Professional Athletes Scoring Points in the Anti-Drug Game

When I talk to kids, I share my experience with them. I tell them I did it this way and this is what can happen with drugs or booze. They’re both the same. They can be very harmful. My drug of choice--the infamous ethyl alcohol, the No. 1 drug in America . ... It wasn’t affecting my pitching then, but it was affecting the way I take care of myself. If I had continued in that direction, it would have gotten worse. I probably would have ended up dead somewhere.

--Bob Welch, Los Angeles

Dodgers pitcher and a

recovering alcoholic

In the off-season, when he isn’t concentrating on his fast ball, Bob Welch is pitching something else to kids and young adults--stay away from drugs and alcohol.

Welch is not alone. He is one of a growing number of professional athletes, current and retired, who are trying get the anti-drug message out to America’s youth. The message seemed particularly pertinent in recent days after one of America’s most promising basketball players, Len Bias, 22, of the University of Maryland, died from the effects of cocaine.

Concerned About Abuse

Some of the anti-drug sports figures, like Welch, have had personal problems because of alcohol or drugs; others have not. But they all are concerned about drug abuse, enough to spend time in schools, clubs, church youth groups and jails talking to youngsters, or at PTAs and service clubs speaking to parents.

All major-league teams in the Los Angeles area have Adopt a School programs, in which athletes meet with students and stress getting an education and staying off drugs. Many professional players support charities on an individual basis.

“Most people are really concerned about what’s going on with drugs today,” said Welch, 29, who has been sober since attending an alcohol-treatment center in the winter of 1980. “They come up and say, ‘Well, I have this friend with a problem. Can you tell me something I can do?’ Or they write letters. I get a lot of letters from kids in the junior highs who are writing about their parents, or brothers or sisters.”

Wrote a Book

Since going public about his alcoholism, Welch wrote a book with George Vecsey, a New York Times sportswriter, chronicling his problems with alcohol at age 23. The book, “Five O’Clock Comes Early,” is being used by some junior high and high schools to inform students about alcoholism, said Welch.

He has talked to students in Los Angeles area schools, in his hometown in Michigan, and to young prisoners at the Indian River Correctional Institute near Vero Beach, Fla., when the Dodgers were there for spring training.

“It’s for kids 17 and under,” he said of the Florida prison. “Twenty out of 25 are in there because of drugs.”

Welch also has met with major-league ballplayers who ask him for advice about drinking problems, and with youngsters who write to him asking for help.

“Their moms and dads can offer some advice, but you can develop it in the schools,” he said. “People are opening up their eyes and listening to some things.”

In his book, Welch writes: “I was in high school just a few years ago. If some doctor or teacher had gotten up in front of class and said, ‘Alcohol is dangerous,’ we would have laughed in his face. If it was lunchtime, chances are we already would have been flying on beer or pot or reds--pills to bring you down. But if a ballplayer, or somebody near my age, had warned me, maybe I would have listened. I hope young people listen to me.”

On a recent warm afternoon, Los Angeles Rams linebacker George Andrews stood outside the principal’s office at Douglas MacArthur Fundamental Intermediate School in Santa Ana, watching about 300 sixth-graders file into the auditorium for his anti-drug talk.

“I think any time you can give the kids a positive role model, it helps,” Andrews said. “I remember when I was a kid, I listened to people I respected. . . . The kids have to be the ones to say no to drugs. We can’t say it for them. But you have to try to reach them. If you can reach one or two, then it’s worth it.”

Andrews, an All-American football player at the University of Nebraska in 1978, and some of his other Ram teammates participated last month in a drug-education program in 30 high schools and junior high schools in Anaheim, Santa Ana, Claremont and Pomona. Sponsored jointly by the Rams and Alta-Dena Certified Dairy in Industry, it is part of a national program set up in most National Football League cities by the C. E. Mendez Foundation in Tampa, Fla., a private, nonprofit organization for the prevention of drug abuse.

