It finally became unbearable for Daniel Morge when the Thousand Oaks High baseball team went to go sing the national anthem, and he couldn’t put his hand behind his back.
He’d known he was hurt for a while, but there’s a difference between hurt and injured. And Morge knew it.
Even though the later part of his junior year would be a showcase for college coaches, Morge knew he would be no good to the Lancers. And no good to himself. So midway through last season, he shut it down.
Morge eventually learned the severity of his injury: a micro tear in his labrum and a shoulder impingement.
Morge was scared because his dream to play college baseball was in jeopardy.
“I tried to play through for as long as I could, and I tried to hold out because thought it was better for the team but realistically it was me being selfish,” Morge said.
Morge knew what was at stake by missing so much of his junior year and subsequent summer.
“Junior to senior year summer is a lot of summer ball tournaments in front of coaches and a lot of getting out in the college world and actually getting recognized,” he said. “At first, there was disappointment that I couldn’t play. Then I don’t want to say there was joy, but there was relief that I didn’t have to go do that and I could go and live that junior summer.”
With his pitching future on hold, Morge was free to focus on a summer trip with his best friends.
Since November of 2022, there had been talks about doing a big trip with his long-time friend group. With most of his friends and teammates graduating seniors, they would soon be off to college. It was their last time to do so. Morge and his friends decided to take a road trip to New York.
They started out in California on July 5, driving three days and 14 hours a day to Buffalo, New York, where they picked up another friend and promptly started the drive back.
After every state sign, Morge and his friends would stop and take a picture with the sign, not knowing after stopping at one state sign they would get their car stuck in a ditch. After about three hours they managed to push it out and start their journey back home.
“One of the best moments of the trip was definitely actually getting to New York,” Morge said. “Spending the day in New York with (my friend’s family) and seeing Niagara Falls was very cool. The day we spent on the lake in Michigan with family was very nice. But one of my personal favorite things of the trip that continued to happen was the family dinners with everyone’s families throughout the country and having a home-cooked meal and bed to stay in rather than a hotel and drive-thru food.”