Joe Mugler hasn't led a charmed life, but he's fought to recover from a debilitating brain injury suffered as a youth. He's held down several jobs at Penn and now he's found success on the playing field. Mugler, 32, was the starting catcher and clean-up hitter on the gold-medal winning Drexel Hill slow-pitch softball team at the Delaware County Special Olympics in June.
The annual competition, held June 12-15, marked the first time that Mugler participated in the Special Olympics and, for that matter, the first time that he played organized softball, though he was an avid baseball player as a youngster.
"My mother had been telling me for five years that I should play," he said. And he finally decided to take her advice because he enjoys the game.
When Mugler first met his teammates, he was amazed that he "was much bigger" than they, because he is only average size, about 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds.
But Mugler knew that softball isn't a sport in which body size is all important. Skill matters and so does determination. Despite his injury, he said, "I never lost the eye for the ball, or my arm."
Mugler was 7 when he was injured on August 8, 1973, while racing bikes with his brother and a friend. He flew through an intersection and was hit by a car. The impact tossed him 6 feet into the air.
"We were going really fast," he recalled. "I didn't hear my brother yelling to me to stop." His doctors feared that he would not survive, and his family was brought into his room to say their good-byes as he lay in a coma.
He awoke after four months, but the accident resulted in permanent brain trauma, leaving him with a limp, a shake in his arm, impaired speech and a hazy memory.
He spent years in physical therapy and speech therapy, but his mother wouldn't allow her son to be in a "special" school. He returned to his old elementary school, St. Charles, and later attended Malvern Prep, where he earned his high school diploma.
Mugler brought the same work ethic that helped him graduate from school to the playing field. Before the Special Olympics, he worked out with his softball team at regular, one-hour practices, sharpening his old ball-field skills and learning to work with his teammates.
The practices paid off, creating a team that could communicate and work as one on the field, the key components in a winning team. "We had good chemistry," said Mugler. There was a special bond between Mugler and the team's pitcher, Tim Cohney, who told him he was one of the best catchers the team ever had.
Drexel Hill's first victory "was a close one," Mugler said. "Our coach told us that we were lucky to win that game." But, he said, the win "really motivated us to play harder the next game [because] we knew if we won the next game we would win the gold." When they did, Mugler said, he "really didn't feel that excited [although] everyone else did.
"We won because everyone played as a team," said Mugler, who contributed to both victories by hitting some key singles. "I wanted to hit home runs at first." But his coach convinced him that singles were "all I really needed."
"I used to let losing really bother me; now I feel that somebody's got to win and somebody's got to lose," he said. "I just give my best."
And he doesn't just give his best on the softball field, but also at Penn, working in both Training House dining hall during the school year and, for the second consecutive summer, for Mike Ferraiolo, the Superintendent of Hardsurfaces and Athletic Grounds at Franklin Field.
Joe Mugler, hard at work at Franklin Field, is a natural at softball.
Photograph by Candace di Carlo
Mugler's main responsibility is cleaning Franklin Field, inside and out - the track, the turf and the area beneath the stadium. He picks up trash on the grounds and makes sure that the trash-can liners are changed regularly. "I keep the place presentable," said Mugler with a smile.
Ferraiolo approves of his work: "Joe is a hard worker. He comes every day on time and does anything that we ask of him." Mugler's stint at Franklin Field is not his first. He worked with athletics as an equipment man, helping out with freshman football from 1989-1992, but left when the freshman team was disbanded due to budget cutbacks.
Mugler is not planning to return to his fall job at Training House. "It's not for me," he said. He wants a full-time job with benefits and is actively searching for one with the help of a community job program. But Ferraiolo said that "he has a summer job at Penn as long as he wants one."
Mugler is confident that he will find a good, full-time job. "I know the feeling of winning and losing. I won't let anyone tell me I can't do anything."
Return to Compass Features for September 2, 1997