On Aug. 18, the Angels will celebrate the 10-year anniversary of their 2002 World Championship with a pre-game ceremony honoring the players on that team. Shawn Wooten, a back-up Angels catcher in 2002, certainly wasn’t the most famous or popular player, but it is likely he has endured the most in the 10 years since he reached the baseball stratosphere. Shawn went from collecting his World Series ring to a long descent into the minor leagues to, this summer, spending more than a month praying for the life of his newborn son in the pediatric intensive care unit at the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital.

The baby with the broken heart was supposed to have a ballplayer’s name.

Two months before he was born, he was going to be Chase.

Shawn Wooten, the boy’s father, a former World Series champion when he played with the 2002 Angels, had once been a teammate of Chase Utley, the all-star second baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies. There aren’t many better baseball names than Chase.

Shawn’s wife, Marissa, had named the girls (Kylee, 6, and Kyera, 2), and she had agreed that Shawn would name their son. Then, with two months to go, she changed her mind, and Shawn was smart enough not to argue with his pregnant wife.

Marissa didn’t want it to seem like the Wootens had become “super fans,” or like they deified ballplayers. “Baseball players,” she said, “are just people like everyone else.”

She said she wanted a good Irish name, even though the Wootens aren’t Irish.

So the baby with the broken heart was named Nolan, a name completely uninfluenced by Shawn Wooten’s up-and-down baseball existence.

Shawn wasn’t the one who broke the news to her. By trying NOT to choose a ballplayer’s name, she had accidentally chosen the name of one of the greatest baseball pitchers of all time, a Hall of Famer, an Angel legend – Nolan Ryan. Marissa’s mother, Gail, was the one who told her about the striking coincidence.

Still, Marissa had it fixed in her mind that he was Nolan.

On June 14, when Shawn signed the consent form allowing a surgeon to stop his son’s heart in an attempt to save his life, he did so on behalf of four-day-old Nolan Wooten.

The baby with the broken heart now had a ballplayer’s name.

But, for the first time since Shawn was a Little Leaguer, the game he played professionally for 15 years was the furthest thing from his mind.

“Baseball is so small,” he said.

Something is wrong when a baby doesn’t cry.

Nolan Wooten was born at 2:33 a.m. on June 8 at Fairview Maple Grove Medical Center in Minnesota, about 10 miles from the Wooten’s home in picturesque Plymouth, twice named by Money magazine as one of the best places to live in America. Shawn proudly held a video camera in one hand, and he cut the umbilical cord with the other.

In the nurse’s arms, Nolan whimpered a bit. when he was placed on Marissa’s chest, Nolan went silent. he was just lying there like he was half asleep. Marissa knew something was wrong. So did Shawn.

But the medical staff didn’t react. They weighed Nolan (8 pounds, 1 ounce), measured him (20 inches) and stamped his footprint on his birth certificate.

The staff’s first sign of trouble came when a nurse performed a quick oxygen saturation test by holding a gauge against Nolan’s hand.

“This can’t be right,” the nurse said.

Shawn watched the nurse get a new gauge from a drawer (the nurse thought the first gauge was defective). She held it against Nolan’s other hand, then his foot. She jostled the baby, trying to get him to cry.

Marissa, who had low blood pressure and fainted five times in the minutes after Nolan was born, was getting agitated.

“Is it his heart?” she said.

The people in the delivery room kept saying, “Transition takes time.”

This is what they would quickly discover: Nolan was, in medical terms, cyanotic — a blue baby. His blue blood (all human blood is blue until it receives oxygen from the lungs, then it turns red) gave his body a blue tint. he was born with a rare heart defect called “Transposition of the Great Arteries” (TGA), in which his aorta and pulmonary artery are switched causing his blood to be circulated through his body without oxygen.

In the United States, about 1 in 4,000 babies are born with TGA – about the same odds as flipping a coin to heads 12 times in a row.

