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The reach of Sam McDowell the counselor had grown by 1986. That was the year I took a call from the Toronto organization, whose players had received positive feedback from their peers with Texas, which gave the Blue Jays permission to speak with me. I met with the entire management team during spring training, including the president and CEO, general manager, doctor, minor league director, and two scouts. I detailed what I offered as a counselor as well as contract provisions and informed them that I was quite willing to speak with the Rangers about splitting time between the two teams.
I was taken aback when their minor league director and major league pitching coach asked me if I could help their pitchers with their physical approach and performance on the mound. It amounted to a coaching task that I rejected because I required in my work as a counselor a boundary between me and the players. Mixing in advice about emotional or substance problems with how to snap off a 12-to-6 curveball would not only blur my relationship with pitchers but usurp the authority of the coaches within the organization. It would also have watered down the serious nature of my program.
Soon I was working for both Texas and Toronto. My philosophy and approach had been well established by then. I understood that every player I counseled had problems that were unique to his life and career. But I also knew that in the realm of sports psychology I could not allow athletes to dwell on the past. I directed their focus to the next pitch or play.
Sometimes I used humor to lighten the mood. At one point I had spoken with the Triple-A Syracuse Chiefs about how to erase negative images. A pitcher named Alex Sanchez, who eventually earned a cup of coffee with the Blue Jays, certainly needed my advice after allowing eight runs, including three home runs, before a fourth-inning knockout in a lopsided defeat. “Did you hear about the commotion over at the bus station last night during the game?” I asked him in reference to a terminal located about 250 feet beyond the center-field fence. “They heard all those home-run balls hitting the roof and thought it was sniper fire.”
Some who did not understand my objective might have perceived my words as mocking but the intent was to add levity to the situation and prevent the loss from getting Sanchez down. It reinforced a lecture I’d given the previous day.
My approach worked and brought me tremendous pride. All but 4 of the 175 ballplayers I counseled during the late 1980s and early 1998s actively worked to recover from their addiction and two that relapsed returned to me for further treatment. One of my successes was Pirates minor league pitcher Mike York, whose story was told in a 1990 issue of Sports Illustrated feature that spotlighted my recovery and work with ballplayers. We met when he was just twenty-two years old in 1986. Despite his youth he feared that he had drunk himself out of baseball after he had been released by the Yankees, White Sox, and Tigers due to his alcoholism.
I had been dispatched to Pirate City for the start of instructional league and had begun presenting educational seminars on addiction, prevention, and sports psychology. The instructional league season was about to begin. One evening Syd Thrift told me about his conversation with scouts who were impressed by York’s talent and knew he was available after alcoholism had cost him jobs with three teams. Thrift asked me to meet with York and determine whether I could help him. He did not want to waste a contract on a lost cause.
My initial meeting with York proved promising enough that I endorsed him. But that recommendation came with a caveat. I told Thrift that York needed recovery time before being placed on the field. No dice. Thrift stuck a Pirates uniform on him and sent him out to pitch. His first two outings were disastrous. He became so angry after one performance that he flew into a rage and fired the ball into the outfield when the coach arrived to remove him from the game. Thrift arrived the next day and threatened to send York home. I offered instead to talk to the kid for a couple more days and reminded Thrift that I urged the Pirates not to sign him yet.
Soon I was confronting York. I called him a drunk and described all his excuses as bullshit. I was seeking to draw out his anger and succeeded. He rose from his chair ready to fight. I told him to sit the Hell down and I pointed to his chair. And as I headed out the door I expressed my satisfaction that he had gotten mad, informing him that I was on my way to recommend that the Pirates sign him to a contract for the following year but only if he met my requirements. If he did not attend an in-patient rehab clinic for twenty-eight days, call me every other night at a specific time while there, attend counseling sessions near his home upon his release and AA meetings every night until spring training the following March, and stay in contact with me, he would be waived by the Pirates. He had no choice. Had he not accepted his career would’ve been over. I placed all the stipulations in a contract.
York embraced my challenge. He spent a month at a rehab center in Florida, calling me every night for advice and moral support. I did not always tell him what he wanted to hear. I believed if I made it too easy on him he would revert to his old habits. And he did not as we continued to work nightly all winter.
During that winter I also updated Thrift on York’s progress. I predicted that York would thrive that spring but warned Thrift about possible mishaps. I strongly urged Thrift to keep York at the same minor league level at which he had started because relocation during his initial recovery period could prove to be a damaging jolt to his recovery. A sober York soared to the heights in 1987 in Class-A ball. He compiled a 17–6 record and struck out more than a batter per inning. Thrift twice asked me if he could promote York but I requested he refrain, and Thrift complied until he moved York up to pitch in the playoffs.
York appeared destined for greatness. He performed well consistently and continued to rise in the Pittsburgh organization. He boasted a curveball that dropped off the table. But an ignorant pitching coach ruined his career. He changed York’s delivery to make his Uncle Charlie start at the hitter and break over the plate rather than drop straight down. When a pitcher has for his entire life thrown a 12-to-6 curve and the delivery is altered, he begins to use entirely different muscle groups. The change can be made eventually but not instantly, and certainly not in intense game situations.
