Corey Hagan has been living a pretty typical summer for a 10-year-old from Palmer Township: camping a couple of times, going to Dorney Park, playing video games and watching movies, not getting excited for the start of fifth grade.
He runs around and, within reason, pretty much does what he wants.
And that's the amazing part.
Corey was on the field a month ago at Coca-Cola Park in Allentown for Harry Potter night activities when a bullet, fired into the air, lodged into the back of his knee.
"It's still in there," he said Friday night. "I can feel if if I put my hand and I touch it."
Corey is going back to the Lehigh Valley IronPigs' ballpark Saturday night, where he'll be honored on the field by the Philadelphia Phillies' Triple-A team and the Allentown Police Department, the city announced.
“I’m going to go in the dugout and meet the players,” he told lehighvalleylive.com. “I’m going to get to throw the first pitch.”
It was Corey's mom Dana's birthday July 27 when they went to the game. Corey felt the stray bullet as it lodged behind his knee, but he figured maybe he'd been hit by a broomstick or suffered some such Quidditch injury.
"No idea," Dana Hagan said Friday night in an interview at home, adding they didn't even go by ambulance to the hospital: "We drove because it was just, we didn't what it was. It was just a hole in his leg. It was like, OK we'll go get stitches and then we'll come right back."
They went first to St. Luke’s Hospital-Sacred Heart Campus in Allentown then were transferred to the pediatric trauma center at Lehigh Valley Reilly Children’s Hospital in Salisbury Township, before going for a second opinion at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
He never did get the stitches.
"It has to heal from the inside out," Dana said. "So he was on crutches for about a week just 'cause it was painful to straighten his leg out. Other than that, yeah, he's just fine. Life as usual."
Friday night, Corey paused a movie he was watching with his sister, 7-year-old Lilian Cumberland, to talk to a reporter, then dashed down the stairs for a photo outside beside the family's IronPigs yard sign. They've been going to games for years. Corey plays ball himself, most recently with the Palmer Royals in Little League minors, and will be in the majors when his sixth year of play begins in spring. He also played in a summer basketball league that ended earlier on the day he was shot.
Authorities have not determined who fired the round or from where it was shot.
Now that he’s on the road to recovery, Corey has quite the story to tell when he returns to Tracy Elementary School on Monday, with what looks to be a happy ending taking shape Saturday night. The on-field honors are scheduled for 6:15 p.m. before the ‘Pigs host the New York Yankees’ Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders.
"It's absolutely insane," Dana said. "I think I was a little more traumatized than him. But he's good to go."
After the Friday night movie, Corey was planning to start getting loose for the ceremonial first pitch.
“We’re going to go practice his throwing tonight,” his mom said.
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.