Faith, Injury and Hope: The Resilient Return of Hunter Simmons
Trailing 1-0 in the bottom of the sixth inning against Nebraska on Opening Day, Baylor senior designated hitter Hunter Simmons stood confidently in the on-deck circle studying the warm-up routine and throwing motion of the new Cornhuskers pitcher, who had just entered the contest in relief of Friday's starter and inherited one out and a runner on first base.
Simmons, forever superstitious as most baseball players are, entered the batter's box and lightly brushed his foot into the ground to form a makeshift cross, just as he had done hundreds of times before. After dribbling the first pitch foul down the third base line, Simmons knew he was just a tad bit early, but if the Nebraska reliever threw a two-seam fastball again, he'd make him pay.
On the following pitch, Simmons' eyes lit up as he saw another two-seamer, this time chest-high and slicing right over the middle of the plate. The 5-foot-11, 220-pound slugger swiftly swung through the ball and clubbed the pitch opposite field to the right-center field warning track, just a couple of feet from the Baylor bullpen, where a conglomerate of BU pitchers excitedly smacked the padding of the Globe Life Field wall and cheered Simmons on.
With an oversized silver cross chain now dangling over the lettering on the front of his jersey, Simmons cruised into second base with a stand-up RBI double and motioned to the Bears' dugout. There, he was met with thunderous applause and chants of "Scoob," a nickname that his teammates affectionately call him primarily to avoid confusion with the unfathomable amount of people named "Hunter" he's shared the diamond with over the years and secondarily due to his love for Scooby-Doo.
Moments later, Simmons was granted a timeout by the umpire and hustled over to meet first base coach Zach Dillon to exchange an elbow guard, a leg guard and batting gloves for a protective sliding mitt to run the bases.
When he returned to second base, Simmons wasn't thinking about anything other than tying the game and rallying his teammates. He tried to stay in the moment, knowing that if you dwell on a particular hit or think too far ahead in the future, "it's not where you want to be," but even he knew with how well he was hitting the ball to start the spring, good things were sure to follow.
Across the next three games, Simmons continued his torrid start to the season with six hits — four for extra bases — in just 17 at-bats and even notched his first collegiate grand slam in a win over Lamar on Feb. 20.
Then, everything changed.
In the top of the first inning in the series opener against No. 22 Indiana on Feb. 23, Simmons was chasing down a sure-fire extra-base hit to left field when he ignored the cautious calls from centerfielder Ty Johnson, who was screaming, "Wall! Wall! Wall!"
"The ball cracked off the bat, and I took off," Simmons said in an interview with SicEm365. "It was one of those moments where it's just me and the ball. I couldn't hear Ty. I couldn't hear anything. I was just running."
Simmons eventually lost all sense of where he was and barreled into the outfield wall at full speed in an attempt to make the spectacular grab. His left cleat, however, got jammed and stuck into the wall's padding, instantly breaking his shinbone and calfbone; the official injury was a spiral fracture of the tibia and fibula.
Initially, Simmons thought, "I ran over that wall, but I'm okay; I'm good. Then, I looked down, and my leg was hanging. I was like, 'Woah. Woah. Woah.' I panicked for a second and laid there because that was all I could do."
Simmons immediately called to Johnson, yelling, "Ty, I broke my leg. I broke my leg." When Simmons heard Johnson's footsteps run past him, he told himself, "Great. No one's going to help me."
When Johnson had returned to the left field warning track after throwing the ball back into play, he stood next to Simmons and asked him, "What's wrong with your leg? It doesn't look broken."
Now pointing to his dangling left leg, Simmons sarcastically replied, "You sure?"
The ballpark fell silent as Johnson frantically motioned to the dugout. The training staff and head coach Mitch Thompson ran out to left field to check on Simmons. After an extended pause that felt much closer to an eternity, Simmons' left leg was eventually placed in an air cast, and he was carted off the field and taken to Waco's Baylor, Scott & White Hospital for surgery.
