Accidents happen. St. Martin's College baseball student-athlete Jason Gragg knows more intimately than most the truth embedded in that adage.

In the early morning hours of May 15, 2004, Gragg, a gifted middle infielder who sometimes took the mound for the Saints, climbed into the back seat of a friend's car after an evening spent playing cards and watching movies. On the way home, the driver took a sharp turn too fast, causing the car to veer off the road, hurdle over a ditch and into a wooded lot, where it slammed into a tree. Gragg, who was not wearing a seat belt, banged into the roof of the car, shattering the third, fourth, fifth and sixth vertebrae in his neck.

Friends pulled him out of the car and transported him to the hospital.

Through two surgeries spanning a total of eight hours, doctors used eight bolts, three bars, a carbon graphite cage, a plate and four screws to fuse Gragg's four vertebrae back together. One of the damaged vertebra had to be replaced through a donor.

As horriffic as his injuries were and as long as the road to anything approaching normal appeared, Gragg was fortunate. After all, he was alive and he wasn't paralyzed. As he lay in the hospital, one simple wish spurred him toward recovery. Gragg wanted to play baseball. Again.

"For the first couple weeks I really thought there was no chance I could make it back. It just seemed like something that was so far away. It didn't seem like something I'd be able to do," he said.

But he pushed the doubts aside and with the same grit and quickness that made him a first-team all-Great Northwest Conference selection as an utility player, he embarked on the journey back. He wasn't alone, though. Family, friends and teammates provided vital support.

Initially, doctors suggested it could be a year before Gragg would be released from the hospital, but he needed only 18 days. In that span, he went from being motionless to walking out of the hospital.

He dropped 30 pounds through the ordeal and had little to no strength or mobility in his left side. Through a combination of occupational therapy -- relearning how to perform functional tasks such as taking a shower and brushing his teeth -- and physical therapy, Gragg began the grueling task of rebuilding his strength, movement, coordination and balance.

By late September, he was able to begin throwing a baseball and playing catch, and he enrolled in school. In October, he began working out with the team.

With his mind firmly set on returning to play his senior season of baseball at St. Martin's, Gragg also made the difficult decision to give up his beloved middle infield positions to focus solely on pitching. Doctors had advised against returning to those posts because of the risk of colliding with base runners.

"It was a tough decision because second base and shortstop are my favorite positions. Most people like to hit, but I like to play defense and make that diving play," he said. "I told myself that I can't do that stuff anymore, but at least I can still play and contribute."

Fifteen games into the season, in a game against Mesa State in which the Saints already were down by eight runs and facing another threat, Gragg came on in relief.

It was the moment he'd been thinking and dreaming about for nearly a year.

"It almost felt like slow motion," he said, recalling his concern that not having his old strength would make him vulnerable. "It meant a lot to me. I know that to a lot of people who look up to me, it showed them that all it takes is determination. There are so many people who heard me say I was going to play, they said there's no way. When they saw me actually do this, they were like 'wow.' If you want to do anything, you can do anything."

Gragg did end up surrendering a couple of hits that day, but he also got the outs he needed. More importantly, the outing boosted his confidence that he could still play. Gragg followed that first appearance with eight more to close out his senior season.

"The biggest lesson I've learned is that things like this happen. There's no reason to blame," he said. "All I can do is keep pushing forward and be thankful I still have a life to live and can still do the things I love to do."

Gragg has exhausted his athletics eligibility, but he has one more year of school before earning a degree in economics. Eventually, Gragg hopes to pass along his love of baseball along with some of the wisdom he has collected through coaching.

Said Gragg,"That will give me another pathway to share my story and spread my knowledge about what I've learned in baseball and life to a lot of younger kids."