Corsicana — Just when you start thinking the story of the national baseball champion Navarro Bulldogs can’t get any more made for Hollywood, enter Roy Hobbs. Or I’m sorry, make that Garret Autrey.

This chapter of the 2011 Bulldogs’ storybook season goes back to the bottom of the first inning of the first game of the JUCO World Series. Go ahead, hop in the time capsule with me and let’s go back to Grand Junction, Colo. Saturday, May 28. Right around 3:40 p.m. mountain time.

Southern Union (Ala.) center field and leadoff hitter Bruce Jackson starts the bottom of the first inning by crushing a high fly ball to right center field on the first pitch he saw. It’s a double at least. It’s carrying away from Autrey, who is racing over from his spot in right field. The 6-5 Autrey is fast, but he’s not that fast. Not to get to this ball.

Autrey gets to the warning track. Maybe he can catch it after all. He twists his body like a pretzel because the wind is taking the ball away from him at a strange angle. He dives. The ball lands in his glove as he crashes to the ground. He holds on. One out. It’s still 0-0 in Game 1 of the JUCO World Series.

Meanwhile, Autrey struggles to get up. Center fielder Weston Hall comes over and says, “Garret, are you alright?” He’s not.

Autrey has a torn labrum. He has a partially dislocated right shoulder. He’s in a ton of pain.

The only thing is the injury-part of the story didn’t fully come out until well after the Bulldogs’ dog pile at home plate to celebrate Navarro’s first baseball national title. To be exact, it was three weeks after that historic June 4 night.

Autrey told a few of his teammates he was hurting the night of “The Catch,” but not his coaches. He basically played in six games without his right arm. He was diagnosed with the injuries last week and will have surgery on Friday.

Did he ever think about saying anything to Bulldogs coach Whoa Dill or assistant coach Pudge Podjenski?

“It was bothering me, but not enough to come out of the game,” Autrey said. “I knew I could tough it out. I didn’t want to worry anybody.”

Is Dill upset Autrey kept things hush hush?

“He did what any other baseball player would have done in the World Series,” Dill said. “He’s tough. He’s one of the toughest players I’ve ever been around. He wants to play every day.”

His teammates and coaches are grateful he kept quiet.

Autrey made the all-tournament team after batting .500 and scoring five runs. He had a .642 on-base average, best on the team, because he walked seven times. He was one of the stars of the Bulldogs’ national title run.

“I told him he played better in the World Series than he did all year,” Dill said. “He had great at-bats. He was on base all the time. He had a great tournament.”

And while two of his teammates went to the hospital during the first four days Navarro was in Grand Junction, and with good reason by the way — Tyler Mapes almost had a heart attack because of dehydration and Rory Myers had E-Coli — Autrey said nothing.

“It would take a lot for me not to play,” Autrey said.

This bravado comes straight down the family tree. Autrey’s father, Larry, was a steer wrestler for 16 years from 1968-84. He retired from rodeo only because his second son, Leighton, also a former Navarro baseball player, came along.

Larry went to the hospital with a broken nose once. Otherwise he stiched himself up a few times. If you’ve ever had anything to do with rodeo, you know it’s quite the dangerous sport. Larry broke numerous bones during his career that he never reported.

“That’s probably where he gets it,” Larry said Wednesday by phone from his ranch in Stephenville. “The Autreys don’t go to the doctor unless we have to. Not that we’re super human. We’re just old school.”

Garret didn’t stay completely quiet; he just didn’t tell the coaches. Navarro had an off day on the Sunday after the Game 1 win, and Autrey says he told Hall and second baseman Christian Stringer that his arm was killing him.

Catcher J.T. Files gave him some special stretching exercises to do. Trainer Kelsi Hildebrandt helped stretch Autrey out before every workout and game. And Autrey played on.

He was fine when he was swinging a bat. It didn’t bother him when he was chasing down fly balls. He had 10 putouts, and had another diving catch face-first during the tournament.

“It only hurt when I threw,” Autrey said.

When the Bulldogs arrived back in Corsicana on Sunday, June 5, Autrey took part in the celebration and took five days off before leaving for a summer league in Martha’s Vinyard in New England.

“I’d always had a lot of tweaks and played through them,” Autrey said. “It usually takes three or four days, maybe a week, and the pain stops. This kept hurting me.”

Autrey played in seven games in summer ball, but the pain while warming up his right arm got to be too much. He called his father, who called his new coach at Lamar University, Jim Ricklefsen.

Ricklefsen advised Autrey to come home and see Dr. Keith Meister, the Texas Rangers team physician. An MRI revealed the signifcant injuries.

After surgery Friday, Autrey will be in a sling for four weeks. He can start swinging a bat in 12 weeks and throwing in six months. Autrey said he’ll be ready to play for Lamar when its season starts in February.

“He’s in for a tough surgery,” Larry said.

It was all worth it. Autrey’s catch in the first inning of Game 1 will go down as one of the best in Navarro baseball history, maybe in JUCO World Series history, considering the aftermath.

“It’s the best one I’ve ever made,” Autrey said. “I was in a full out sprint, the wall was close, then came the warning track and I had to lay out. It was a momentum changer.”

Larry said it’s a testament to his son’s character.

“That’s the way he plays the game,” Larry said. “That’s the way he was taught to play the game. Injuries are part of it. I’d like to trade places with him and go through the surgery. He’ll work through it.”

Corsicana should get used to the Autrey bravado. The youngest of Larry’s four sons, J.T., will be one of Navarro’s top pitchers next year. He’s coming back from nerve damage in his right arm that forced him to miss most of the Bulldogs’ national title run.

Garret’s half brother and the oldest of Larry’s boys, Heath, is the new baseball coach at Corsicana High School.

The Autrey brand is very much a part of Corsicana.

As it should be. Because of one catch, and one kid playing through pain to win a championship.

It’s the stuff legends are made of, and as Garret tells it, he’s only one of 29 Bulldogs that would have sucked it up for their teammates.

“They would do the same thing,” Garret said. “That’s the final stage, no matter what. It would have taken a broken leg to keep me from playing.”