Thompson returned to the dugout teary-eyed, knowing that the "heart and soul" of his team had just suffered a catastrophic injury and had become the fourth Baylor position player to suffer a season-ending injury within the first week of the spring, joining outfielder Gavin Brzozowski and infielders Jack Little and John Youens.
Lying in a hospital bed after the surgery, Simmons wondered why baseball had been stripped from him. Before his injury, the senior slugger had actively been pursuing God and was in a good spot with his faith. Then, he began to question everything.
"When that happened, it shifted my mindset a little bit," Simmons said. "It was hard to sit there and look at the picture without thinking that I had just gotten screwed. I was very resentful, and I turned my back on God because I felt like He turned His back on me."
Simmons constantly wrestled with his innermost thoughts, sometimes trying to ignore the situation entirely and other times recounting the moments leading up to the injury and thinking about what he could have done to prevent it from happening.
"There are times where I didn't want to even think about it," he said. "But there's also times where I'm like, 'Why?' I still think about it. I don't know. I always do this when I get nervous – I can't feel, and I glide out. If I had just run normally, I would have caught it. … I try not to think about it, but I also try to think about what I could have done differently."
For the next month and a half, Simmons was mainly confined to his apartment room, where he could do nothing other than prop his left leg up and hope for the healing process to go as fast as humanly possible.
"I was thinking that I could have had a possibility of maybe getting drafted, and a lot of the 'me stuff' started to seep out of where I had been holding them in," he said. "I've had some dark spots in my life, but that was the definite hardest moment. It was hard – it really was. I was sad. I didn't want to be around anybody. It wasn't like I was angry at anybody; it was just me and God. It was a head-to-head just angry [at God] moment."
Feeling ostracized, Simmons remained reclusive and avoided gatherings with loved ones or teammates. He instructed his mother, Rachel, not to worry about him and told her to stay home in Mansfield, Texas, to care for his two younger brothers, Aidan and Riley. What he missed more than anything was being with his teammates, but he struggled to open himself up to them.
"It's one of those things where you want to, but you can't because your mentals are everywhere," he said. "I couldn't bring myself to hang out with them. They'd say, 'Hey, you want to go hang out?' And it was like, 'Yeah, no dude. I'm good here. I don't want to do anything.' I wanted to just sit in it."
Simmons added, "So now, I'm losing things two things, and I'm angry at God for taking this. I have a bunch of things that I'm angry at, but I can't fix it, and it's out of my control. That was probably one of the biggest things that I missed were the driving factors that kept me like me."
What helped Simmons regain some normalcy in his life was the presence of Casey Sunseri, who lived across the street from him. Sunseri, a junior infielder on Baylor's 2023 roster, didn't make the team in 2024 but stayed in Waco to finish his degree, hoping to transfer to another program in the summer.
"The best thing was watching the games [on television] and Casey Sunseri being there the entire time," Simmons said. "We'd go to class together when I did go to class, but he was there helping me the entire time. Sunseri was one of those people that really pulled me out of it."
He continued, "It's hard for your teammates to pull you out when they're at the field playing during the season. Casey's here waiting to get his opportunity the following year, so he's sitting here helping me. He's a very positive person, and he really helped me with that and shifting my mind back to where it was."
Another pivotal piece in Simmons' recovery process was just across the hall. Simmons' roommate, senior right-handed pitcher Cole Stasio, had also endured a season-ending injury, but Stasio didn't suffer his hip injury until midway through the spring. He had surgery in April, almost two months after Simmons underwent his, but late enough to where the duo had a similar recovery process.
"We both went through a period where you're going through rehab, and you're at rock bottom, and you're like, 'This sucks.' There's no other word around it," Stasio told SicEm365 in an interview. "We've worked every single day of our life, and when it gets taken away from you, you're like, 'There's nothing else.' For both of us, we had to realize that baseball was baseball and that at the end of the day, it's just a game."
When Simmons eventually picked himself up off the mat and started the strenuous recovery process himself, he set out with the goal of getting a medical redshirt and returning for a fifth and final season in 2025, which didn't initially seem possible.
