Softball player Terry Backman had thrown a four-pitch inning last summer before dropping from a heart attack in the bottom of the dugout. Last Sunday, he hit a long line drive before a similar collapse atop the first-base bag.
Both times, fellow ballplayer and off-duty ambulance tech Tyler Rosser was there to save him. On the same field, at the same park in Santa Clarita, the good Samaritan hit the same home run twice.
“It’s a miracle,” said Susan Backman, of Newhall, wife of the 67-year-old shipping-and-receiving manager. “He has saved him twice.
“We’re so very grateful — words can’t describe it.”
Backman, who’d played softball just about every Sunday for 24 years, had long had trouble with his ticker.
After a scorching game day in August 2006, the Brewers’ pitcher was driving home when he was struck by a massive heart attack at the wheel of his Chevy Bronco outside Kmart, his wife said. An off-duty doctor and two nearby motorcyclists helped save his life.
For the next seven years, the sturdy grandfather from North Dakota did just fine. He walked more than a mile a day, hit the gym three times a week, and played softball every Sunday.
Then without warning, on Aug. 11, Backman suffered a full cardiac arrest at Central Park in Santa Clarita. On the next diamond over was Rosser, an off-duty emergency medical technician for McCormick Ambulance in Woodland Hills, warming up for a game. Seeing commotion in the next dugout, he ran to help out.
He and some teammates were able to revive Backman him with the help of CPR and jolts from the park’s newly purchased automated external defibrillator. For their valor, each would receive commendations from Santa Clarita and from the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
Six months later, Rosser was at home plate, again in Central Park. The count was two balls, two strikes and then there was another commotion from the adjacent field. “Time out,” his manager told him. “Tyler, it looks like they need you on the other field.
“I think Terry had a heart attack again.”
Sure enough, Terry Backman had hit a beautiful line drive, then crumpled after safely reaching first base, said his wife. But he was anything but safe.
In front of his wife, a son Eric and two grandsons, the softball veteran lay dying. Someone called 9-1-1. Someone ran for the defibrillator. And Tyler Rosser once again stooped over the same prone patient.
“I couldn’t feel a pulse,” said Rosser, 26, of Canoga Park, father of two young boys who has now served seven years as an EMT. “I watched him take his last breath.”
Again with the CPR. Again with an electric jolt. Again, with the assistance of teammate Brian Tethers, the aging softball player started breathing, opening his eyes, before paramedics could rush him to a hospital.
On Tuesday, the EMT with the dark eyes and close-cropped hair stood in disbelief inside his Ventura Boulevard ambulance station.
“Right place, right time,” said Rosser, a graduate of Los Angeles Baptist High School, who hopes to become a local firefighter. “It was crazy. I’m still in shock about the second time. I just couldn’t believe the outcome — to save his life twice. Twice.”
On Tuesday, Terry Backman underwent surgery at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, where doctors installed an automatic defibrillator in his chest. A cardiologist told him, “Terry, you’re going to be able to play ball again.”
But he told his wife he didn’t think his teammates would let him.
“I believe he wants to,” said Susan. “But I don’t believe he’s going to. I believe three times are our charm. He said, ‘That probably was my last game.’”
