CHAMPAIGN – When the Big Ten Conference hands out its annual baseball awards, you won't find Comeback Player of the Year among them.

That doesn't mean, however, the league lacks for worthy candidates each year. And this year, says University of Illinois pitching coach Dan Hartleb, it's hard to imagine anyone any more worthy than Cody Salter.

"It's a great story," the seventh-year Illini assistant said. "As long as I've been coaching here, he may be one of the guys I'm most proud of because he had every opportunity within himself to quit. Now he's being very successful, and he deserves everything he's getting."

Since being inserted in the pitching rotation three weeks ago, Salter is 2-0 with a 3.32 earned run average in three Big Ten starts. In those appearances, covering 212/3 innings, the junior right-hander has held opponents to 17 hits and eight runs while walking just three.

"He's been as consistent as anybody the past three weeks," Hartleb said.

Two summers ago, Salter was wheeled into an operating room twice in a matter of weeks after waking up one morning to find his right arm twice the size of his left. The cause was a blood clot that had developed in the vein located between his right clavicle and top rib bone, probably from years of throwing.

"It's pretty rare, but they say it happens to quarterbacks, baseball players and tennis players," Salter said. "In my case, it wore down the vein so much that it clotted off."

Although medical treatment cleared up the problem, Salter's pitching career grew murkier by the month. The same guy who had who shut out mighty Miami on one hit for 51/3 innings as a freshman was getting belted around last season by the likes of Pace University and Portland.

"Last year, I never really got untracked," said Salter, who finished 1996 with a bloated 9.47 earned run average in 11 appearances.

Nor did the Plainfield native show any sign early this season of turning things around. Salter's performances during drills last fall hadn't exactly gained Hartleb's confidence. And nothing Salter did when the Illini resumed work under the Memorial Stadium bubble this winter did anything to change that.

"He still worked very hard, but he wasn't pitching well," Hartleb said. "He didn't have real good stuff. He would get hit hard in practice."

How much of Salter's struggles were related to the treatment for the blood clot is uncertain. After one operation to dissolve the clot, he had another to remove part of the rib bone to prevent further pinching on the subclavian vein.

Certainly, Salter's strength in his upper chest and shoulder area was affected for a time after the second surgery.

"I'm sure that played a part in what happened to him," Hartleb said.

Salter says the second surgery was a factor in his slow start last season but that by midseason he was physically OK. What was going through his mind then, however, was another matter.

"It was more of a mental thing," he said. "Every time you feel pain in the arm, you worry about it happening again. It just takes a while to get over it mentally."

Salter's psyche took perhaps its biggest blow during his first appearance this season. To be blunt, it was a disaster. Inserted in the ninth against Troy State with the Illini ahead 11-1, Salter never made it through the inning. His line: one-third of an inning, four hits, three runs, one walk.

"I was really upset because I didn't know if I'd ever get a chance to throw again," he said.

Before the day was out, Salter knew otherwise. Hartleb assured his struggling pitcher the coaching staff hadn't given up on him.

"I told him we'd work every day," the UI pitching coach recalled, "that we weren't going to quit on him ... and that there were things we could do to help him. I also told him it was up to him how good he wanted to be."

For the next few weeks, Salter spent hour upon hour in the bullpen working on an adjustment in his delivery "to make sure I was keeping my weight back and following through."

In turn, Salter's control improved markedly.

"When Cody keeps the ball down, he has above average movement on his ball," Hartleb said. "When Cody's ball stays up high, it's very flat, and he's not an overpowering pitcher."

Success wasn't instantaneous. In Salter's second outing this year, 18 days after his first, he gave up four hits and a couple runs in two innings. But two days later, he was back on the mound in a Big Ten game against Indiana, retiring the two batters he faced.

Salter got another chance the following weekend. He capitalized on it by holding Purdue to one hit and one run in 3 1/3 innings of relief.

"Cody was one of the few bright spots that weekend," said Hartleb, recalling a series in which his pitchers gave up 41 runs as Illinois lost 3 of 4.

One week later, on April 12, the 6-foot-4, 200-pounder made his first start in slightly more than a year and held Ohio State to two runs in 7 2/3 innings. A week after that no-decision, Salter went the distance in an 11-5 victory over Penn State. It was his first win since May 11, 1995.

Never has Salter been sharper, though, than he was last weekend at Minnesota. In a seven-inning complete game, he held the Gophers to four hits and walked none in a 5-1 Illini victory.

"I feel so comfortable out on the mound now," said Salter, 3-0 entering this weekend's home series against Northwestern. "I feel like I can throw the ball wherever the catcher sets up.

"It's amazing how far I've come in this two-month stretch. Confidence is 90 percent of baseball, and I'm confident I can go out there and do the job."