"When I first started [rehab], I thought that I was never going to play again and that I was done," he said. "But then, as you keep going through rehab, you see more and more improvement. It gives you a sense of hope that you'll be able to [play] again, maybe not right now, but it's going to work out down the line, so just keep going."
Simmons and Stasio remained in Waco over the summer to tackle rehab together. With daunting roads to recovery ahead, the duo became inseparable, routinely reading the Bible and doing a nightly devotional together.
"It was one of those things where we're going to get through this together," Stasio said. "Every single day, we had a plan, we had a purpose and we were going to attack it. Living together was the biggest part of that. We are across the hall from each other. It's easy to walk over and knock on his door. Then, we'd sit there and chop it up. It was definitely super beneficial for me, and especially for him."
With the start of fall ball right around the corner, the two friends inched closer to full strength. When reflecting on their struggles, both were grateful for the lessons they had learned amidst a trying time that tested their physical and spiritual will.
"It's been a journey. I've learned a lot, and there's been a lot of good influences to get me where I'm at today, "Simmons said. "You live, you learn, but I don't think anything will come close to this because you're literally riding high. You're everywhere you need to be, and then all of a sudden, you're back in the mud and below the mud. You're six feet deep. I felt dead, but it really was helpful. I am going to look back and say, 'Hey, this did make me who I am now.'"
Stasio added, "I truly believe that God gave us that opportunity at the exact time and that we had each other. That's a story that I'll tell my kids. Having Christ-centered relationships is the most important thing you could possibly have. Seeing how hard he worked from rock bottom to where he is right now is just a testament to who Scoob is and to the God we serve and how faithful He's been throughout all of it."
Even though Simmons didn't finish rehab until right before Christmas, he participated throughout the fall, almost nearing a full go, and was ecstatic to return to doing what he loved.
"I try to look at the positives, and I was able to play this fall No. 1," he said. "I was able to swing the bat pretty solid for not playing for about seven months. And then I got to hang out with my friends again. I started to trust again and regained the faith of where it all started. It was a realization that things happen full circle."
Although he won't be returning to the outfield, Simmons is in the process of re-learning how to play first base, a position he's played in the past. The position switch doesn't bother him because he jokingly says he won't have to "worry about any walls" this season.
Simmons' playful and high-spirited demeanor makes him beloved by his teammates. Stasio, among others, is "pumped" to have him back around the clubhouse on a daily basis.
"He's one of those guys that brings energy in the dugout, and you see him dancing in the outfield, knowing that every day, he's the same Scoob," Stasio said. "He makes people laugh. He makes people smile. He lightens the mood and is one of those guys you can go to war with. You know he's got your back. Everybody on the team is close with him, which is a testament to who he is as a person."
All-Big 12 outfielder Wesley Jordan added, "Scoob is the greatest locker room guy there is. That injury last year kind of sucked, and nobody liked it. Seeing him get back and on the field playing brings a different kind of joy to the team, which we've missed."
With most players who undergo a career-threatening injury, there's usually a renewed appreciation for being able to play the game of baseball again. In this case, Stasio can sense the mindset shift with Simmons and believes it's due to his growing faith.
"The fact that he's playing again is a miracle; he's mashing baseballs right now, and having that bat in the lineup is going to be a night and day [difference]," Stasio said. "He grew so strong in his faith during that time. That's going to benefit him this year because he's playing free; there's no stress or anxiety. He just feels blessed to be able to be on the field."
When Simmons enters the batter's box for the first time on Feb. 14 against Youngstown State, almost a full year after his injury, he'll do what he always does. He'll lightly brush his foot into the ground to form a makeshift cross and then choke up on the bat to remind himself to stay on top of the baseball. Nerves will be the last thing on Simmons' mind; he's just grateful to be back in a position doing what he loves.
"I'm going to be chilling; there's nothing to worry about," he said. "The one thing that helped me get through this last year was that there's a lot bigger things to worry about than baseball. God puts things into perspective to show you that this is just a game. He's given me the ability to play Power Five baseball, so why am I even worried? I have this little saying, 'Let go, let God.' The minute that comes over me, I have no fear. I'm just playing freely, and that's usually when success happens."
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