James Vodvarka

In October of 1997, Mike Webster walked into Dr. James Vodvarka's office in Pittsburgh. He kept his medical records in a box in his truck and handed them over a page or two at a time. He had already seen a lot of doctors. Most of them told him the same thing: depression, mental illness.

Dr. Vodvarka didn't accept that. What followed were years of treating the Hall of Fame center nobody could explain, in the years before anyone had a name for chronic traumatic encephalopathy. That small Pittsburgh office turned out to be ground zero for the concussion crisis that changed football.

Dr. James Vodvarka, D.O., is an osteopathic physician, born and raised in Pittsburgh inside the culture of Steelers football. The Unseen Battle is his account of those years, and of the man behind the diagnosis. He wrote it for the families living some version of the same thing right now, still being told it's something else.