Though no one yet had diagnosed what was wrong with Nolan’s heart, a neonatologist decided to give the baby prostaglandin, a drug that would keep open a valve that normally closes in a baby’s heart after birth. That move helped keep Nolan alive.

Nolan was transported to another room, away from his mother. Shawn followed the baby. The plan was to rush Nolan out of Maple Grove, and take him to Amplatz Children’s Hospital, a world-renowned heart center, about 30 minutes drive away. So many nurses began poking and prodding the baby.

“It’s hard to watch,” Shawn said.

To keep his composure, Shawn left the room to check on Marissa, who was losing hers.

“This is all my fault,” she said, in a panic. She was convinced she had caused this nightmare by drinking soda during her pregnancy.

“That’s ridiculous. you didn’t do anything wrong,” Shawn said. Then a doctor agreed, telling her that soda didn’t cause this heart defect.

Marissa wanted to call her mother, but Shawn refused to give her the phone. he was sure Marissa was too emotional and feared she would scare her mother, and a telephonic panic would reverberate around Minnesota.

So he agreed to make the call.

“Gail, there’s something wrong with Nolan,” Shawn said.

That’s when he lost it. The calm, understated Wooten began to cry.

Shawn Wooten was a decent hitter with a better personal story. Raised in West Covina, he played high school ball at South Hills with four other guys who made the major leagues – Jason Giambi, Jeremy Giambi, Cory Lidle and Aaron Small. Wooten was the least likely of the group to make it, and the only one to win a World Series ring.

He was an 18th round draft pick and signed with the Detroit Tigers in 1993. he wasn’t tall. he wasn’t fast. he didn’t have a particularly good arm. he played catcher, first base and third, but none of them particularly well. but he could hit.

Before he made it to the major leagues, Shawn had played eight years in the minors (including two stops – after being released by the Tigers — in western Canada to play for a team in Moose Jaw). he was hitting .353 in triple-A when the Angels finally gave him a shot in the show.

In 2000, he was a 27-year-old rookie on a team that featured Tim Salmon, Mo Vaughn, Darin Erstad, Troy Glaus and Garret Anderson. he was also single.

On Sept. 1, he and teammates Matt Wise and Brian Cooper were having lunch on Rush Street in Chicago when a couple of girls, who were in Chicago taking a break from law school in Minnesota, walked in front of a large open window. Some hoots and hollers ensued, the girls came inside and the ballplayers bought drinks.

One of those girls was Marissa Falk, who would later become Marissa Wooten. The only thing she knew about baseball was that she liked the ice cream that came in the little plastic helmets when her father took her to Twins games.

After hearing the men banter about why they were in Chicago, Marissa said she thought Shawn Wooten played for a softball team called the Angels. when he asked her to come to the park the next day to see him play, she thought he meant a city park with a softball diamond. when she went to Comisky Park and saw Shawn warming up pitchers in the Angels bullpen, she thought he had a job with the team to play catch.

“I thought he made everything up,” she said. “It was kind of surreal when it was true.”

A week later, the Angels played the Twins in Minnesota, so Marissa went to the ballpark again. during that season, Shawn only had five hits in the major leagues, but two of them came that night at the Metrodome.

They didn’t really start dating seriously until 2001. Marissa remembers the night Shawn took her to the grand opening of a new shopping district in Anaheim called Downtown Disney.

In 2002, Shawn was hitting .391 in spring training when he popped a tendon in his thumb. he had surgery, came back from the injury too soon, and tore an oblique muscle in his side while swinging a bat in a minor league rehab game.

He missed the first half of the 2002 season.

Then the magic happened.

In Shawn’s first game of 2002, he hit a home run in Kansas City, and the Angels beat the Royals 1-0. he played in 49 games for the Angels and hit .292. The Angels finished behind the Oakland A’s, but they entered the 2002 postseason as the wild card team.

The Angels had to play the behemouth Yankees, who had been to the World Series for four straight years (they had won the World Championship three times). In 2002, the Yankees had won 103 games. Their pitching staff featured starters Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, Andy Pettittee and David Wells, with Mariano Rivera in the bullpen. The Yankees offense, with Shawn’s high school teammate Jason Giambi, led the league in runs and on-base-percentage. They were second in home runs.

