True Grit

Her heart was broken, but Mary Hearst had to stay strong. Her baby was in pain, and when the tears came streaming down his cheeks, she did what a mother does—wiped them away and assured him that everything would be O.K. Three years ago this week her son, Garrison, the San Francisco 49ers' star running back, was lying on the training table in the visitors' locker room of the Georgia Dome, his fractured left ankle throbbing, as the muffled sounds of a shattered season resonated from above. The constant cheers told Hearst that the Atlanta Falcons were eliminating his team from the playoffs, ending a year in which he had set a franchise rushing record and earned his first trip to the Pro Bowl. What hurt most was that Hearst, having snapped his leg while carrying the ball on the game's first play from scrimmage, was powerless to alter his team's fortunes.

"Garrison, don't worry," said Michael Dillingham, the 49ers' orthopedist "I've dealt with this type of injury before. You'll be back next year." Hearst's father, Gary, and his agent, Pat Dye Jr., offered similarly reassuring words, but the normally ebullient running back was devastated. He started to speak, and Mary sensed what was coming: Why me? "No, don't say that," she said, cutting him off in mid-sentence. "You're very fortunate. It could have been worse. You're going to be fine."

Mother knew best, of course. Her son would indeed reclaim his cherished role, prodding the Niners back into the playoffs with his fearless running style and peerless running of the mouth. All it took was 32 months of rehab, seven surgeries—including a cutting-edge procedure that Dillingham believes had not been attempted on a pro athlete—and unshakable faith, and Hearst is right back where he always figured he'd be.

"I never thought I wouldn't play again," Hearst said recently at the 49ers' training facility in Santa Clara. "One specialist I saw a few months after the injury told me to start preparing for life after football, and I know a lot of people around here thought I was through. But those people didn't know what was inside of me."

Pardon the rest of us if we didn't see this coming. Hearst, who turned 31 on Jan. 4, has become the most inspirational player on one of the NFL's most improbable contenders, and last Wednesday he cemented his comeback by being selected to the Pro Bowl. His stats through 15 games—1,149 yards on 237 carries, for a hefty 4.85-yard average—do not adequately reflect his impact. When Hearst's ankle snapped, so did the once mighty Niners, who went 10-22 in his absence. While Hearst is not the only reason for San Francisco's turnaround in 2001, he is certainly the franchise's pride and joy. "I can't imagine any player meaning as much to a team," tackle Derrick Deese says.

As the 49ers prepare for their first playoff game since that grim day in Atlanta, Hearst's recovery stands as this season's preeminent feel-good story. "I root for the guy, and I think everybody in the league does," says the NFL's best running back, Marshall Faulk, who plays for the rival St. Louis Rams. Even the men who tackle Hearst feel warm and fuzzy about his return. "He's one of those guys you want to hit hard and then help up with a smile," says Miami Dolphins linebacker Zach Thomas, whose team gave up 103 rushing yards to Hearst in a 21-0 San Francisco win on Dec. 16. "We respect a guy who's fought his way back after sitting out two years, and he came back better than before."

As recently as 20 months ago, Hearst faced the possibility that he might never again walk normally. By the spring of 2000 a rare circulatory condition called avascular necrosis had limited the blood flow to his ankle, causing his talus bone to begin degenerating. Dillingham says Hearst was in danger of having to undergo surgery to fuse the bones in his ankle.

The condition, which afflicted Hearst in the aftermath of the initial surgery to stabilize the ankle with screws and plates in early 1999, was the same one that had forced former Raiders All-Pro running back Bo Jackson to retire from football and to undergo hip-replacement surgery. Hearst's second major procedure, in July '99 by Dillingham and orthopedic surgeon Mike Mont, involved boring holes into the dying parts of the talus, then inserting bone plugs from a cadaver. Five months later, however, the bone still wasn't healing, and as Hearst headed into a second off-season of rehabilitation, Dillingham was running out of options. He turned to Pierce Scranton, a Seattle-based specialist who had treated conditions similar to Hearst's by breaking the ankle near the top, cleaning out the decaying parts and inserting plugs grafted from another part of the patient's body. On May 6, 2000, in Seattle, Scranton and Dillingham performed the operation that would revive a bone, a player and a team.

The two doctors were stunned by the devastation they encountered. Despite the previous efforts to repair it, the most damaged parts of Hearst's talus bone, Dillingham recalls, "had the consistency of toothpaste." During a 3�-hour procedure the surgeons removed bone and cartilage from Hearst's right knee and used it to reconstruct the ankle. "Garrison stayed upbeat, but sooner or later I thought he might throw in the towel," admits Niners coach Steve Mariucci.

Yet even with $2 million of tax-free disability insurance waiting for him should he choose to retire, Hearst never wavered. "I tried to drop some hints about postcareer options," Mary Hearst says, "but he'd say, 'Mama, I'm gonna play football. I can't go out like this.' "