Padre Player Returning From a Tragedy at Home

Three weeks ago--on Friday, the 13th--infielder Randy Ready played his first game as a San Diego Padre. He was rotten. The Dodgers bunted on him three times. He struck out. He made an error.

“That’s life,” he said.

But on Saturday, the 14th, something happened to his wife. She collapsed in their Tucson home. She had a heart attack. She went into a coma.

She was 24.

This, really, was life.

So Randy Ready forgot baseball, forgot his silly career and went home. He sat by her hospital bed 24 hours a day for five straight days. He prayed for her to wake up.

It has been three weeks.

He’s ready to resume his silly career. He arrives in San Diego today to begin workouts. More than anything else, he has realized what baseball is--a game.

“Your family is more important than any baseball game,” he said by phone Wednesday. “If not, you’ve got your priorities messed up.”

But you’ve got to work for a living.

“It was great I got to stay around Tucson so long,” Ready said. “But if I had a job different than baseball, I’d be back at work already. It’s time to go to work. I’ve just got to go. Everyone knows that. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes. I’ve usually been able to go all out when I’ve walked between the white lines. Well, we’ll just see how it goes.”

So, today, he leaves. He leaves his wife, Dorene, who is being kept alive medically and might have severe brain damage.

He leaves his eldest son, Andrew, who is 3. He leaves his twins, Jarod and Collin, who are 10 months. He leaves the mess that is home, the whines and tears from infants who have no idea where mommy is.

“I have people here (mainly Dorene’s cousin, Elaine Byrne) to take care of things,” Ready said.

Now, all he has to do is take care of himself. He’s only 26.

“It’s been a real test of my faith,” he said. “A lot of suffering.”

He retraced the events.

“I got a call late Saturday night (June 14),” he said. “They told me it was serious, and I better get home. I had just gotten to San Diego (traded by the Milwaukee Brewers), and she (Dorene) was supposed to join me that Sunday. She was going to look for a place. I didn’t get ahold of Jack McKeon (the Padre general manager) until morning. But it was a situation where I just had to get there.

“She’d had a cardiac arrest. She’s only 24. Why? Everything’s a mystery. They (the doctors) don’t know. They think it could be hereditary. There were no symptoms leading up to it. It’s a mystery. There was nothing in the toxicology report. You can only speculate. Maybe, it was something with her arteries. You can’t do any tests on her with her current condition.

“It’s just a long wait. How long? It’s hard to tell. Of course, we’re hoping for complete recovery. . . . At least, her heart is fine now. She’s breathing on her own. But the tough thing is, she’s still unconscious. It’ll be a long wait. They can do stuff with your heart--like transplants. But with the brain, it’s different. There’s probably brain damage, but they don’t know how much and won’t know until she wakes up.

“If she wakes up.”

In about a week, she will be moved upstairs to a rehabilitation floor. She’s apparently making progress.

His rehabilitation begins next week, too. After a couple of days in San Diego, Ready will join the Triple-A team in Las Vegas to begin a 20-day rehabilitation stint, after which he can rejoin the Padres if they want him to.

“I’d like to be back in the big leagues tomorrow,” he said. “No question. That’s the only place to play.”

The Padres have told him not to rush. He has appreciated that. There have been consoling calls, as well, from his old team, the Milwaukee Brewers.

Ready was asked to describe Dorene.

“Very strong-willed, very outgoing, talkative, loving, a great mother,” he said.

He paused, his kids giggling in the background.

“That was a bad question,” he said.