Andrews’ teammate, running back Eric Dickerson, is national chairman of First Lady Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No drug program and also sponsors an ongoing anti-drug program with the Los Angeles City Recreation and Parks Department and Pepsi Cola. The program, called “Dickerson’s Rangers,” involves youngsters from 30 city youth clubs.

This is the second year that the MacArthur School has been involved in such a program, principal Tom Reasin said, explaining that the school also holds drug-awareness workshops for parents, and has sent 12 teachers to Tampa for seminars given by the Mendez organization. Alta-Dena financed their trips.

Once the sixth-graders were gathered inside the auditorium, Andrews, who is recovering from knee surgery, gave a short speech, talking not only about staying off drugs, but encouraging students to stay in school.

“I’ve had two knee surgeries in a row,” Andrews said, “and I’ll be playing again. But you realize how quickly football can be over. I encourage you to get an education. You need it.”

Andrews talked about something called “Me-ology,” a term coined by representatives of the Mendez foundation to encourage children to feel good about themselves “in mind, body and spirit.”

“Me-ology is about drugs,” Andrews continued. “Where do drugs fit into what I’ve been saying? They don’t. They ruin your life. Every person I ever knew on drugs, it’s ruined their life. You have to stand up against the pressures of society, against the pressures of your friends--who really aren’t friends. They want to pull you down with them. I encourage you to be strong.”

“The kids ask a lot of quality questions, a lot of drug questions,” Los Angeles Raider wide receiver Dokie Williams said recently during a charity basketball game at Belmont High to raise money for the new Boys and Girls Club of Echo Park. “They want to know how you got an education, what it takes to get to college. But, we go to a lot of schools in rough neighborhoods and the drugs are around. Their peers are doing it, and the kids want to know how to stay away from it.”

Charity Basketball Games

With their statewide charity basketball games this year, Raider players have raised more than $300,000 for schools and clubs. The 3-year-old program is co-sponsored by various corporations--Nissan Dealers of Southern California, Coors, Wherehouse, Coca-Cola and Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream.

“Next season we’re talking about developing an anti-drug program just like the school program,” Williams said, referring to the Raiders’ recent program in 30 of the city’s elementary schools that encourages kids to “score points” against the Raiders by having perfect attendance records.

“I think that it’s working with the kids,” Williams said.

“The message we stress is anti-drugs,” said Bill Shumard, Dodger director of community services and special events.

The Dodgers, the first major-league baseball team to institute an alcohol rehabilitation program for all its employees, also have on staff retired pitcher and recovering alcoholic Don Newcombe as director of community relations, and former left fielder Lou Johnson, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Both spend much of their time talking to youth groups and parents about drug and alcohol abuse.

In a similar capacity, Clyde Wright, the California Angels’ former 22-game winner who is also a recovering alcoholic, heads the team’s speaker’s bureau and addresses youth organizations on the need to shun alcohol and drugs.

“In our case, the club is recognizing its responsibility to the community and the players are involved in a lot of charitable causes,” said Tom Seeberg, vice president of public relations for the Angels. “We don’t have an anti-drug program per se, but the players talk to the groups about it. I’m not saying that’s a panacea, of course, but it’s pretty effective. We’re in a crawling stage with it, not walking or running yet.”

Lou Rosen, director of promotions for the Lakers, said: “Our guys go out to high schools and junior highs when they can and talk about the perils of drugs. But there are only 12 players, so it’s hard to go to too many places. But the team is very anti-drug, and they want the kids to know that.”

Don Newcombe has been getting the word out about staying off drugs and alcohol for 14 years.

“I’ve spoken to more than 2 1/2 million kids in 48 of the 50 states,” said Newcombe, who, in addition to his duties with the Dodgers has a consulting firm that sets up alcohol- and drug-prevention programs. He works with the federally funded National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and with New Beginnings, a company with rehabilitation hospitals across the country.

“We’ve got 9- and 10-year-old drug addicts and alcoholics in these hospitals,” Newcombe said. “I know a 15-year-old boy with a $30,000-a-month cocaine habit. You wouldn’t believe what’s going on out there. But I think there is no doubt professional athletes can have an impact.

