12
It was 1979. I was driving early in the morning in a condition sometimes expressed euphemistically as “feeling no pain.” (How I survived all my drunk driving at that time in my life is beyond me.) I swerved and hit the tire of a semi truck. That threw me into the next lane of traffic and through a guardrail on the Highland Park Bridge, which rested 129 feet above the largest river in Pittsburgh and about 100 yards from one of its most powerful dams. Had I hit the water or the riverbank, I would have been dead.
Earlier that day a tree company had dumped two truckloads of tree chips on the riverbank. As fate or God would have it, I landed upside down on that pile of wood chips, sustaining only a broken collarbone and two ribs. As I lay in the hospital, my mother grew philosophical and uttered words that would haunt me for quite a while: “God has something in mind for you. If not your life would be over.” I thought about that remark throughout my three days there.
Not that it stopped me from drinking. My son Tim, to whom I have grown so close since my recovery allowed him to love a healthy father, quoted the first passage from the Charles Dickens classic A Tale of Two Cities to capture his childhood thoughts and feelings about our relationship.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.
Carol Ann once told him that he could love his dad and hate the alcoholic—quite profound and astute for a woman who never took a counseling class. She had no inkling of the deep impact her words would make on her son. Tim once told me that those words, uttered when he was twelve years old, lifted the dark clouds from his psyche and replaced them with sunshine. They enabled him to embrace the love he felt for me but acknowledge the anger he experienced when I went off on one of my many binges before and after I retired from baseball. They did not lessen the terrible effect my alcoholism had on my family, but they helped Tim maintain his sanity through it all.
Tim and I talk often about the bad old days when he and his sister Debbie would walk by me in the driveway as they left for school and see that I had again passed out after another night of binge boozing. He spoke about his contradictory emotions—feeling both secure and fearful about his and his family’s future. He told me of his pervasive sense of unpredictability, not knowing when he would see his dad and in what condition I would be in.
It was indeed the best and worst of times for Tim. During my playing days he would spend time with me in clubhouses and experience the thrill of shaking hands with real major league stars. He would join me in spring training during breaks from school; spend summers in the cities in which I played, including San Francisco and New York; attend All-Star Games, celebrity events, and banquets; frequent exclusive resorts. How many children of alcoholics can make such a claim?
But there were the ugly memories as well. Some have faded over time, but others never will. He remembers me being out of his life after I had engaged in benders that lasted several days and often ended in a car accident or early-morning trip to the hospital or someone returning me to our doorstep a stumbling mess. And there were the promises. “Dad is going to get help,” I would tell him. “Dad is serious this time. He is going to get sober.” Tim told me once he remembered thinking that he could never again feel comfortable trusting that I would ever dry out.
That was something he yearned for so desperately. He wanted to be proud of his father. He stuffed shoe boxes with photos of me in action on the mound to show his classmates. He told them about my blurry-fast fastball. He told them I had played in six All-Star Games. He told them I was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Little could he have imagined those would be the least of my accomplishments. He would eventually be far prouder of me for my recovery and forty years of sobriety, the 3 a.m. calls from panicked athletes that I never let ring their way to voicemail, the hours I spent talking to an alcoholic or drug addict as well as their children or spouses. He is honored to be the son of a man who has saved hundreds of athletes and family members. And that makes me happy. True happiness? I never experienced it until I achieved sobriety.
I sure did not experience it immediately following my retirement from baseball. The fog in which I walked had around my entire life became thicker and darker. I lost all control. I never knew when I would get drunk or to what level. Quite often I tell myself, “Not tonight! I am not going into a bar!” Then I’d find myself in a bar, where I would say in my mind, “Okay, only two drinks tonight.” A couple hours later I’d be smashed.
A friend of the family who owned a real estate company set me up with my first job out of baseball. I hated it. I had been used to action on the field. Now I was sitting around all day waiting for the phone to ring. That was the only way to get customers, who were not exactly ringing that phone off the hook. I was paid only on commission so the work was not swelling the old bank account. It was fortunate I was still receiving paychecks from the Pirates through 1975 because I sold just one home.
I then quit to take another job that also paid by commission, this one hawking policies for Colonial Life & Accident Insurance Company in Pittsburgh. I performed better in that position and even set sales records. But my boss was well aware of my drinking problem—it was not hard to figure out why I went AWOL for periods of time. His threats to fire me were hollow because I was his top salesperson. But I eventually descended to the point at which I was no good to anyone—employer or family member.
What I sought from alcohol I could never truly achieve. A person with an addiction seeks peace and happiness through a chemical. He yearns to be funny, to enjoy life, to fit in, to belong. In other words, to be a normal human being. Because of my chronic depression, loneliness, and low self-esteem, these desires were ever-present. They did not subside. Changes take place within addicts when the alcohol or drug hits the blood stream. I was trying to find contentment in a bottle more often than ever before.
