Rage. Peter Golenbock
I read the papers the next day, Westrum was quoted by Dick Young, the influential but not easily impressed New York Daily News reporter, as saying that both Tom and I had made the team.
I kept the clipping. I have memorized it. Young compared our pitching styles and our strengths. Young commented that when the regular season started, either Tom or I could well be the fourth starter in the Mets’ rotation behind Jack Fisher, Bob Shaw, and Don Cardwell. Shit, I thought to myself when I read that, Tom and I have better stuff than any of those other guys.
As I mentioned in the Introduction, as proof of how highly we were regarded, Topps, at that time the only baseball card company, issued a card with my mug and Tom’s side by side. At the top of the card, which was number 581, it read: 1967 Rookie Stars.
We were both supposed to have long and brilliant careers. Tom won 311 games over a twenty-year career. My brilliant career would last exactly two months. But for those two months, I was everything my hometown press clippings predicted I would be.
In my first start as a Met, I struck out eight Phillies to set a Mets record that stood until 2012. I had a blazing fastball and a wicked curve, but the Mets had a pathetic-hitting team, and I lost three close games. Then in May I took the mound against pitching great Juan Marichal and the San Francisco Giants. A teammate handed me a “black beauty” to give me an adrenaline boost. I had never had a “black beauty” before, but I took it because I trusted him.
With my body bursting with adrenaline, I pitched three shutout innings, and then in the fourth I threw a pitch that changed the entire course of my life. If I had known what was going to happen, I would have taken the pitch back. But life doesn’t work that way. One day you’re headed for greatness, and the next day you’re falling into a deep chasm with no end in sight and nothing to break your fall. I threw Willie Mays a hard slider, and it felt like someone stuck a knife in my shoulder. My days of excellence were over pretty much before they began. I would hang on to my professional career for parts of four more sorry seasons, and in my final season in Detroit I assumed the reviled role of designated headhunter for Billy Martin.
As I said, Tom Seaver, the other guy on my rookie card, won 311 games with an ERA of 2.86, pitching himself into the Hall of Fame. I, on the other hand, finished my career with a one-and-ten record and a 4.70 ERA.
And yet, compared to Tom Seaver, my life was far more entertaining and interesting. Tom was a real good guy. Seaver, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, now has the complementary silver fork, silver knife, and Silver Cloud. He has triumphed in everything he has done.
Tom was the perfect addition to King Arthur’s court; he was Sir Lancelot. I, on the other hand, was Robin Hood, a fun-loving, practical-joking scoundrel with unlimited potential and a deep-seated mean streak.
With my career over in my mid-twenties, I had to figure out how I would live the rest of my life, and that hasn’t been easy. I suffer from the disease of addiction. I have a wicked temper, and I was born with a self-destructive streak, which would ensure that my life after baseball followed the arc of my baseball career, with promising beginnings followed by crushing disappointments and failures. In each attempt to do well, I would come tantalizingly close to a roaring success, only to find myself empty-handed. My hot temper and insistence on never settling for less than being the best would contribute greatly to those failures. I weep to look back on it. Many have no idea how hard it is for me to stand before the world and share any of this.
Then, five years ago, at age sixty, I began to lose my eyesight, and now, because of the steroids I took as a player, I am blind. I realize that throughout my whole life I never had a Plan B, which means a rewarding career outside of baseball. I’ve had to struggle to gain similar satisfaction and still make the good money I was accustomed to making in baseball.
I was a dreamer. And time after time I figured that if I could come up with some grandiose idea, some magical plan, I could provide my family with all the trappings of success for a person no longer in major league baseball. I felt driven and under tremendous pressure to succeed, in part because my ex-wife’s mother thought I was a loser. I suffered great agony having never been able to prove her wrong. The more I pursued those dreams, the more I chased the illusion, the deeper I got into drug abuse, and the more I separated myself from my morals and my ability to be a good husband and father.
When my two daughters played softball, I did not coach them, preferring instead to stand behind the center field fence and smoke joints with a couple of the other parents. To this day, my younger daughter still holds some resentment toward me because I didn’t teach her the sports that I excelled in when I was in high school.
In June of 1992 I flew to Connecticut on vacation and watched my daughters play high school softball, but I didn’t play catch with them. I didn’t participate in their warm-ups. I stood behind the center field fence, smoked my pot, and watched the games. The next day, I was leaving to fly back to Florida and took both girls to breakfast. I asked them whether there was something we didn’t do this time that we could do the next time we got together.
Kristin said, “Not really.” She always kept her real feelings inside. Heather said, “Yeah, play catch, Dad.”
That was June 15, 1992, and on the plane back to Florida I vowed that I would never have another drink or drug. I have been in recovery since that day.
But before I talk about my recovery, let me share some of my history. The root of my anger and my trouble with women began with the nuns in Catholic school. These sex-starved sadists never should have been allowed around children. I thought they were a menace to society.
Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.
EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT I WAS the victim of physical and verbal abuse in Catholic school, abuse that took me years to get over, I had a great childhood. I was raised by two loving parents and several adoring aunts and uncles.
But my greatest trauma, one that caused me to feel great shame and guilt, came when I was ten years old. Richie Barone was my best friend. We were in Little League together. We lived in Middletown, Connecticut, and one winter’s evening I went to visit Richie at his house. After a delicious spaghetti dinner, Richie’s dad asked him to go out on an errand.
We left Richie’s house and headed into town. We had the choice of taking the long route around Pameacha Pond or taking a shortcut across the ice. My father had warned me never to walk across the ice during winter. The pond had heavy currents, and the ice wasn’t always solid and safe.
Richie was stubborn, and he insisted he would take the shortcut across the ice.
I stayed on land and made my way home. Richie didn’t return home that night. He fell through the ice and drowned.
A wake was held for Richie two days later. For the first time in my life I felt deep-down anxiety. I walked into the funeral parlor and was confronted by Richie’s dad, who grabbed me and started shaking me.
“How could you let your best friend walk across the ice by himself?” he shouted.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t stop him.”
The incident scarred me so deeply that I didn’t attend a wake or funeral until I was out of high school. Years later, Richie’s dad apologized to me, but I could never get it out of my mind that I could have done something to save Richie from his fate.
The death of Richie Barone haunted me for years. I would have conversations with him.
“Rich,” I’d say to him, “I don’t know if I’m going to go into the NBA or major league baseball, but you’re coming with me. You may not be able to physically get there, but I’m