The result was an arm injury that forced York’s career to stagnate once he reached the majors. York pitched well for Pittsburgh during a brief stint in 1990 then got traded to Cleveland, where he struggled the following year. After that, he would never play in another big-league game. Even so, like many of the athletes I have counseled, York became a lifelong friend.
My goal as a counselor to athletes was to achieve fast and long-lasting results. My therapy required speedy and permanent solutions as athletes have no time to waste. They must produce now because careers are short and sometimes there are no tomorrows. So whether their issue is addiction, confidence, or struggling to focus, I had to be Mr. Fix-It Fast. I devised a method of counseling that I called “keying in, locking, loading, and firing.” It was intended to combat negative thinking. I would tell a player whose failures had brought up pessimism to focus on pleasant imagery, such as his wife or girlfriend in a bikini on a warm, wind-swept beach, then maintain that positivity in concentrating on the task at hand on the field.
I did not respond to pessimism with sugary optimism. I provided a permanent method for players to help themselves. The solution worked faster in the cases of athletic performance than addiction. I waved no magic wand that could bring sobriety. I knew from painful experience that it takes time, grit, determination, and intense desire to rid oneself of that insidious disease.
That is why, for instance, AA promotes its Twelve Steps program. If it is followed faithfully, it works. During my forty years working in the field of addiction I’ve seen miracles as well as tragedies, preventable sadness, depression, and divorce. I have witnessed inexplicable phenomena. I saw them with professional athletes early in my career and everyday people later. But what was confirmed to me was that the most effective and lasting method of beating this disease is the Twelve Steps program but only for those who buy in. Its value is negated by those who cheat, partially accept, refuse, or pretend to work and live it.
I know athletes who embraced the program. Their careers took off like rockets. The positive changes in their outlook and performance were obvious. One did not need to be a psychologist or therapist to see the difference. Many scouts would tell me that they were watching a new and improved player. But faking the program is known in the field of addiction as “white knuckling.” Those who merely feign adherence live in a malaise. They just exist, constantly seeking attention with superficial rather than real changes such as in hair color, tattoos, body piercing, or shifts in attitude, such as acting like a know-it-all.
The good news is that many who tire of living a fake life finally take the program seriously. The changes within them occur so subtly and slowly that they often do not recognize them, but their friends and family members do. Eventually they feel happier and have a sense of inner peace. They seek respect by accomplishing things, excelling at their job, even attacking personal or professional goals they had at one time considered unattainable. I once followed the travails of a waiter who gained so much success through the Twelve Steps program that he transformed himself into a highly successful businessman.
Most important in my personal life was that I had moved from the fast lane into a more peaceful ride. I was once driven to impress others. Now I was toiling quietly to impress myself. I worked out of a modest office in Swissvale, a hilly suburb of Pittsburgh overlooking the Monongahela River and Interstate 376. Small gold letters on the front window of my Triumphs Unlimited office read, Sudden Sam McDowell & Associates, Counselors for Professional Athletes and Athletic Teams. There was nothing flashy about me or my business. I had gained emotional security. Throughout my entire second career I refused any and all notoriety. I refused hundreds of radio or TV interviews. (There were rare exceptions when the writer went ahead and did his story anyway despite my wishes.) My program was confidential and I greatly preferred that players not think otherwise because of negative or even positive publicity regarding their issues. That I eschewed publicity was quite a departure from the old Sudden Sam.
Not that I had time to sit around and twiddle my thumbs. Inquiries about my services from major league organizations eventually totaled seven. Two National Hockey League franchises and one National Football League club also expressed an interest. I worked one year with the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds, the latter team after a request from a friend. One convenient option I chose to pursue was the Pirates. But I was forced to turn most teams down. I simply did not want to spread myself too thin because I believed it would weaken my effectiveness in helping individual athletes. I was already on the road forty weeks out of the year. At any time I might be working with several sports figures on a case-by-case basis. And I spent hours upon hours planning my visits. I kept a map of North America in my office with destinations marked in bright colors. The schedule left me little time for me and my family.
Meanwhile I had to battle the perception that persists even today that I only worked with alcoholics. My counseling had branched out to a wide range of emotional, psychological, and family problems. It required levels of experimentation on my part while trying to avoid trial and error because mistakes can be costly when dealing with human lives. Moreover one must realize that a certain type of depression is the natural byproduct of alcoholism and drug addiction. I learned during my years as a counselor that major league players can often hide or at least deal with their depression partly because they have already reached the primary goal of their life and some of the career pressure has been lifted. Such is not the case with minor leaguers, who can be overwhelmed by depression, even though they might not be aware of it, leading to the end of their career.
Sometimes I felt consumed by my counseling. My obsessive-compulsive nature did not disappear along with my addiction. I acquired more counseling credits than necessary to maintain my certification. Rather than read books featuring subject matter outside the realm of my business, I pored over medical thrillers and self-help manuals. I read Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill so many times that I could recite passages from it. The good news was that by the early 1990s I had cut my cigarette habit in half to one and one-half packs a day. Soon thereafter I was smoke-free—no butts.
My limited free time beyond working and reading was spent either at the golf course with friends or dabbling in art, which had become a passion. I enjoyed painting and still do, mostly forest scenes, landscapes, and seascapes. I was constantly moving forward in my professional and personal life after walking around in a fog nearly forty years. And I welcomed the new challenges ahead.