18
It was 1993. I was in a hotel room when the phone rang. On the other end was Joe Garagiola, former big-league catcher who gained greater fame as an analyst on nationally televised baseball broadcasts. He sounded distressed.
Garagiola had received a call from Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins, who had spoken with former Red Sox left-hander Bill Lee. Garagiola initially contacted former Dodgers great Don Newcombe, who declined to intervene because he lacked training. Garagiola informed me that a one-time teammate of Lee was trying to commit suicide and asked me if I could help. I offered my willingness to try. He then revealed who was attempting to end his life. It was Bernie Carbo, who was known publicly as a free spirit during his twelve years in the league—mostly as a platoon hitter with power but he was also a drug addict. There is no free spirit among those in the clutches of addiction.
In 1975, Carbo had made history with a three-run homer for Boston in Game 6 of perhaps the greatest World Series battle ever. He later admitted to having been high when he took that fateful swing of the bat. Now he was on the verge of ending it all by locking himself in his garage and suffocating on car exhaust fumes.
There was no time to waste. I had to talk Carbo off the proverbial ledge. I stressed that there was a future for him with a window of light. I was able to stabilize him, calm him down, and eventually convince him to get professional help. I called Carbo the next day with details, he checked into a rehab facility I set up, and he eventually recovered. An anxiety attack at one point forced a transfer from the rehab center to a hospital, but I met with Carbo a short time following his release. During his stay he had met a pastor who gave him a spiritual perspective that helped him fully recover. Carbo went on to become a minister, and he now works with at-risk children.
I had learned long before that though millions of people suffer from the same addictions—alcohol or drugs—each of their stories is unique and must be addressed individually. The seeds of Carbo’s addiction had been planted well before he played major league baseball. One might have assumed that smashing a home run in a World Series that has forever held a special place in the hearts and minds of Red Sox fans would have brought Carbo joy, at least at that moment. But he was miserable. He struggled with deep insecurities as I did during my career. He believed his father did not like him yet he could not stop seeking his father’s approval. His marriage was falling apart. He argued incessantly with his managers and coaches.
Carbo continued to abuse drugs while running a hair salon in Michigan after retiring. He began using cocaine when that became popular. His mother, who was devastated by her son’s addiction, committed suicide in 1989. He blamed his father but in his heart took personal responsibility for her death. His dad died three months later. Carbo then moved to Florida to play in a senior league.
He hoped a new lifestyle would result in positive changes but both he and his wife remained in the vice of drug abuse. One day he came to the realization that he was a dead man if he did not kick the habit. And since his wife refused to change, he kicked his marriage and filed for divorce. But even that did not produce the desired results. Carbo moved on to even harder drugs and drank heavily as well. A second marriage proved tumultuous and disastrous. That led to the suicide attempt.
It would not be the last life-taking threat in which I intervened. It was, however, the one that received the most publicity during my time with the Baseball Assistance Team, from which I have officially retired. The organization, known appropriately as BAT, was launched by Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth in 1987. By that time a group of former players who had become increasingly concerned by poverty among their peers asked Ueberroth to begin a help program. He agreed and set up funding through donations from insurance companies, one of which funded an old-timers’ game that raised about $10 million over three years.
My work with BAT began six months after its introduction. My most harrowing cases involved suicide because they had to be handled immediately and delicately, yet firmly. I was responsible for talking players through nineteen live suicide threats and others in which the athletes were considered suicidal. I initially provided a list of counselors I believed could help the newly formed organization without the intent of being among them. Garagiola, who was among the founders of BAT, ripped the list up and insisted that I join the group. I agreed to serve as a volunteer for one year. Three decades later I was still swinging for the fences for BAT.
I am proud to have been the first EAP counselor in the history of professional sports. And BAT is easily the most comprehensive EAP in American society. It has expanded greatly over the years to help any former player, family member, umpire, minor leaguer, or front-office worker experiencing problems whether financial, emotional, psychological, or even educational. Among the personal issues tackled by BAT counselors are addiction and severe family conflicts. My son Tim later took over my duties and, as a trained psychologist, was able to expand its services exponentially.
The program has been an unqualified success. BAT boasts an 85 percent success rate of recovery regarding drug or alcohol abuse as well as psychological or emotional problems. The organization gained such a fine reputation that former NFL, NBA, and NHL players asked us to help their colleagues because those leagues had fallen woefully short in what they considered their obligations to their alumni.
