Hoyt Makes Return : After Recent Stay in Rehabilitation Center, Padre Pitcher to Look for Some Relief Help

YUMA, Ariz. — LaMarr Hoyt was back Friday, all bright-eyed and bushy-haired (he was sporting a new perm hairdo).

And the guys were glad to see him. “LaMarr!” Craig Lefferts said at first sight. Lefferts and Hoyt then sat together and talked for at least five minutes. Then, someone handed Hoyt a bat.

“Just let me take a couple of rips,” said Hoyt, who batted .063 last season. “I’m ready.”

Then, as he walked to another side of the room, he passed Carmelo Martinez, who was gulping a beer.

Hoyt said nothing.

The Padres hope he will drink nothing.

Friday was the first day of the rest of LaMarr Hoyt’s life, which had become undone before he checked into a rehabilitation center in Minnesota 28 days ago.

There, he discovered he was an alcoholic.

Right now he will not talk about such things. He is here to play baseball, and Friday, while his teammates were playing an exhibition game, he threw to pitching coach Galen Cisco for 14 minutes.

“Galen tells me he threw strikes,” Manager Steve Boros said.

Cisco said: “He could throw strikes blindfolded.”

But, there are those who once feared he would drink himself blind. This was in late February, after Hoyt had been detained at the San Ysidro border for carrying marijuana and Valium tablets and Quaaludes. A few days later, he was arrested for carrying more marijuana and a switch-blade knife.

Somebody called to alert the Padres, and the Padres called Bob Fredricks, who works for owner Joan Kroc’s Operation CORK.

Bob Fredricks specializes in alcoholics.

He is a recovering one.

So he visited Hoyt before LaMarr was scheduled to leave for spring training, and he began his plea: Please check into a rehab center.

Hoyt’s attorney, Ron Shapiro, seconded the motion, but it took a few days before Hoyt would agree. Fredricks remembers team president Ballard Smith telling Hoyt that day: “I want you to get help, but I don’t want this to reoccur.”

And Hoyt was off.

He talks to Fredricks frequently. Fredricks always has a story to tell Hoyt, and it’s usually the story of his own comeback.

In 1971, Bob Fredricks was a teacher--and a good one--in San Diego. But he said he started taking too many days off; started drinking bottles of wine during classes, and even missed his own little girls’ birthday parties because he couldn’t pick himself up out of the local bar.

“The noose was tightening, so I left and went to Warner Springs, where I taught for five more years,” Fredricks said.

Then, on June 24, 1975, he was arrested for drunk driving. He was thrown in jail.

“It was the culmination of trying to stop drinking on my own and watching my life kind of crumble,” Fredricks remembered Friday. “When they were taking me to jail, the highway patrolman that took me down said: ‘You may be an alcoholic.’ And that was the first time I’d ever thought that I might be addicted to alcohol. So when I got out of there, and I really thank God for this, a friend of mine took me to a self-help group meeting the next night.

” . . . On the way out (of the meeting), I asked a gal: ‘Do you people here not drink at all?’ Because it all seemed frightening to me. I couldn’t see how I could quit. They talked about being off alcohol for two years, three years, five years. I said: ‘Oh God, that’s impossible! I can’t do that.’ And that gal said: ‘Oh, the not drinking part? We just do that one day at a time.’ And it was like 2,000 pounds off my back. I said: ‘I can do this a day at a time.’ And then things started to get better.”

Fredricks said he hasn’t had a drink in 10 1/2 years.

He told all this to Hoyt.

He said Hoyt’s initial reaction was “10 years!”

Fredricks said Friday: “Do I get tempted? Yeah . . . (But) it gets easier. And I still go to meetings and stay involved with self-help groups. And I realize my disease is one that I have to live with the rest of my life. But it has a lot of benefits. Now, I can look back on June 24, 1975 and say: ‘That was the best day of my life, the day I got thrown in jail.’ That day, I thought it was my worst day. I guess there are a lot of paradoxes in life.”

Feb. 28, the day Hoyt checked into the Hazelden Foundation, might turn out to be his greatest day.

“In many ways, our experiences paralleled,” Fredricks said of Hoyt. “We’ve had a lot to talk about in terms of similar experiences. If there’s any magic involved with the whole idea of Hazelden, it’s that one alcoholic is helping another. That’s what I try to do. I basically just share my story and hope people can relate to it and see that my experiences might be useful.”

They are not great friends.

“No, that’s not one of my goals,” Fredricks said. “I think we have a bond. We understand we’re more alike than different. But the one magic thing about recovery is that there are no big league heroes in the self-help groups we attend. We’re all the same--alcoholics.”

They are not thinking it’ll be easy.

“One woman called me and told me the story of her husband throwing up in their sink during a party when he’d drunk too much,” Fredricks said. “She cleaned it up, and he saw the clean sink the next day and didn’t remember what had happened. And he didn’t know why she was mad at him. Well, she shouldn’t have cleaned it up. She should’ve made him and put the responsibility where it belonged.

“This is where LaMarr is. Our help will be there for him, but the ball is in his court. Just like my recovery is in mine.”

They will speak often.

“I don’t have any tricks . . . ,” Fredricks said. “I don’t have any psychological insights . . . I don’t have anything to offer other than my own experience and my own hope. And he knows I’m taking it one day at a time, and he knows I’m vulnerable. He knows I’m struggling with the same thing he’ll be struggling with.”

What will be the struggles? Like when Carmelo Martinez pops open a beer in front of him.

For strength, though, Fredricks always looks at a key chain of his that reads: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Bob Fredricks knew the difference and changed his life.

Can LaMarr Hoyt?

So far, so good. Fredricks, having seen Hoyt recently, said: “He’s very sincere about his recovery. I went and saw him at Hazelden, and what I saw was a human. Before, he was LaMarr Hoyt--the pitcher. Now, he’s LaMarr Hoyt--the human. He has a lot of potential as a human being. I don’t know about his pitching.”

During his final days at Hazelden, Hoyt also received a call from Joan Kroc. Fredricks said Hoyt thanked her for giving him the opportunity to go there, and Kroc only asked one thing of Hoyt in return.

“She made him promise that he’d give her a big hug on opening day,” Fredricks said.

“And LaMarr agreed.”