The effect on my life proved catastrophic but I remained unwilling or at least unready to even try to kick the habit. I agreed at the insistence of my boss to see a psychiatrist. He sent me to Dr. Abraham Twerski, who I believe to be the foremost authority on addiction in the world. I should have embraced the chance to work with such an expert who happened to work out of the Pittsburgh area and who had founded the Gateway Rehabilitation Center. But I was not appreciative of the opportunity. I spoke with him for nearly an hour with an arrogant and stubborn mindset as he talked knowledgeably about alcoholism. The old chestnut about having to admit you have a problem before you can really get help came into play and I dismissed Twerski out of hand, telling him he had no idea what he was talking about. I left the room but not before he uttered the words that would stay with me until I got clean: “I’ll see you again and hopefully your brain will still be intact.” He did and it was—barely. My life spiraled out of control after I met with Twerski.
By that time my drinking binges had increased to four or five times a week. And they were not short inebriations during which I would have a few drinks, go home to sleep it off, and be fine the next day. Quite often I embarked on bouts of boozing that had me snockered for days at a time. My drunkenness peaked from 1976 to 1980. I got arrested seven times during that period for public intoxication, drunk driving, or disturbing the peace. But I was never convicted. The cops would allow me to sit in the chief’s office for several hours or sleep it off in a cell. In the meantime I was trying to sell insurance, and my finances were becoming strapped. So I sold the dream home into which we had recently moved and we hightailed it to the country, about ten miles from Monroeville. It was what those in the field of addiction refer to as a “geographical cure”—basically an escape in the illogical hope that a clean slate might help. I had severe worries about my drinking but could no longer control it as I did to some extent during my baseball career.
Most of the bars in my hometown of Monroeville had banned me permanently. The establishments were intended to be havens for folks who wished to drink or grab a bite peacefully and not saloons frequented by angry, violent drunks either crying in their beer or starting brawls. We had only lived in our new home for about eighteen months when my wife and family bolted from me permanently. Now I was close to bars that did not know enough about my escapades to ban me. But those I visited after our move soon also told me to get lost and never come back. Some of them I never would have frequented during my baseball career. They were strictly skid row joints.
When Carol left me again, this time for good, and moved into a Monroeville apartment. I was in no position or state of mind to fight for anything so I gave her all our furniture. My eighteen-year marriage soon collapsed, and she received full custody of Debbie and Tim. I was scared to death. I continued to convince myself that alcoholism was not the problem. But my sense of fear and loneliness had been exacerbated. How was I going to take charge of my life?
I had certainly taken charge of a bottle. Among my drinking binges was a ten-day marathon that I somehow survived. My bouts often took place during the frigid Pittsburgh winters. I would pass out in my car, sometimes in below-zero temperatures. At one point Tim came to visit to see how I was doing. Carol had driven him as he was adamant about wanting to see me and she waited in the car. He saw ten bottles of booze on the floor of my bedroom and me only semi-sober before taking off.
My family had finally been pushed to the edge. So had my finances. I sold my house and moved into my parents’ home in Highland Park in February 1980. I had child support and alimony payments to make, and I was earning very little money. I had resumed selling insurance but remained on commission only. I felt a strong sense of embarrassment and shame returning to live with my folks, but I had no alternative. My mother issued the same edict as had the Pirates five years earlier: drink and you are gone. But I was not a child. There were no babysitters for thirty-six-year-old men. My folks could not keep an eye on me 24/7. When my mom left for six days in April to visit my sister two months after my arrival, I promptly got drunk. I came home and was passed out on the kitchen floor after my mother came back. My brother woke me up and dragged me to my bed.
The time of reckoning was near. I rose at 3 a.m. and prepared a pot of coffee. I paced the living room floor for hours. All I remember of that dark moment was repeating both to myself and to my demon addiction, “You beat me, you beat me, you beat me.” I feared that I was going insane—I was thinking real insanity.
The final crossroad had been reached. Did I want to live or die? I wanted to live. But did I want to live desperately enough to act? There was little clarity in my thinking, but I did know that I was surely digging an early grave if I did not gain sobriety. So at 10 a.m. I called the operator and asked her to connect me with Gateway. I did not remember the rest of the business name—thank goodness I recalled that much of it. She could have sent me to Gateway anything since there were more than fifteen different businesses or schools with that name but she hooked me up with the right one. I assume she received many calls asking for that number.
I could no longer reject the warnings of Dr. Twerski. He would indeed see me again, and my brain was indeed still intact, though quite damaged. My brother drove me the forty-five minutes from Highland Park to Gateway in Aliquippa. He barely spoke en route. I was deathly afraid that my condition would earn me institutionalization for life. This is no exaggeration. I had stumbled into a barrier I could not break through, an issue I could not resolve. I had always found ways to extricate myself out of jams. But not this time. Addiction had beaten me though I had yet to recognize that as my primary demon. I feared that nothing I could do would help. I believed it to be a mental illness or character flaw.
When I arrived Twerski was the first to greet me. He had been waiting for me in front of the elevator doors with open arms. We were about to engage in an all-out battle to pull me out of my personal Hell.