I found it interesting and rewarding working strictly with retired athletes and baseball personnel for BAT. The contrast was striking as I continued to counsel active players for individual major league organizations. Among my challenges with BAT was working with the children of coaches or managers. The parents reported that their kids were suffering from depression and requested intervention. They informed me of red flags that had convinced them that their offspring were in trouble. Some had threatened to take their lives—the rate of suicide among youth had skyrocketed in recent years. Warnings from parents proved critical because they allowed me to intervene in time. My job was to calm and stabilize the child and provide the most appropriate referral in that city to take over the case immediately.
The process in cases of threatened suicide must be adhered to strictly. Upon learning of a suicide attempt, I would notify the local emergency medical services as soon as I knew the address of the distressed individual. I gained as much knowledge as quickly as possible over the phone to assess the level of despair, depression, and hopelessness the individual was experiencing. I listened intently for all the warning signs. It was important that I maintain a soft, melodic tone in my voice during our discussion—any expression of shock or excitement could have proven dangerous.
I understood entering a conversation that the distressed might not want to talk. I was also aware up front that a suicidal person has lost all hope of overcoming his or her roadblocks and is convinced there is no way out, no solution, no door through which to escape. So I had to keep the dialogue flowing and utilize the entire spectrum of fact-finding questions. I could not be fearful of using the word “suicide” often because the severity and finality of what was being threatened could not be overstated. It was my job to convince those in such a frantic state to calm down and embrace the feeling that their lives remained valuable—they had to see a light at the end of a dark tunnel, to know that there was a tomorrow. The suicidal needed to recognize that even if there seemed to be no immediate solution to the problem that was causing them such distress, there is always a solution and a purpose in life.
What I wish everyone would understand is that we are all unique and we are all special. And when I dealt with suicide attempts or ideation, I was confronted with very individual and often complex personal dramas in which people found themselves in positions from which escape seemed impossible. So I went with the flow. I allowed the person to dictate my final approach. I was keen on the complete spectrum of suicide. I began seeking to lure suffering individuals into conversations to talk about their feelings of misery or at least their situation and thinking. It should be noted, though, that I never worked with female athletes in depression and addiction. I considered myself unqualified for a myriad of reasons.
The referral system through the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic that I created for my work as a counselor was critical to ensuring the best possible outcome. I could not be at more than one place at a time, and issues with players elsewhere sometimes necessitated intervention. I sought confidentiality for players and coaches with problems then offered solutions that involved referrals to skilled professionals. But those who required help in the sports-psychology realm needed me on site so I could personally work with them.
Sometimes during my years toiling with major league baseball organizations I was forced to fight through barriers to simply receive access to a player. In those cases, the benefits of my expertise were not fully recognized or appreciated. Such was a greater problem early in my career before what was considered a new direction in player interaction and intervention had been established.
One case involved a player for Triple-A Oklahoma City with a serious drug problem. The Rangers had acquired him from another club that did not want to deal with his worsening addiction. I insisted that he needed to be placed in a rehabilitation center immediately and the player agreed. Of course I had to mention this to team management because it was rare that I would ask to send a player away during the season as it placed a media and public spotlight on the individual and threatened to hurt his standing with the organization. So to avoid widespread knowledge of my desire, I requested an audience only with Texas minor league director Marty Scott. I knew he had complete faith in me and had mentioned that he would go along with whatever I thought was necessary to protect a player.
Then came a roadblock. Somehow a physician learned of my intention and met with the player himself in private. He decided to take charge of the situation and send the player to a friend who was a psychologist, many of whom do not treat addiction for what it is—a disease. I was upset upon learning of what I deemed a dangerous rejection or circumvention of my assessment and recommendation. But the Rangers decided otherwise. The player visited the psychologist weekly during homestands and every two weeks that winter.
The plan backfired. He soon called me in a desperate state of depression. He begged for help, and I provided it without informing the Rangers. I had him placed in a rehab center for a month, set up weekly counseling upon his graduation, and sought to ensure that he would follow the Twelve Steps program religiously. The happy ending to this story features sobriety, a stint in the major leagues, and a peaceful and productive retirement.
I was often encouraged or forced over the years to step aside and allow team physicians, medical directors, or orthopedic surgeons take the lead in a treatment with which I disagreed. I did so with little argument. But I cannot recall one case in which a player received significant help from a psychiatrist, psychologist, or medical doctor. There was little I could do. I had to back off without a challenge.
And sometimes I fight myself over it. I periodically allowed interventions to happen throughout my career as an EAP and counselor knowing that the best interest for the athlete would not be served. I estimate ten situations in which I retreated from carrying out what I knew to be the most effective approach by accepting the demands of a doctor, psychologist, or team official. These situations all occurred during my first five years as an EAP and counselor as I was intimidated by these medical professionals.
