16
The Kuhn call came out of left field. Little did I know he had grown concerned about addiction in major league baseball and was contemplating the idea of launching a program to combat the problem. But combating the problem was not the only problem.
What became clear to me was that neither Kuhn nor anyone else running the league felt any motivation to include alcohol in the equation. Addiction to them meant drugs and only drugs. The fact that players might be alcoholics—given a lifestyle that encourages drinking—either escaped their attention or was purposely ignored. I tend to believe the latter. Major league baseball had for generations promoted a relationship with alcohol manufacturers through advertising. Baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie? It was more like baseball, hot dogs, and beer. This was the early 1980s. And Harry Caray was not hawking lemonade during broadcasts. He was peddling Budweiser. Beer commercials have remained tied to baseball for nearly a century.
My rekindled relationship with the game started a bit more than a decade after I retired as a pitcher. Kuhn, who would be replaced as commissioner in 1984 by Peter Ueberroth, called me to discuss a counseling program for addicted players. Based on the absence of any such treatment during my career and what I had gathered since, I knew one was needed. I also understood that despite my absence from the game, my legend as a boozer lived on within the sport. So Kuhn, who had served as commissioner for the last six years of my playing career, was certainly familiar with my reputation on both ends of the spectrum. Not only did he recall that I was the most violent drunk in baseball, he knew that I had turned my life around and begun to counsel others on addiction. He had become aware after reading an article in the Pittsburgh Press that spotlighted my recovery and education in the field.
I relished the opportunity to help. I told Kuhn that I would design a program that could stem the tide but warned him that it would take time. My obligations to attend AA meetings and to my continued education through Dr. Twerski remained priorities. In addition I was still in the waning years of my career selling insurance. But I did put my best effort into a written proposal that I sent to the commissioner three weeks later. His reply: Thanks, but no thanks. My program included counseling for players with alcohol problems, and he wanted nothing to do with it.
I was not surprised. I suspected as I started the project that major league baseball would avoid tackling that issue like Superman avoided Kryptonite. I understood that advertising revenue from the alcohol industry would prove more important than ridding alcoholic players of their disease. Today beer and liquor advertisers warn folks to drink responsibly. But this was still a play-hard, drink-hard period in baseball. Drunkenness was snickered at rather than taken with the gravity it deserves. It was considered to some a sign of manliness. Kuhn, in fact, released a statement claiming that baseball did not have an alcohol problem. So the response was just as I expected.
What I did not expect arrived a year later via another phone call, this one from Texas Rangers president Mike Stone and new general manager Joe Klein. What I had created for Kuhn circulated around the baseball grapevine and eventually motivated their inquiry. I remained skeptical of intent regarding their desire to target alcoholism as well as drug addiction but I was certainly pleased when they invited me to spring training. They wanted to witness my interaction with their players and discuss the possibility of implementing a program for the Rangers.
My first task when speaking with Stone and Klein, as well as minor league director Tom Grieve, was to make certain they understood that my work was educational and not punitive. Our conversation certainly piqued the interest of Stone, an attorney whose wife had toiled for two decades as a psychologist in the addiction field. Then our meeting came to a crossroads, one that I knew had to be reached. I informed them in no uncertain terms that I planned to address alcohol as well as other drugs. I feared that the Rangers had adopted the same policy as major league baseball and would shun the idea.
That suspicion remained when they allowed me to talk with the players. I revealed to the players immediately that management was watching so if they preferred to speak with me in private I would be glad to meet them in my motel. I told them not to take my word for anything but allow me to prove my sincerity and ability to help. I designed my talk to deal primarily with the feelings, physical cost, emotions, and changes associated with drug and alcohol abuse. I yearned to prove my expertise on the subject and make clear its impact on their on-field performance. I realized that the players were skeptical despite their knowledge of my personal experiences in the game. They knew I had been a drunk during my playing days but that alone meant nothing because young people, including ballplayers, are always being told something and often they perceive it as bullshit. So I had to convince them that what I offered had value and could help them perform. They were not going to stop drinking or using drugs simply because I talked with them.
Mission accomplished. It mattered not that the brass openly observed which players offered to converse individually. Eleven players indeed came down to the field from the stands to speak with me. Some had questions about the facts I had imparted. Others simply wanted to confirm that my understanding about alcohol and drug abuse within the sport had great merit. Many admitted to dealing with such issues but never fully understanding the direct or indirect connection to physical performance regarding stamina, breathing, speed, bat speed, mound control, or balance as a hitter or pitcher as well as the mental effects such as fear, defensiveness, and self-doubt. The players told me that they knew immediately what I was talking about.
Two days later I spoke to them as a group about sports psychology and the effects they would experience at various points throughout the season. This time most of the players came down to discuss that subject further. I emphasized strongly that all individual conversations had to be made private and that they could contact me at the motel. During the ten days that followed I had appointments nearly every hour after workouts until 9 p.m. I found it interesting that the management team, which was staying in the same motel, could see their players coming to me. Some in management asked me to dinner but my full schedule disallowed it.
