By Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.blogspot.com/2018/03/sammy-stewart-rip-to-self-inflicted.html
Jazz legend Dexter Gordon (he was long considered
the bebop tenor saxophonist) once said prison saved his life after he couldn't kick heroin
outside of it. Sammy Stewart, who went from World Series champion one minute to postseason forgotten man the next in the 1980s, would
come to believe being behind bars saved his, too, at long enough last.
"I like for it to stay bright," Stewart---who died 2 March at 63---
told the Baltimore Sun in 2013. "When you're in drug addiction, you close
your curtains, you duct-tape your windows because you're paranoid about people seeing you. I'm away from all that. My windows are open.
People can knock on my door, call me on the phone and I'll get back with you. I'm not dying now."
The husky righthander started his career with a flourish, shaking off a shaky first inning to strike out seven straight White Sox in late August
1978, breaking the record for major league debut strikeouts formerly shared by one-time Oriole Pete Richert and Brooklyn Dodgers near-
legend Karl Spooner and since matched by Stephen Strasburg.
With the Orioles flush with starting pitching Stewart became an effective long man who pulled in second on the American League's ERA
leaderboard in 1981. He threw twelve scoreless innings across two postseasons, 1979 (in the World Series loss to the Pirates) and 1983 (in
the American League Championship Series and with the Orioles winning the Series over the Phillies).
Which is why Stewart was among the many who couldn't fathom why, after he was dealt to the Red Sox for 1986, manager John McNamara
refused to even think about him in that ill-fated World Series. Stewart hadn't had a particularly solid regular season, but despite his World
Series resume prior McNamara kept him in drydock while one after another Red Sox reliever proved futile in containing the Mets, especially
in the final two games.
It turned out Stewart had gotten on McNamara's bad side after missing the team bus narrowly during the season. Stewart was visiting his
hospitalised, cystic fibrosis-stricken young son, Colin. The Red Sox's traveling secretary refused to hold the bus for the pitcher, which didn't
sit right with several teammates.
A fun-loving but mostly stable Oriole, Stewart's problems in Boston weren't limited to the World Series disappointment or to McNamara's
doghouse. Thinking he was due for a decent enough free agency payday after 1986, he bought a sumptuous home in Boston but later admitted
he'd fallen in with people who weren't of the caliber he'd known in Baltimore. The owners' collusion kept Stewart from signing with anyone until
he signed with the Indians in June 1987.
He had a terrible season and decided to walk away from baseball after it. At 32. Big mistake. His dalliance with crack cocaine, which may have
begun in Boston, became a full-blown addiction as Stewart tried now to make sense of his life, even returning to his North Carolina roots. And
it cost him. Dearly.
There was a kidnap and assault charge against him involving his first wife in 1990; he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault. A year later, Colin
died in his arms of the same disease that would eventually claim his daughter.
The stricken father spiraled so far out of control from there---he refused to blame his son's death for that spiral, but it can't be discounted---that
he'd eventually pawn both his 1983 World Series ring and his father's gun collection to support his habit.
"He was a lovable guy and a terrific pitcher, but he was a lost soul,†said Stewart's Hall of Fame Orioles teammate Jim Palmer
to the New York Times.
“Those of us who knew Sammy knew what he’d gone through in his life. He was a little bit of a con man. You never knew if he was telling you the
truth, but that’s the same thing with anyone who has an addiction."
"The lowest moment was just to know that you're completely alone on a dirt-dark highway," Stewart told the
Sun. "You're the only one up at 2:30 in
the morning. You're walking, and the pit of your stomach is just bored out with a hole in it, something that you just can't fill up. The thing about any
kind of dope is one is too many and 1,000 isn't enough. There's never enough for you."
His marriage ended in 1994; his addiction morass cost him the trust of his first wife, Peggy, and his daughter, Alicia. In 2006, at long enough last, after
numerous charges and short jail stays, he was arrested and rejected a plea bargain on a possession charge, even telling the judge he probably needed
to be sent to the calaboose. He'd been through too many failed drug rehabilitations.
"I take full responsibility for everything," he told an interviewer early during that prison term. "There were times when I was just pathetic."
A year later, after who knew how many nights of praying just to survive his sentence, Stewart received the unlikeliest answer: a letter from a woman he'd
first met in Seattle, where she had seats next to the Orioles' bullpen, who told him where to find some of the state's choicest apples and even sent his family
a crateful of golden delicious.
Her name was Cheri Linquist. Perhaps inexplicably, she looked up Stewart after going through her own divorce and discovered they'd both been through the
mills and back. Linquist moved to North Carolina and bought a duplex. When Stewart was paroled, he made sure his parole officer took him there.
The couple eventually married and, when Stewart told a local newspaper he was interested in teaching baseball, he was flooded with requests from parents
willing to engage him to do just that.
"God gives me second chances every day, and I believe everyone deserves that," one of those parents, Jerry Warren, told the
Sun. "Why shouldn't Sammy
get a chance? He needs that outlet."
He simplified his life, savouring autumn leaves watching and fishing with his second wife, reconnecting with his daughter and with two sons from another
relationship. He'd taken up cooking classes and teaching himself the guitar while in prison. He even began reconnecting with his Orioles past and teammates.
"I never should have left there," he admitted.
"It was good to see that little spark in him again," said Stewart's Orioles catcher, Rick Dempsey, at a 2013 reunion celebrating their 1983 World Series triumph.
"Obviously, prison made an impression on him. He needed that."
"He looked so good, and he sounded like himself, funny as ever," said fellow pitcher Mike Boddicker. "We were all family, and I'm excited to have him back with
the group."
Daughter Alicia---who underwent a double lung transplant in 2005---died in 2016. Too well aware of the addict within looking for any excuse, Stewart had fought
back and kept that addict at bay.
Who knows what losing his daughter at last, for all their on-and-off estrangements, for all the guilt he claimed, drained from him at last? May the Lord in whom
he placed his faith forgive him his failures and reunite him with his children in the Elysian Fields of the eternal sunshine.
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