It still hurts. A clean, sober life remained elusive for every ballplayer forced into that path. I recall one doctor sending a player to a psych rehab center three times despite my insisting that those in the facility were not trained to help with addiction and that the player would fail to receive the necessary help. And now that player bounces back and forth from sobriety to drunkenness. Folks can still read in the newspaper about his DUI, cocaine possession charge, or other trouble with the law.
One should not assume from these experiences that I feel a lack of reverence for psychologists, psychiatrists, and physicians in general. Quite the opposite. Throughout my years as a ballplayer and counselor I had a difficult time with some in those fields because I respected them so much that it interfered with my own knowledge, research, and understanding. I bowed to their judgment. I allowed myself to get so close to particular doctors that they asked me to call them by their given name rather than their professional name but I could not even bring myself to do that because I was so impressed by the sacrifices they made personally and educationally. Out of respect I simply call them “Doc.” Their work still reminds me of my desire in high school to pursue a medical career before the lucrative baseball offers arrived that made it virtually impossible to take that long and arduous path.
But the medical world is not without its con artists or at least those who are ineffective in treatment. What many people do not know is that some publicly advertised rehab centers and recovery programs have been designed by alcoholics or drug addicts who did not like certain aspects of the Twelve Steps program, particularly those requiring self-honesty. Those who research these programs will learn that they fail to secure long-term sobriety. They work well for about six months but they do not help addicts stay clean.
Statistics have proven that AA and its affiliates such as Narcotics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous boast the highest percentage of recovery for short-term and long-term addicts. All three embrace a program that has proven for decades to provide the strongest possibility for recovery. AA’s medical model includes 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day stays in rehab centers or a three-year program. I defy anyone to find bona fide, objective research refuting my contention that no other medical model compares to that of AA for sustained success even though a new twist in recovery programs seems to rear its ugly head just about every year. Almost all of them come from California and most of them patronize the alcoholic or the drug addict to secure big money for their rehabilitation process.
I recognized then and do today that bucking the system would have been difficult and would have threatened my relationship with the organizations I served, thereby preventing me from helping other ballplayers. But it still amazes me the number of medical professionals who do not understand alcoholism and drug addiction.
I vowed when I began working with BAT to help athletes with all my heart and soul. I had experienced the pain of losing a great career, and I would be damned if I would allow another player to throw away his if I could do anything about it. During my first twenty-eight years counseling athletes with addiction problems for BAT, I can proudly report only six permanent relapses. That level of success is unmatched but does not indicate smooth sailing from the start. About 40 percent of those who went through our program relapsed, usually once, but returned to BAT for help and were given the opportunity to follow our recovery program again and to the letter. One important reason for this level of success was our constant monitoring system. We remain to this day in touch with hundreds of recovering players and their family members, with whom we have worked for twenty-six years. I am personally still in touch with many former players from the various teams I spent time with.
The BAT program is simple. Like the sport itself, we feature two different leagues of play. One begins when a player comes to us for help that is strictly financial. Our executive director will then meet with the grant committee to study the situation and determine whether a donation is warranted. The other scenario is an alcohol, drug, emotional, psychological, or family problem—sometimes a combination of more than one. Those cases, which often also require financial assistance, were turned over to me before my retirement. It was my job to find a solution.
Several considerations arose. One was the level of seriousness of the situation. Did it require immediate attention? And what would that entail? My next task was to evaluate the individual and determine his specific problem, addiction or otherwise, so he could be either properly placed at a rehab center in the city in which he lived or in the cases of emotional or psychological issues that did not warrant changes in living environment, scheduled for weekly appointments with professionals I knew and trusted. Because of changes in the rehabilitation field, we now send those who require treatment to rehabs we know are successful and maintain certain specific modalities. We are not interested in fancy, patronizing programs designed to grab the suffering only to make money and the Hell with their actual recovery.
My relationship with the ballplayer did not end there. Follow-up was critical. I continued to monitor progress through reports from the rehab facility to ensure that he was taking the process seriously. I demanded after graduation that he attend nightly self-help meetings and adhere to the program. He also had to keep appointments with any psychiatrist, psychologist, marriage counselor, or other professional I deemed most appropriate based on the diagnosed problem. But what was most important for these recovering alcoholics and drug addicts to realize was that skimping on the program ensured failure while doing the opposite guaranteed success. It was that simple.
Though I have retired, I remain a BAT board member. I have said often that my work for BAT was the most rewarding of my life. I remain friends with many of those I helped recover. And I still follow the action on the field. I want the sport to be as healthy and vibrant as those individuals who are now living fruitful and happy lives. But I do not like what I have been seeing in recent years.