, he intends to volunteer for the fire department that serves the Sewanee, Tenn., school.

Tough competitor

Before he gets there, Barton has managed to play some nice high school baseball.

Despite occasional early departures to tend to fire department business, Barton is a full-timer at first base and has lately taken a brief turn at third. He's hitting a robust .460 (17 of 37) with a pair of doubles, 11 runs batted in and 11 runs scored. He's even stolen a base.

Since tending to his wounded teammates a couple of weeks ago, he's been killing the ball.