“It was David vs. Goliath,” Shawn said. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”

The Angels lost the first game in new York, but won the second. Shawn went 3-for-4 against Pettittee in Game 2. The Angels won Game 3, putting them one victory away from eliminating the vaunted Yankees.

On Saturday, Oct. 5, 2002, the Yankees held a 2-1 in the fifth inning when Shawn Wooten came to the plate.

Wells had pitched him inside in his first at-bat, so Shawn anticipated (“I didn’t guess. I anticipated.”) that Wells would try to pitch him outside this time. With a 2-0 count, Wells threw the pitch Shawn knew was coming.

Shawn hit it over the left-center field fence for a game-tying home run. Shawn’s hit launched the Angels into, arguably, the most explosive, exciting and important inning in franchise history.

“That home run was the momentum change of the game,” Shawn said.

After Bengie Molina flied out, Benji Gil hit a single, David Eckstein hit a single, Darin Erstad hit a single, Tim Salmon hit a single and Garret Anderson hit a single. after Troy Glaus flied out, Scott Spiezio hit a single.

Shawn came to bat for the second time in the inning. The Yankees took out Wells, and brought in right-hander Ramiro Mendoza. Shawn usually didn’t bat against right-handers, but Angels manager Mike Scioscia left him in.

Shawn took a strike. on the next pitch, a change-up on the outside corner, he hit a single to right field. Molina followed with a double. Gil followed that with a single.

At the end of the inning, the Angels had scored eight runs on 10 hits. Shawn was 2-for-2 with two RBI in the inning no Angels fan will ever forget.

The big, bad Yankees were beaten.

“I had never felt like I did right then,” said Shawn, who was 6-for-9 in the series. “It was a new excitement for everybody. The Angels had never won before.”

Shawn got two hits in the American League Championship series against the Twins. he got one in the World Series against the Giants. In the entire 2002 post-season, he went 9-for-19, a .474 batting average.

Marissa had flown to Anaheim for Games 1 and 2 of the World Series. She flew home after Game 2 to move into the house Shawn bought her in Minnesota.

“I didn’t think leaving was a big deal,” Marissa said. “I know now what a big deal it was.”

In 2003, Shawn’s life changed forever. he played 98 games for the Angels, but only hit .243. after the season, he decided to sign with the Philadelphia Phillies because he wanted to play more. According to baseball-reference.com, Wooten signed with the Phillies for $575,000, the top-dollar mark of his career.

He started the season with the Phillies, and after a slow start, he got sent to the minor leagues. Just more than a year after he was a postseason hero for the Angels, he was back in the minor leagues.

“I didn’t think that could happen,” Marissa said. “I thought it was the worst thing in the world. it humbles you.”

The Wootens were married in 2004. Marissa, a smart and funny woman with a law degree, became something she never thought she would become — a baseball wife. She says now that she lived her baseball life backward – shortly after she got serious with Shawn, he won the World Series, and THEN he descended into the minor leagues.

She quickly learned the harshest baseball words. “Optioned” (sent to the minor leagues). “Designated for assignment” … which usually leads to “released.”

All of those baseball business words hit the Wootens hard between 2003 and 2008. after winning the World Series with the Angels, he played 386 games in the minor leagues. he played for nine minor league teams in five years.

“When you’re released, you lose your health insurance,” Marissa said. “We barely had enough money to make the Cobra (private health insurance) payments.”

The worst of it came after 2006. Shawn had two knee surgeries and an appendectomy. Shawn went to spring training with the Padres and got released. he hooked on with the Padres double-A team in San Antonio and got released. he played with the independent St. Paul Saints for three days. he signed with the Mets, and got released. he signed with the Padres and got released.

He retired at 35 years old in 2008.

The baby’s broken heart was the size of a large strawberry.