“We owe something to these kids and to the adults. It’s our responsibility. They look up to us. So many times, we don’t do what we should be doing to be responsible to these kids. I tell them it (alcohol) cost me my baseball career. And my whole premise is to try to keep it from happening to some of these kids.”

Late last month, about 8,000 schoolchildren from the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys carried red, white and blue balloons that read “JUST SAY NO” into the Rose Bowl in Pasadena for an anti-drug rally sponsored by local civic groups in conjunction with the national Just Say No program.

Former major league pitcher Dock Ellis stood watching them and talked about the coming of age of anti-drug programs. “There’s a lot being done. A lot of people are giving back now,” he said. “But I think if everyone gets together, a lot more could be done. This is a one-shot thing here, and it’s good. But it won’t work. Repetition will work. People don’t realize we’re fighting a hell of an industry when we’re fighting drugs and alcohol. There are a lot of changes to be made, a lot of thinking to be changed.

“What do you drink after you win the World Series?” asked Ellis, a recovering alcoholic and drug user who now runs a drug counseling center in Los Angeles and is a consultant to the New York Yankees on drug and alcohol awareness and education. “Champagne. The kids see that and they identify winning with drinking.”

Ellis should know. He’s been there. “In the old days, I used to play drunk,” he said of his early major league career with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He said he was using both alcohol and drugs by the time he got to the majors in 1968.

“There was no way you could have told me I have an alcohol and drug problem,” Ellis said. “The heaviest part of the disease is the denial.

“As long as a lot of people are trying to do something, it’s bound to help, but we need to be doing some networking across the country. That’s something major league baseball ought to be doing. There are a lot of athletes out there giving back now.”

In addition to his consulting business, Ellis, who grew up in Watts, has begun a program at the California Youth Authority at Paso Robles. It is called Operation New Hope.

“We need programs for kids even younger,” Ellis said. “If we can teach them the ABCs, then we can teach them about drugs and alcohol.”

Ellis said in his six years of counseling he has heard incredible stories. “One guy told me that ever since he was 3 years old he’s been around drugs. He started getting high at 5, getting into his father’s stash. And I know a 9-year-old, too, who is a full-blown alcoholic.

“When I talk, then I put it back on them,” Ellis added. “I say, ‘It’s your world and you’re only going to destroy it with drugs. Drugs are here to destroy a generation. Yours, not mine.’ ”

“All the current exposure about staying away from drugs, is probably a plus,” said Lew Pebbles, the California Department of Education’s director of physical education and athletics. “But I think we’ll probably have problems down the road, because the programs aren’t coordinated. Now it’s so fragmented, one group of people doesn’t know what the other group is doing.”

For his part, Pebbles is in the process of setting up a new statewide program to discourage California youths from using drugs. Using a grant from the state Legislature, $450,000 for a three-year pilot program which begins Tuesday, Pros for Kids will enlist well-known professional and amateur athletes to work with teen-agers in schools, summer camps and special activities in anti-drug programs. He said four schools in Orange County and four in San Francisco will be selected in the fall.

Working with him will be Delvin Williams, director of the Oakland-based Pros for Kids. Williams, a former running back for the San Francisco 49ers and Miami Dolphins, began Pros for Kids four years ago “after my own personal involvement with cocaine.”

Assemblyman Art Agnos (D-San Francisco), who sponsored the bill to fund the project, said the athletes would be involved with youngsters at the designated schools for a year.

“It will not be a one-time carnival stop,” Agnos said at a recent press conference in Sacramento.

“We want to make an impact, and make it on the kids early,” Pebbles said. “The athletes can make an impression on them. But what we really need to do is get everybody together. Maybe we could spin everything off the national Just Say No program. It could be at the top of the pyramid and then every program could complement the other. I say what we really need is a world symposium involving all anti-drug programs. I haven’t given up on that idea.”