Aikens Is Star in Mexico : Ex-Major Leaguer, Career Hurt by Cocaine, Is Trying to Prove Himself Again and Isn’t Doing Badly: .454 Average, 46 Homers

Power hitter Willie Aikens, who destroyed his major league career with cocaine, sits in the Puebla Black Angels dugout wishing he were back home playing and hoping someday to get that chance.

“I guess I have to prove myself all over again to everybody,” he said in a recent interview. “You can’t prove anything if you don’t play, and this was the only place I really I had a chance to play.”

In 1983, Aikens became one of the first major league players convicted on drug charges. Released after three months behind bars, Aikens’ three-year career with the Kansas City Royals ended with a trade to the Toronto Blue Jays.

After a mediocre 1984 season with a .205 average, the Blue Jays released Aikens the next year and he went to their Triple-A team in Syracuse.

Aikens refused to discuss his drug use, saying: “It’s something that happened almost three years ago, something I would just like to forget about. It’s something that’s out of my life now.”

Asked if he had any advice about drugs, Aikens paused before answering.

“I can only speak for myself about drugs,” he said. “I’ve tried them and I know what they can do to you. I don’t think what I say right now in a newspaper or anything else like that is going to help anybody else out who wants to use drugs. If they are thinking about doing it, they are going to have to do it and find out for themselves what it can do to you.” Many consider Aikens to be a washed-up player who at age 31 has impressive statistics in an inferior league. Nevertheless, he keeps trying, knowing that efforts to recapture his glory days are a long shot.

“It’s no guarantee that I’ll get a chance to play in the major leagues again,” he said. “I really feel it’s tough to come down here and play and then go back to the States and play.”

This year, he is the Mexican Baseball League’s top hitter with a .454 batting average and 46 homers and is setting records with 145 runs batted in and 370 hits.

“It doesn’t matter where you hit .454, it’s still good,” Aikens said.

He had a major league career average of .271 with 110 home runs and 415 RBIs. His best single-season statistic was 98 RBIs in 1980 when he batted .364 in the American League playoffs and .400 in a six-game World Series loss to Philadelphia.

“Baseball is almost my total life,” he said. “It is something I enjoy doing, regardless of what the pay is, really. Financially, I’m not in the pinch or anything in the States because I have invested my money the right way, so I’m doing OK.”

There are differences. Aikens doesn’t make the money he did in the majors, although he is paid in dollars while Mexican teammates receive pesos. But pay doesn’t bother him because he will receive deferred salary from the Blue Jays for the next 12 years.

Then there are the long bus rides to games, putting on the uniform in a hotel room and going by taxi to the ballparks. Most of the the parks do not have dressing rooms.

Of his hopes of returning to the big leagues, Aikens says: “The only way I’m going to is to keep playing to open some eyes up.”

But Angel Coach Mauro Ramirez says: “Sometimes the scouts come here to see the players, but the only ones who come to see Willie Aikens are the reporters.”

Aikens conceded that he had problems with the Kansas City management during his final year.

“At the time I had a bad attitude . . . because of what I was doing at the time,” he said. “I was messing with cocaine, and that was the reason I had a bad attitude, because it gives you a bad attitude.”

Does Aikens think his reputation is keeping him from returning to the majors?

He said: “I’ll just put it this way--a player who has played in the major leagues for almost seven years, averaged almost .280, averaged 20 home runs and averaged over 80 runs a year, just all of a sudden doesn’t get invited to a spring training camp because he can’t play. I feel that’s part of it.”

If he can’t make it back to the majors, Aikens said he may have a chance next year playing for one of the Japanese teams, or may just come back to Puebla for another year.