Denehy Bill - Rage: the Legend of Baseball Bill Denehy

SPECIAL PRAISE FOR RAGE

Bill Denehy has an amazing story to tell. Stop what youre doing, start reading, and get ready for a life-changing experience.

Pat Williams

Senior Vice President, Orlando Magic Author of Coach Woodens Greatest Secrets

Rage by Bill Denehy and Peter Golenbock is must reading for anyone concerned about issues of addiction, and it has a special application in the world of professional sports. Crisply written, Denehys life story is an important one for us to share. Bill has opened his heart, and anyone who reads it will see the pain, tragedy, and ultimate triumph of this great person.

Richard Lapchick

Founder of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport

I have been Bills sponsor for eighteen of his twenty-one years of continued sobriety. Through the loss of his parents and his pet dog Schmucko, times of anger and resentments, and concurrently, the loss of his eyesight, his commitment to sobriety has never wavered. His resolve to live life to the fullest is inspiring.

Allan Webber

Retired Attorney, Orlando, Florida

Bill Denehy is an interesting, complicated guy. His stories about his baseball days are utterly hysterical. His ability to treat and manage his drug abuse and alcoholism, as far as Im concerned, puts him in the Hall of Fame. I really loved this book.

Greg Boger, MD

Physician/Partner at Florida Otolaryngology Group

Nobody could have built a college program the way Bill did at the University of Hartford. We could have beenshould have beenperennial powers, if only he hadnt been fired.

Ted Lombardo

Central Recovery Press (CRP) is committed to publishing exceptional materials addressing addiction treatment, recovery, and behavioral healthcare topics, including original and quality books, audio/visual communications, and web-based new media. Through a diverse selection of titles, we seek to contribute a broad range of unique resources for professionals, recovering individuals and their families, and the general public.

For more information, visit www.centralrecoverypress.com.

2014 by Bill Denehy and Peter Golenbock

All rights reserved. Published 2014.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

Publisher: Central Recovery Press

3321 N. Buffalo Drive

Las Vegas, NV 89129

19 18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-1-937612-56-6 (e-book)

Publishers Note: This is a memoir, a work based on facts recorded to the best of the authors memory. Central Recovery Press books represent the experiences and opinions of their authors only. Every effort has been made to ensure that events, institutions, and statistics presented in our books as facts are accurate and up-to-date. To protect their privacy, the names of some of the people, places, and institutions in this book have been changed.

Central Recovery Press makes no representations or warranties in relation to the medical information in this book. This book is not an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider.

Cover design by David Hardy

Interior design and layout by Sara Streifel, Think Creative Design

Photo of Bill Denehy by Patrick M. Kittell. Used with permission.

Photo of Peter Golenbock by Wendy Grassi. Used with permission.

Id like to dedicate this book to all the men and women in and out of recovery who still havent found the right solution to stay abstinent from alcohol and other drugs.

And to my three girls, Heather, Kristin, and Marilyn.

Bill Denehy

Heres to my brother and sister, Robert and Wendy.

And to the other Golenbocks, Aunt Hazel and cousins Jeffrey, Susan, and Douglas.

Peter Golenbock

TABLE OF CONTENTS

IM BLIND, AND MY BELOVED BASEBALL HAS made me this way. Ive always loved Ray Charles and wanted to be like him, but not like this. I wanted to sing like him, not be blind like him.

The reason Im blind is that during my five-year professional pitching career, team doctors prescribed fifty-seven cortisone shots for my aching shoulder. I didnt know any better. This was before the dangers of cortisone were made public. I knew Sandy Koufax was taking them for his arm, and Sandy was my hero, so I figured what was good for Sandy was good for me. I found out years later that no one should take more than ten cortisone shots in a lifetime. I was later told that if you take more than ten shots in a lifetime, your corneas will grow weak and you risk going blind. I wish someone had said something back then.

I was one of the best young pitchers in the nation when I graduated from high school in 1964. I could throw a baseball ninety-five miles an hour. I once struck out twenty-four batters in a high school game. I retired forty-one batters in a row when I pitched in two American Legion games. Both outings were almost perfect games. Did you ever do something where you feltwhere you knewthat you were the best in the whole wide world? Thats how I felt when I was a teenager in high school.

When I came up to the New York Mets in 1967, I got more ink than Tom Seaver, the college kid from California. In our first games pitching for the Mets, Tom and I each struck out eight batters to set a rookie record that wasnt broken until 2012. My future was so bright that Topps even put us on the same baseball card, calling us Mets Rookie Stars of 1967. I was living my dream. It was a dream I got to live for about two weeks.

In my fourth start, I hurt my arm. I never saw it coming. I had never been hurt before. I threw a pitch and felt the intense grip of pain in my shoulder. Little did I know that my brilliant major league career was finished after exactly two months; after that I was just hanging on to my dream.

I would experience one more brief moment of fame that was very unusual at that particular time. The Mets traded me to the Washington Senators for their manager Gil Hodges. The Cleveland Indians had once swapped managers by trading Joe Gordon to the Detroit Tigers for Jimmy Dykes. However, no player in baseball had ever been traded for a manager. That trade was a first. Mets fans who remember me ask, Oh, Bill Denehy. Youre the guy who was traded for Gil Hodges, arent you?