In the first full day he was alive, Nolan Wooten had a balloon injected into his heart to pop open a valve that would allow some oxygen to get into his blood stream. after that first procedure, Shawn sat with his finger touching the palm of Nolan’s hand, trying not to picture him with plastic tubes encircling his body, trying to keep his composure.

Shawn wondered, “Will I ever be able to play catch with my son? Am I going to be able to run around and tackle him? but I know the Lord is going to bless me any way he wants to.”

“I was scared beyond belief, but I had hope,” Marissa Wooten said.

The Wootens made their home on the third floor of the Amplatz intensive care unit. They waited and waited, staring at the monitors that measured everything that was going on in Nolan’s body. Shawn was there around the clock.

“You can get lost in those monitors,” Shawn said.

It was about then that Shawn began to dream about getting off the third floor, getting away from the flat couch and the mustard yellow curtain and the small window, getting away from Pandora Internet Radio and the children’s lullabies that run constantly.

The sixth floor, where recovery takes place, is where you want to be, Shawn thought. but the sixth floor, to Shawn Wooten, seemed so far away.

Some of the families he met had been on the third floor for two years.

On the fourth day he was alive, Nolan Wooten underwent an open-heart surgery procedure called an “arterial switch operation.” for seven hours, the baby’s heart was stopped (and he was kept alive by machines), his body temperature lowered and his major arteries were cut. The aorta, pulmonary and coronary arteries were then re-attached in the proper places.

“The defect is severe,” said surgeon Jim St. Louis, who operated on Nolan and has been doing pediatric surgeries since 2001. “This is a high-risk situation.”

St. Louis, however, was ultra-confident, telling the Wooten’s that TGA patients have better than a 90 percent chance at a full recovery (although TGA patients have to be monitored their entire lives). at one point, Shawn asked him how he could do such life-and-death work with such apparent ease. St. Louis countered by asking Wooten how he could possibly play baseball successfully in front of so many people with so much pressure.

“Baseball seems complex and difficult to me, but this is what I do every day,” St. Louis said.

St. Louis tried to ease the Wooten’s tension by telling them this was his “favorite surgery.”

After seven hours, the arteries had been successfully switched, but there were complications. The first was Nolan’s phrenic nerve, which is attached to the diaphagam, had been stretched.

Nolan had to have another surgery, a “plication” to tether the diaphragm.

It was the second complication that turned out more severe, unexpectedly putting Nolan Wooten’s life in jeopardy again and scaring his parents more than the open-heart surgery.

Most babies who have TGA surgery go home within a couple of weeks.

But the baby with the broken heart could not.

Shawn Wooten keeps his World Series ring in a small pouch emblazoned with the San Diego Padres logo. (He currently serves as the manager for the Lake Elsinore Storm, the single-A affiliate in the Padres organization.) he takes the ring wherever he goes.

When people recognize him, Shawn likes to pull out the ring and tell stories of those days that now seem so far away. he can give pitch-by-pitch accounts of those 2002 games.

In the intensive care unit, Shawn met Bob Keller, whose son was also battling for his life. Derrick Keller, 18, was a high school shortstop who had verbally committed to play baseball at Southwest Minnesota State when he was diagnosed with leukemia. on the third floor at Amplatz, parents tend to share each other’s pain.

“You don’t know if you should smile at people,” Shawn said. “You don’t know what to do.”

Shawn asked Bob if he could take the ring into Derrick’s room, and possibly spread some of the World Series happiness, a little magic in a horrible situation.

But Derrick was in a coma, and Bob told Shawn it would have to be another time.

On June 26, (“The worst day,” Shawn called it) Shawn woke up to check, again, Nolan’s heart monitor. this time, something was wrong. Shawn panicked. Nolan’s heart rate had dropped from the normal 120 beats per minute to 70. Shawn left the room as the nurses took over, treating Nolan with magnesium injections. They eventually got his heart rate back to normal levels.

But a horrible day had started.

