Dave Veres just wanted the pain to stop.

He wanted to be able to sleep more than two or three hours a night, to sit in his car, to make it through a movie, to play with his four kids without a constant ache in his left hip.

He never set out to be the poster boy for hip replacement, and he certainly never thought about returning to Major League Baseball.

"Pitching was the furthest thing from my mind," says Veres, 40, a right-hander who retired in 2004 after 10 major-league seasons with five teams, including the Rockies from 1998-1999. "I figured, after surgery, what's left? I'll just sit in my chair and watch TV."

Hardly. But let's back up 15 years, to the day when Veres tripped on a carpet and fell on his left hip.

"For about a month or so, it bothered me when I pitched. When I'd go to land on it, it hurt," he says. "Then the pain went away. And a few years later, I noticed I had lost a lot of my range of motion. It got tighter and tighter."

In 2003, the pain began to get worse. That was the year of his last major-league appearance, in the National League Championship Series.

"I went home and figured I'd lose some weight and take the pressure off it. But the more I worked out, the more it hurt," he says. "I figured it was time to do something about it."

By the time people limp into Dr. Peter Lammens' office at Panorama Orthopedics in Golden, they've usually tried everything short of surgery: pain medication, cortisone shots, physical therapy. Those are the first-line options for a 38-year-old man with a hip that looks 70 or 80, Lammens says.

"Dave had degenerative arthritis. He really wore out his left hip over time," says Lammens, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in total hip replacement.

Sometimes a hip joint wears out because a person's anatomy is a little askew. But it's also possible to wear out joints with demanding physical activity, Lammens says.

"That's Dave's landing leg," he says.

Veres already was nervous about the surgery - it didn't help when his brother-in-law phoned a couple of days before to ask if he'd heard about the football player who died during a hip replacement.

"His two cents wasn't worth much," Veres says. "I knew it had to be done."

The operation takes about 90 minutes and costs about $45,000. Lammens does 30 to 40 a month, and the average age of his patients has been dropping as replacement hips and surgical techniques have improved.

Earlier this month, former Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians outfielder Albert Belle underwent hip resurfacing, a recently developed procedure that involves capping the head of the femur with a smooth metal ball. It's sort of like capping a tooth instead of replacing it, and it saves bone while reducing recovery time.

But it's unclear how long resurfacing will last, Lammens says. Hip replacements, on the other hand, have an excellent track record.

"We think the hip David has in will last 20 years or more," he says. "But he's young, and he's going to put it through a lot more than an elderly patient."

Before the surgery, Veres and Lammens half-joked about the possibility of a major-league comeback. By summer, Veres was playing with a city-league team in Castle Rock and training with Loren Landow at Velocity Sports in Centennial, which specializes in athletic performance.

He was feeling great, pain-free for the first time in years. The idea of being the first major-league pitcher to come back after a hip replacement started to seem, well, pretty darn doable. With the support of his wife and kids, Veres decided to go for it.

"I thought it would be worth trying again," he says. "The way I saw it, I had nothing to lose."

The Rockies felt the same way and brought him into training camp on a minor-league contract. "If we didn't know what Dave is all about, we would have been skeptical," says General Manager Dan O'Dowd. "If he is healthy, we feel he can help this team."

Lammens has put no restrictions on him, except for warning him against long-distance running. That's been tough for Veres, who used to cover up to 10 miles a day.

"He can bike and swim, but we don't want him doing any activity that has impact through the femur," Lammens says. "He has to run to get the ball and train with agility drills. Those things we've allowed him to do."

At the moment, Veres has other body parts on his mind - a strained forearm muscle has ended any hope of playing Opening Day.

"My elbow's a little sore," he says, "and my hamstring hurts."

But his hip? It feels just fine.

Hip to the numbers

217,000 total hip replacements are performed in the United States each year.

600 pounds of force are exerted on the hip joint of a 200-pound man with every step he takes.

80% is the likelihood that a hip replacement will last 20 years.

20% of hip-replacement patients are candidates for minimally invasive techniques.

Common surgical treatment options for the hip

• Arthroscopy: Arthroscopy of the hip is a minimally invasive outpatient procedure. It is relatively uncommon. The doctor may recommend it if the joint has evidence of torn cartilage or loose fragments of bone or cartilage.

• Osteotomy: Candidates for osteotomy include younger patients with early arthritis, particularly those with abnormally shallow hip sockets. The procedure involves cutting and realigning the bones of the hip socket and/or thighbone, decreasing joint pressure. In some cases, this may delay the need for replacement surgery for 10 to 20 years.

• Traditional hip replacement: Traditional hip-replacement surgery involves making a 10-inch to 12-inch incision on the side of the hip. The muscles are split or detached from the hip, the hip is dislocated and the ball of the femur is removed. The hip socket is prepared by removing any remaining cartilage and some of the surrounding bone. The cup implant is pressed into the bone of the socket. It may be secured with screws.

Some bone is removed from the inside of the thighbone. A metal stem is placed into the thighbone to a depth of about 6 inches. The stem implant is either fixed with bone cement or is implanted without cement. Cementless implants have a rough, porous surface that allows bone to adhere to the implant to hold it in place. A ball is then placed on top of the stem to re-create the ball-and-socket joint.

• Minimal Incision Hip Replacement: Minimal incision hip replacement surgery lets the surgeon perform hip replacement through one or two smaller incisions. Candidates for minimal incision procedures are typically thinner, younger, healthier and more motivated to have a quick recovery. Two-incision hip replacement involves making a 2-inch to 3-inch incision over the groin for placement of the socket and a 1-inch to 2-inch incision over the buttocks for placement of the stem. This surgery can take twice as long as traditional procedures but results in less pain, less muscle damage, a shorter hospital stay and quicker recovery.Source: American Academy Of Orthopaedic Surgeons

Top 5 most common reasons for hip replacement

1 Osteoarthritis

2 Loss of the blood supply to the head of the thighbone

3 Rheumatoid arthritis

4 Previous injury or trauma

5 Infection

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