By rights he'd earned, Gage Miller should've been on the mound Thursday when Notre Dame opened District 7-AA baseball tournament play against Sequatchie County.
But Miller was relegated to the dugout, despite having been the Irish's No. 1 starting pitcher all of last year and much of this season. Actually, considering the bigger picture, he was glad to be even there.
Blame it on mononucleosis -- and, yes, he's heard all the wisecracks he can stand about "the kissing disease." His mono led to a life-and-death pair of surgeries, the first to repair a leaking spleen and the second to remove it.
"Gage is a very healthy child. I don't think he had anything more than strep throat in his entire life," said Danielle Miller, his mother.
It is likely that baseball saved his life.
He had pitched a game against district rival Signal Mountain the afternoon that his parents wound up taking him to the hospital.
"The doctors said his pitching motion probably forced blood from his spleen and that his increasing weakness alerted his parents and others to a serious physical problem," Danielle said.
Otherwise, Miller might've gone to bed never to awaken.
"One of the nurses told me later that she didn't think when he came to the hospital that it was going to end well," his mother recalled.
"You have to understand that Gage is a bulldog on the mound. and when it comes to competitor and playing the game the right way, he's one all coaches would love to have," Notre Dame coach Greg Elie said.
The coach knew something was wrong, though, in the fifth inning when Miller got a hit, stole second and then -- completely out of character -- asked for a courtesy runner. Then after pitching through the sixth, Miller told Elie that he wanted someone to finish what he'd started.
"He went out to throw his warm-up pitches and then walked off the mound. I knew for sure then that something was wrong, because he's the type you have to pry the ball out of his hand," Elie recalled. "He said something is really wrong."
At one point as doctors tried every possible test to discover his illness, Miller's blood pressure was 50 over 30. By the time he was released, every ounce of his own body's blood had been replaced.
"Over a two-day period I don't know how many transfusions he had, and I'm thankful that he was smart enough to really understand his body and say, 'Yeah, something's wrong,'" Elie said. "If he had thrown that last inning, who knows?"
Miller remembers everything until the sixth inning.
"It's blurry after that," he said. "I had started feeling like I was cramping, but I've pitched through cramps before. But by the end of the sixth I had tunnel vision and a loud ringing in my ears."
His mom had been down to check on him once -- he asked for a Snicker's candy bar, thinking his blood sugar might be low -- and the second time she went to the dugout she was appalled.
"Gage has played since he was 4, and he's never come off the field willingly," Danielle said. "When I walked down there, his lips were white and he was soaking wet. Then a couple of our parents that are nurses checked his eyes and they were nonresponsive."
By the time his parents got him to the hospital, Miller's dad, Nick, had to carry him into the emergency room.
"Those first three days were the worst of my life. I was told later that my body shut down," Gage said.
He's made a remarkable recovery, although getting back on the field for Notre Dame is out of the question.
"Without my family, friends and teammates, I don't know what would've happened," he said. "Without their support and that of teams in the district like (Chattanooga Christian) and Signal Mountain, it would've been a lot tougher."
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him at Twitter.com/wardgossett.