The agony that comes with a baseball injury extends far beyond a lingering headache or a sharp sting in the elbow.
For Virginia Tech first baseman Garrett Michel, the pain of watching his team from afar vastly outweighed the hurt in his wrist — an injury he sustained on March 1, 2024, when Carson DeMartini sent an errant third-to-first throw that Michel extended towards the basepath to grab. A Stony Brook runner collided with his arm, and he fell to the turf, writhing in pain.
Two runners scored but the Hokies’ troubled, almost disturbed expressions told a far darker story. Sam Tackett ran from right field to check on Michel, quickly jerking his head away at the first sight of his teammate’s wrist. Michel, a sophomore fresh off a 2023 All-ACC Freshman nod, was helped off the field — the first few steps of a long road to recovery. With much of the season still ahead, his team moved forward without him.
“It stunk not being able to play,” Michel said at Tech’s preseason media day. “You work all fall and all January in preparation for the season. And I mean, nine games in, the weekend right before ACC play, kind of felt like it was stripped from me in a way. But you can’t exit the situation you’re in.”
It was a broken wrist for the Denver, North Carolina, native, an injury that typically takes three to six months to fully heal. The 2025 season’s opening day — when Michel will make his first start since the injury — seemed like an eternity away.
The path to that return began with surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, followed by a slow recovery process assisted by Kyle Staggers, the Hokies’ director of sports medicine, and a local wrist specialist.
Forced to step away from the sport he dedicated his life to, Michel spent much of his newfound time in deep introspection. His appreciation for the sport, his teammates and the position he was in grew. As cliché as the adage may be, you never know what you have until it’s gone.
“Just enjoying every single day,” Michel said of how his approach to baseball changed after injury. “I mean, I come to the field ready to work, excited to do things. There’s times where I wake up, I don’t feel the best, sick, not feeling the best body-wise, but it’s a joy to be able to come here with our coaching staff and the guys on this team.
“I’ve always loved the game, you have to love the game to play the game with the schedule we have at the college level, with classes and baseball. But [the injury] grew a deeper love for me, because like I said, [baseball] was stripped from me, and it was my whole world before that. It made me just take a step back and look at my life in a different way.”
Michel eyed a late-season return, but Tech’s dwindled chances at an NCAA Tournament bid or ACC Tournament run suggested that it was best to wait for a full recovery. Once the Hokies’ season ended, conversations arose regarding the best way to reintegrate Michel into baseball. He decided on joining the Bourne Braves of the Cape Cod Baseball League, one of the nation’s premier collegiate summer leagues.
“It was huge,” Michel said of the importance of summer ball in his return. “It was a conversation whether I should’ve started somewhere else, and then kind of moved up once I got comfortable. I truly wanted to be at the Cape, it’s the best of the best. I want to put myself in that environment, even though I knew it was going to be tough.”
Having not seen live pitching in over three months, Michel’s initial at-bats were shaky, but his production grew as he adjusted to seeing pitches from some of the best aces in college baseball.
“I’m up there facing 96, 97 [miles per hour] so it was tough,” Michel said. “But I felt like I grew a lot as a person and as a player because I had to handle the failure. It was a lot more failure than I’m used to. But I think it helped me a lot more mentally than anything. I was able to work through and felt really good about the summer.”
Michel’s 207/.339/.356 summer slash line wasn’t gaudy, but he was just glad to be on an upward trend. In his return to first base — a situation that would typically strike anxiety — Michel posted .995 fielding, up from his .990 mark in 2023, his first season with the Braves.
And then came fall ball back with Tech, where Michel stepped into a leadership role — something he described as his biggest goal for the upcoming season.
“After losing last year, it kind of makes me enjoy the game a lot more,” Michel said. “I just hope to be the biggest leader on the team, just leading by example with the way I play the game. And I think when I do that, the results will take care of themselves.”
Another change for the junior? A greater focus on speed. Michel has just one stolen base in 60 games as a Hokie. After an injury that forced Michel’s workouts to include nothing but running, he thinks that number could rise.
“I wasn’t able to lift and do all the things that I truly want to do [during injury],” Michel said. “Seth Diters, our lift coach last year, was able to spend one-on-one time with me and grow my speed. Hopefully I can steal a couple bags and be the element of surprise to some.”
Regardless, Michel is expected to be a premier player for Tech this year. He slashed .339/.465/.626 with 45 RBI and 11 home runs in his last full season as a freshman and hit .400/.475/.886 in limited at-bats in 2024. His journey back to English Field’s diamond is finally complete, and he’ll get a well-earned chance to help lead his team to success.
“[Michel] should help us a lot,” Hokies head coach John Szefc said. “He didn’t play one ACC game last year, and he’s one of our biggest run producers. Just like any other sport, if you take one of your best players out of the mix, it’s not going to make you any better. So having him back into mix, it should make us a lot better.”
Michel returns for Tech in its season-opening doubleheader against Bucknell on Friday, Feb. 14, in Blacksburg (1 p.m. ET, ACC Network Extra).