I left after those ten days had passed. I thanked the Rangers for the opportunity. Stone was impressed enough with my work to call me two weeks later. Rangers management embraced a progressive approach to a problem that was as old as baseball itself. Historians of the sport have researched ballplayers from before the turn of the twentieth century who struggled with alcohol addiction. Yet drunkenness had been either swept under the rug or accepted as part of the old “Boys will be boys” syndrome.
Grieve had come to grips with the dangers and decided to do something about it. He detected something different about my approach and gave me encouragement. He scheduled me for a talk with his minor leaguers three days later that went well. Klein eventually called me and asked me to formulate a counseling plan and contract for his organization. I designed the latter so the club could cancel me at their discretion. I understood that if management and players did not believe I was making a positive difference I could not ethically continue to work with them. But I was confident I would.
My proposal was to visit the major league club and each of the farm teams once a year then offer more of my time if they so desired as they shared results of the first talk with me. I would implement a two-fold plan of sports psychology and employee assistance that included both drug and alcohol prevention. One stipulation insisted upon was suspension without pay of players unwilling to help themselves through my proposed resolutions or referrals. The level of abuse would dictate the solution. I did not foresee any problems in this area. Players and management understood the importance of staying on the field and producing. This was especially true among minor leaguers and unproven Rangers. Their future was at stake. They had yet to cash in on the multimillion-dollar contracts being offered by that time. Time was of the essence, however. Circumstances dictated that I could not wait until the offseason to start therapy.
So successful were my efforts that the Rangers asked me to increase my workload the following year. From that season forward they wanted me to visit with all their teams for one-week periods every month, including spring training and instructional league periods in the winter. Their players were impressed enough that they began to spread the word about my work to peers in other organizations. They especially embraced my sports-psychology program because they connected it to improved performance on the field. Not only were current Texas players benefiting from my program, the organization began acquiring personnel that other clubs could no longer control and turning them over to me to send their careers and lives in a positive direction.
The players who chose to benefit from my counsel were assured of privacy in our discussions. Usually one or two would seek me out after I spoke to a group. I would never meet with them in the clubhouse but rather arranged to advise them in one of our hotel rooms after the game. I would estimate that 40 percent of the issues revolved around drugs, alcohol, or different emotional problems. The rest wanted my assistance on performance enhancement. That did not mean I was giving them pointers on how to grip a slider or close what had been an open stance in the batter’s box. My advice revolved around improving focus and concentration.
Among my points was that drinking affected those necessary elements of performance success. I never told a player to completely abstain from alcohol unless it had been determined he was an alcoholic. Drinking is a socially accepted practice. And occasionally a player will consume a bit too much. He may not necessarily get drunk, but perhaps catch a little buzz. In such cases I asked them to be sensitive to how they felt and thought the next day, especially during a game. Were they tired? Were they weak? Did they experience a change in their breathing? Most important was their mental state. Self-doubt might have snuck in, maybe a little fear.
Those negative emotions affect focus and concentration and I believe cut ability in half. That can seriously threaten a career. The mind can only handle one thought at a time, especially when a keen level of concentration is necessary during competition. One should replace the fear of what might happen with the confidence of what can be achieved. The game otherwise becomes more challenging. A hitter in that state of mind might be unduly intimidated by the pitcher’s abilities. Those thoughts intensify and become a greater obstacle the more a person drinks or uses what they consider performance-enhancing drugs.
Counseling in the sports psychology realm requires far more immediacy than working with addiction problems. Some situations reached a level of complexity that forced me to turn an athlete over to a specialist but there was little time for long, drawn-out therapy because that athlete could in the meantime lose his spot on the team or even his career. Even in cases of abuse or addiction, reality therapy was the quickest method of luring a player into recognizing his behavior as destructive. Once that negative influence was proven to the athlete, he could turn it around.
One example spotlighted a player who exhibited immature behavior and tended to over-celebrate. I sat down with him and we reflected on what was happening to his body and mind: his mental condition, his joint tiredness, his negative thoughts regarding performance. I challenged him to test my expertise after the next game. It became obvious immediately that he understood where I was coming from. Two weeks later he sidled up and thanked me. He had proven me right to himself. He vowed never to party again. The player stopped drinking throughout that season and I noticed the same abstinence the following spring.
These were the issues players wanted to discuss with me more than any other during my decades as a counselor. I would also explain the effect of alcohol from a more technical standpoint, such as what happens chemically from the time it hits the throat and stomach and is absorbed into the intestines and blood system as well as its effect the brain. It is quite a disruptive process. The warning to players was clear. They could imagine a negative impact that was perhaps fifty times stronger or more with an alcoholic or drug addict trying to compete at a high level.
I worked with the Rangers from 1983 to 1998. But free rein to impart my wisdom and experience varied. The club changed managers often and a couple of them worried that I was infringing on their territory. They wanted to be the sole motivators and sports psychologists for their players despite my training and experience in those areas. One told me he simply did not have time for me to speak with his group. He asked me to write down a transcript of my talk. And in the same amount of time it would have taken me to give the speech, he gave it himself. His ego had gotten in the way.
Dealing with resistance became a constant battle. But it was worthwhile knowing that it was a winning one. Those who either did not understand the value of my work or jealously took steps to hinder my relationships with teams and players were fighting a losing game. They were like a snowstorm and I was like the postman. Nothing was going to stop me from making my appointed rounds as the first counselor in professional sports history.