On a late February evening cold around the edges, Jude Hiley walked to the loneliest spot on earth. He made the trip quickly, despite the hitch in his gait.

Jude stood under the lights on a slightly elevated spot on the infield of Medlock Park’s field No. 6 in Decatur. When you are 12, no place on the planet is more remote than the pitcher’s mound.

Jude wound up, threw. The ump didn’t hesitate.

“Strike!”

The crowd — and, really, it was a crowd, 100 people or more standing in the dark to watch No. 9 make his triumphant return to the game — roared with delight.

Young Mr. Hiley would go on to throw 46 more pitches that night. Thirty were strikes. He left the mound to raucous applause. He had been to the loneliest place on earth, survived it and returned.

Last year, Jude’s life changed, irrevocably. How he handled that change — with wit and grit, with limitless levels of optimism — brought him back to the sport he loves. Heroes sometimes do walk with a limp.

Surprising solution

When he learned about the cancer, Jude hardly blinked.

OK, he said, what’s next?

There would be chemotherapy. He’d lose his hair. For Jude, that was acceptable. The bigger concern was his knee. He’d lose it, too. That raised the question: What could he do to get back on the field?

Physicians reviewed the patient’s history — young, athletic, a supportive family. Perhaps rotationplasty would be best?

It’s the sort of surgery that is the stuff of science fiction. Emory physicians would remove his knee, the site of that cancerous tumor. They would take out part of his femur, or upper leg bone, too. But they would save the ankle joint and foot. In an operation that would stretch over hours, they would reattach the foot where his knee had been.

And this: They would put it on backward. By turning it around, the foot and ankle joint would become a knee.

To walk, Jude would clip his real foot into a collar atop a prosthetic device. It would be made of shiny steel and end with an artificial foot made of the same material as a helicopter rotor, strong but flexible. By bending his ankle, he would be able to amble on his way with a slight limp.

It’s not new; a doctor performed the first foot-rotation operation in 1927. For the right candidates, rotationplasty has profound implications.

And Jude, say the people who have worked with him, is the sort of person for whom rotationplasty was invented. It allows a patient to remain active, even as he or she grows. A traditional replacement, without the pivoting foot, wouldn’t grant someone that sort of freedom.

“My initial reaction was, ‘No way you’re going to do that to my kid,’” said Pat.

His brother, Joseph, worried kids would make fun of him.

But Jude didn’t hesitate.

“It was the best way for me to play baseball again,” he said.

Chemotherapy began in mid-March. As predicted, Jude’s thick, dark hair fell out. In June, he underwent surgery at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta — worried parents waiting, friends crossing fingers, a boy breathing regularly under anesthesia. Jude’s physicians wielded saw and knife. It took eight hours.

“It was one of the longer days of my life,” Pat said.

Two hours after orderlies rolled him out of surgery, a groggy Jude lay in bed — and wiggled his toes. That’s when he knew he would return to the mound.

Within weeks, the onetime centerfielder was hobbling about, gaining confidence and balance.

“In retrospect, it was the perfect option,” said Pat.

“A boy like Jude, he wants to be active,” said Dr. Thomas Olson, an oncologist who oversaw Jude’s chemotherapy. “He chose this (procedure). He’s very special. We can kill the tumor, but how you move on (after surgery) is important, and Jude is exceptional on that point.”

In December, six months after his parents rolled him out of CHOA, Jude announced: He was ready to try out for the Red Devils.

Room full of memories

Jude’s room is like most kids’ rooms, filled with a jumble of stuff that marks the steady march from toddler to teen. Jude has stuffed animals. He has Star Wars toys — “Rogue I,” he thinks, was probably the best film in the bunch, but he’s also partial to the classic titles, especially “The Empire Strikes Back.”

He shares the room with Joseph, 17, a senior at Druid Hills High. Joseph is pretty good-humored about it. The older brother has quietly surrendered most of the space to his younger sibling. Big brother has some books and a few other reminders of his younger years, but you get the feeling they’re getting pushed into an increasingly smaller space.

Trophies? Jude has plenty, though only a few are on display. They’re gleaming reminders of cool nights and hot afternoons, of dust and mud and newly mown grass, the joy of rounding first at a full gallop.

Game balls? At least 20. They are mementos of well-turned plays, of clutch hits. There’s that home-run ball, too.

“That really wasn’t a home run,” he said.

Huh?

He won the ball two years ago when he smacked a deep shot to center. It rose fat and fine in the air and — bam! — it landed atop the outfield fence. The ball could have headed one of two ways — back onto the field or into the weeds behind the fence. It chose the latter, plop! landing on the fence’s home run side. Everyone cheered — then stopped: The ump ruled the hit a double because it had hit the fence.

Jude’s coach fumed. After the game, he grabbed a Sharpie. HOME RUN, he scrawled, and handed the ball to his ace centerfielder/pitcher/first baseman.

Jude has reminders of other moments in the sun — footballs and lacrosse sticks, a baseball bat he used so much that it cracked. Yes, cracked: Try doing that to a piece of aluminum designed for thousands of hits.

There’s also tangible proof that youngsters with cancer touch a soft spot in the hearts of grown men paid to play kids’ games. Brian McCann learned about the boy who’d returned to the game wearing a prosthesis. The former Braves and current Astros catcher sent him a pair of his cleats — Under Armors, size 13.

While visiting Jude after his surgery at CHOA, Brave Brian Kemp wore the jersey he’d worn the night before when he banged a three-run homer against the Diamondbacks. Without pausing Kemp slipped it off, signed the jersey, and handed it over. Jude grinned. “The Braves’ equipment guy wasn’t too happy about that,” he said.

Smoltz and Glavine, those former Braves giants, signed balls, too.

There is one other prize Jude treasures. He keeps it in a wooden box about the size of two bars of soap. It contains a plastic bag holding a fistful of ashes — the cremains of his knee and part of his femur. Not long out of surgery, Jude asked for it. Perplexed physicians saw no reason to refuse. The box rests on a shelf above his bed.

On a recent evening, he carefully removed the top, touched the bag with a single index finger.

“This was mine,” he said, “my leg.”