The crack of a baseball bat has never sounded so sweet.

Byline: Write on by Denis Mortenson For The Register-Guard

FOR SAM, my 10-year-old son, the crack of a baseball off a bat was the sound of healing.

To understand, you'd have to have endured an agonizing pain in your right collarbone for four years. You'd need to have seen it grow to three times normal size and had a dozen blood tests, MRI, bone scan and a biopsy. You'd need to have had countless nights of disrupted sleep, daily fish oil pills to combat the swelling and Aleve for the pain.

Then you'd know what a milestone it was for Sam to finally whack a baseball like other boys his age. Then you'd know what Sam's "bump" was like.

Just before the biopsy, two summers ago, Sam played on a Kidsports baseball team. He was small and weak, but he wanted to fit in, so I supported him. I coached bases and cheered.

I thought I might somehow protect him from getting hit. I cringed when the coach put him at the pitcher's mound position and a line drive nearly took his head off. I said silent prayers when he batted, praying that he'd get a hit. Miraculously, once he did hit a dribbler that allowed him to get on base.

When he was up at bat, he looked relieved when strike three was called, because swinging the bat was a monumental effort.

He was just going through the motions. When he somehow made contact with the ball, the crowd cheered because many of them knew about the problem with his collarbone.

The doctors never found out what he had. One said it was osteoitis, which is bone swelling. Another thought it might be osteomyelitis, which is a bone infection. At one time, they warned that it looked like a cancerous tumor.

Terrified by the possibility of cancer, we agreed to have a biopsy done at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. We stayed at the Ronald McDonald House on the OHSU campus. A knitted white lamb, a gift from a ladies' quilting group, lay on his bed.

I talked with a man from Idaho whose daughter was having a fourth reconstructive ear surgery. They'd made an artificial ear from tissue they'd taken from her hip.

The heartbreak of the families there was palpable. Sam, ever cheerful and optimistic, was thrilled to stay at the home of his favorite clown.

Late in the afternoon, when they wheeled him away for surgery, I wanted to tell them to stop. I wanted to put him in the car and drive back to Eugene. My instincts told me I'd delivered my only son to a butcher.

When he came out of surgery, he said the root beer flavored gas tasted terrible. He insisted he'd been awake during the operation. He said he'd screamed but they hadn't heard him. And then he slept for 12 hours.

The surgeon, who was a specialist from Croatia, had told my wife and me, in broken English, that the incision would be small. I could only shake my head when I saw the 4-inch-long wound that ran the length of his collarbone.

When Sam and I went out to hit baseballs that day last summer, I pitched tennis balls because he was afraid of the hardball. Still, I cajoled him into trying to hit it, and he reluctantly agreed.

His first swing was half-hearted, so I told him to imagine that the ball was the pain he'd been through and all the secret anger he felt.

That was when he hit a hardball that soared over the top of our cherry tree, past the large fir on the border of our yard and into the neighbor's back yard. It made a sound like a Fourth of July firecracker.

And that was when the spark of confidence came back into his eyes.

Every ball after that he hit with more vigor, until I feared he'd blast holes in the neighbor's house. He ripped line drives that zipped past me, through flower beds and off the neighbor's siding.

He didn't want to stop. It was the happiest moment either of us had had in four years. I wish you had seen the joy on his face. It was the look that every dad wants to see on his child.

A faint pink scar still marks Sam's collarbone. With time and Vitamin E, it may fade away, though the memory of pain endures.

We still don't know what the problem was. We assume it was connected to his growth cycles. Short-legged pants and too-small shoes testify to changes. It is certain that he's had his growing pains.

Now is the time for recovery and healing.

Denis Mortenson has written an original screenplay, a collection of poetry, two fiction novels and one novella. He is owner of Studio M, a design and advertising business, and lives in Eugene with his wife and two children.

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