Down the hall, another baby died when her body rejected a newly transplanted heart. another 20-year-old patient, who needed a heart transplant, was elated for a few hours when a donor heart was found. but that was short-lived as the new heart had been bruised in a motorcycle accident, and couldn’t be used.

Then Shawn heard “CODE BLUE” – the signal for an emergency — and saw doctors rushing to Derrick Keller’s room.

“They all run, so you know something bad is happening,” Shawn said.

The high school shortstop died that day. His parents wrote on his Caring Bridge website: “We lost our son, and God has him now. he is playing shortstop in a double-header right now.”

Shawn said the feeling among the parents of children on the third floor must have been similar to what soldiers feel in Iraq.

“You don’t know if the people you get to know are ever coming back,” he said.

The second complication from open-heart surgery, the one that caught the Wootens by surprise was this: The baby with the broken heart couldn’t eat.

Marissa Wooten’s breast milk wasn’t reaching her son’s stomach. Doctors discovered that his vocal cord (along with his phrenic nerve) had been stretched during surgery. The vocal cord helps block liquid from draining straight down into the lungs.

So, until his vocal cord healed, Nolan needed a feeding tube inserted into his stomach.

Doctors told the Wootens that inserting the feeding tube was a routine procedure. it would take an hour. In and out. no big deal.

They also said they could further help Nolan by wrapping his stomach to prevent acids from bubbling back up into the baby’s esophagus (The wrap is called a “Nissen Fundoplication” procedure).

Marissa didn’t want to do it. but Shawn won that debate.

“I was worried he would throw up and die in his sleep,” Shawn said.

After the surgery began, the Wootens knew that something was wrong. The one-hour procedure was supposed to begin at 1 p.m. on July 3.

“My gut told me not to do this,” Marissa said.

“It’s fine, babe. It’s fine,” Shawn reassured her.

“Now, I’m starting to pace,” Shawn said. “I’m thinking it’s his heart.”

The Wootens were afraid they would lose their son during what they were told would be a simple procedure.

“I told Shawn, ‘If you don’t find out what is going on in that operating room, I’m going to lose it on somebody,’” Marissa said.

Around 9 p.m., Dr. Bradley Segura came into their room, announced that Nolan was recovering, and sat between the Wootens. Marissa couldn’t look at him. She stared at the wall. Segura had pictures of Nolan’s stomach. he asked Marissa to move closer to see them.

Segura explained that Nolan had been injured during the surgery. Doctors had accidently punctured his stomach lining. twice. That’s what caused the long delay. The baby would be fine.

For the Wootens, the fear and anger began to subside as Nolan’s vital signs began to improve.

“Doctors are human beings. They make mistakes. I understand,” Shawn said.

If you ask Shawn Wooten about the greatest day of his life, he won’t mention his two hits in one inning against the Yankees. he won’t mention the Angels’ World Series championship or his ring.

He will be honored with his World Series teammates on Aug. 18, but that moment won’t be at the top of the list either.

If you ask Shawn Wooten to tell you the greatest day of his life, he’ll tell you about the day his son moved from the third floor to the sixth floor at the Amplatz Children’s Hospital. In Shawn’s mind, the third floor was a scary place where people die. The sixth floor is recovery, where people start to live again.

For a few days after the nightmarish stomach surgery, Nolan’s vital signs held strong. he started gaining weight.

When the nurses came to move Nolan, Shawn was already packed.

“I didn’t want them to change their mind,” Shawn said. “They can have my World Series ring. Just get my son to the sixth floor.”

Shawn said that taking Nolan home – which he did on July 10 – doesn’t even compare to getting him moved to the sixth floor.

“Moving him to the sixth floor was like being called up to the big leagues,” Shawn said. “But way more than that.”

Nolan Wooten is recovering at home now. He’s still being fed through his stomach by a machine that Marissa delicately pumps every meal-time.

It looks as if he’s going to be healthy enough to travel.

When Shawn Wooten and his 2002 Angels teammates are honored on Aug. 18, Nolan, Marissa and his daughters will be right there with him.

For one night, baseball will be big again.

The baby with the broken heart