SOUTH BEND -- Two weeks after his 40th birthday, Randy Ball went for a jog. Just like he jogged nearly every day. It was nothing for the Texas oilman to come home after work, run seven miles, lift weights, and then ask his son or two daughters if they wanted to do something fun.

He had as much energy, it seemed, as Texas had oil. Oh, Ball had heard the stories about how "your body goes to hell when you turn 40.'' But carrying a tightly wound 205 pounds on his 6-foot-1 frame, he had no reason to believe them.

Until the day he stopped his jog after three miles.

"I just couldn't finish it,'' he recalled. "I felt so ... tired.''

Ball called his doctor in his hometown of Tomball, Texas, just outside Houston. Over the next four months, he underwent a battery of tests. During one of the visits, a doctor felt Ball's biceps during one of the mysterious cramps he was experiencing. "At that point they knew,'' Ball said, "but they didn't tell me.''
He would find out soon enough.

The tests revealed that Ball had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) -- Lou Gehrig's Disease -- a progressive neurodegenerative disease that attacks nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord for which there is no cure.

Basically, the muscles in Ball's body were dying. And so was he.

Doctors gave Ball three years to live.

That was five years ago.

"It's like walking around having a boulder over your head all the time,'' Ball said earlier this week.

He was in South Bend to watch his son Jarred, a promising 19-year-old outfielder for the South Bend Silver Hawks minor-league baseball team. It marked Ball's third extended stay here during a summer in which he vowed to see his son play as much as possible.

His boss gave him time off to take the trips.

His boss as in Becky Ball, his wife.

Randy hasn't worked for the last two years while on disability leave from his former job as a director at Conoco, an oil company. He was responsible for 1,600 oil wells spread over 1,100 miles of Texas pipeline, on call "24 hours a day, 365 days a year.'' "I was basically a troubleshooter,'' Ball said.

Then he encountered the problem he couldn't solve. A problem all the medical researchers in the world still can't.

At first Ball thought the tests had to be wrong. After the initial diagnosis he continued jogging, working, living. He fought doctors' advice to slow down. He almost even fought, literally, when he challenged a doctor to show him proof that he actually had the disease.

The doctor Ball challenged pulled out the electromyography (EMG) chart to show him. More tangible, and troublesome, evidence followed. And lingers still.
He no longer has enough stamina to mow the grass. He could still jog three miles, but "I would need to spend the next week on the couch,'' he kidded.

His weight dips as his muscles shrink, and he was down to 175 after he last stepped on the scale. Lately Ball has had trouble swallowing, as the half-eaten blueberry muffin left on his plate over breakfast the other day suggests.

He still looks like the healthiest 45-year-old in the room. Yet in most places he is the sickest.

"You can see some things that give it away,'' he said, holding out his hand to show the absence of muscle tissue between his thumb and index finger. "But I'm just making the best of the time I have left while I can. I don't want to be hooked up, I don't want to be in a wheelchair, I don't want any of that.''

Without a cure, there are not really any drugs to combat what ails Ball. He was part of an experimental Sanofi Trial drug treatment for 18 months, but now only takes medication to treat symptoms as they arise.

The best medicine, judging by the way Ball describes the night his son got picked by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the ninth round of the 2001 draft, is baseball.

He practically glows talking about how early he began playing baseball with Jarred and the night former Houston Astros and current Oakland A's manager Art Howe, a friend of the family, took a picture with the family.

He lights up recounting the night last summer the D'backs flew Jarred to Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix to work out and Jarred's batting-practice group included Mark Grace and Matt Williams.

He marvels at how D'back pitching ace Curt Schilling, the national spokesman for ALS, spent 45 minutes talking with him and showing a genuine interest in his plight.

He smiles wistfully at the irony of watching his son chase a dream of playing in the major leagues, even though he may not live to see that day.

"I don't feel any extra pressure knowing that,'' Jarred said. "There's enough pressure to get to the majors already. I'm just glad he's gotten to see me play as much as he has.''

Added Dad, a former minor-league catcher in the White Sox and Pirates organization who also played at Northwestern State (La.): "Making it to the majors is remote for anybody. It's in God's hands now.''

There was a time Ball would have shied away from such overt spirituality. Back before he considered his own mortality on a daily basis.

He jokes about the old saying that "you won't find many atheists in a foxhole.'' But since the time three years ago when he stopped breathing twice in the same night, he has done the religious equivalent of changing his stance.

"I've always sort of had Christianity in my life but when you're given a death sentence ... that night was an eye-opener and I came to the realization that this is real,'' Ball recalled. "So I went to God and asked him to let me live long enough to see my youngest daughter (who's now 15) graduate from high school. And you know what, two months after that, I had gotten so much better that the doctors asked me, 'What did you do?' ''

His spirit has grown stronger. As his body has gotten weaker.

The Balls will spend this weekend in Peoria where the Hawks finish up the season with a four-game series against the Chiefs. Then father and son will start the 18-hour trip back to Houston in Jarred's black SUV.

Jarred will drive.

His dad will show him the way.

GRAPHIC: Jarred Ball, a South Bend Silver Hawks player, stands next to his father, Randy at Coveleski Stadium Tuesday. Randy, who was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), was told five years ago that he would only have three years to live. He has traveled three times this summer to see his son play. Tribune Photo/SANTIAGO FLORES

LOAD-DATE: August 30, 2002
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