Eisenreich Tries Again to Face Madding Crowd : No One Is Sure What His Problem Was, or Even If He Has Put It Behind Him

Every morning at 11 at the Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis, five ducks leave their rooftop home, ride down an elevator to the lobby, walk single file across a red carpet and jump into a fountain.

At 5 each afternoon, they reverse the process, making their way back across the lobby and up the elevator to the roof, where they spend the night.

If only Jim Eisenreich’s life were so simple, he wouldn’t have been here, playing minor league baseball this season.

He probably would have been in Minnesota, where Calvin Griffith, former owner of the Twins, once called him the best player ever developed in the Twins’ organization and said that he was “doomed to become an all-star center fielder.”

But the life of Jim Eisenreich, 28, who was called up to the Kansas City Royals Tuesday night, is not simple.

And, unless he stays in the major leagues a lot longer than he did during three previous visits, the only thing he is doomed to be is a curiosity.

Actually, he already is that.

He’s the phenom, given to attacks of shortness of breath and involuntary neck and facial tics, who couldn’t handle the stress of playing in the major leagues.

At least, that’s the picture painted by the Twins, who all but labeled him a nervous wreck, physically unable to play the game at which he excelled because of stage fright so acute that he came unglued in front of large crowds.

Eisenreich has a different view.

He believes that he suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that afflicts only 1 in every 1,000 Americans and includes among its symptoms uncontrollable body movements or vocalizations.

But even the doctor who first suggested to Eisenreich that he might suffer from Tourette’s--and whose suggestion Eisenreich has taken as a definitive answer--isn’t sure that Eisenreich is afflicted.

“There’s no definitive test,” said Dr. Faruk Abuzzahab, a clinical professor in the departments of psychiatry, pharmacology and family practice at the University of Minnesota.

And so, there are no hard and fast answers--only theories--as to what led such a promising young player to flee the game.

That baseball doesn’t quite know what to make of Eisenreich and his erratic behavior was evident last fall when the Twins, who in 1984 had put him on the voluntary retired list, put him on waivers--and only one team picked him up.

But it is also evidence of his tremendous potential that the Royals took a chance. Of course, the waiver price of $1 didn’t exactly qualify the move as a risky venture.

The Royals signed him to a one-year minor league contract and told him to relax and enjoy himself--and to show that he was a major league prospect.

What he did was make the Double-A Southern League his personal showcase. After Tuesday night’s game, he led the league with a .382 batting average and was first in hits (105), doubles (36), triples (10), runs scored (60) and slugging percentage (.705).

Used exclusively as a designated hitter by the Memphis Chicks, ostensibly because of a sore elbow, he hit in 59 of 70 games, going hitless in two consecutive games only once all season.

“He’s making a mockery of the league,” Chick Manager Bob Schaefer said.

All he’s really done, though, is show the Royals what they had suspected all along--that, physically, he is a bona fide prospect.

Said Eisenreich: “Everybody’s waiting to see what will happen when I get to the big leagues.”

They’ll find out soon.

He’s back.

The question now is: For how long?

As Eisenreich warmed up for a game against the Chattanooga Lookouts, an ABC-TV camera crew filmed him stretching with his teammates. Ironically, an old Elvis Presley record, “All Shook Up,” blared over the public address system.

Well, bless my soul

What’s wrong with me?

I’m itchin’ like a man

On a fuzzy tree

--”All Shook Up,” Otis Blackwell

The next day, Eisenreich was interviewed by ABC’s Dick Schaap. It was the third interview he’d given in two days. Eisenreich said he is asked to tell his life story at least once a day.

And his parents, Cliff, 70, and Ann, 60, who live about an hour’s drive northwest of Minneapolis in St. Cloud, Minn., said that hardly a day goes by without them taking a phone call from somebody wanting to talk about Jim.

Cliff asks not to be quoted.

“He’s sick of talking about it,” Jim Eisenreich said. “I am, too. I don’t know why I do. Everybody knows the story. Well, maybe they don’t know the truth.”

Only Jim knows that.

What is known is that his time with the Twins was troubled.

He has had facial tics and muscle twinges since he was a kid. When he was in grade school, school officials brought specialists to his classrooms to time the movements. He sat in the back at church so the noises he made wouldn’t bother anybody. Little League opponents teased him incessantly.

But the public didn’t become aware of his problem until April of 1982.

He came north from spring training that year as the Twins’ starting center fielder, having made the considerable jump from Class A. When the Twins opened the Metrodome on April 6, 1982, he was their leadoff man.

And he started well, batting more than .300 the first month, but the erratic contractions of the muscles in his neck and arms seemed to worsen day by day until one day he couldn’t stand still in the outfield.

In the sixth inning of a game against the Milwaukee Brewers, he was jerking and shaking, and his breathing was labored. He called time and ran into the dugout, removing himself from the game.

Three more times, he took himself out of games. In Boston, where his problems had been reported in the newspaper that morning, the fans in the outfield bleachers jumped on him verbally, showering him with abuse.

He left in the fourth inning.

The next day, he left in the third.

Eisenreich, though, said he never heard the Boston fans, whose behavior on those nights was described as obscene at worst and merciless at best.

“Everybody thinks it was the fans who bothered me, but that’s another myth,” he said. “The reporters jumped on that and said that was the problem. I told them it wasn’t, but they didn’t believe it and they wrote what they wanted to write.”

What was the problem?

“It gets to the point where I hyperventilate too much,” he said. “I just feel like if a ball comes out there, I’m not going to be able to get it. I didn’t want to screw that part of it up, so I decided I might as well come off the field.”

His problems only worsened.

Dr. Leonard Michienzi, the Twins’ physician, started Eisenreich on Inderal, a drug that blocks the effects of adrenaline and is commonly prescribed for heart problems and high blood pressure. But it is also used by first-time parachutists to lessen the sensations of nervousness.

Eisenreich said the drug made him “go crazy.” Before a game in Milwaukee, he pulled himself from the lineup and, in the clubhouse, he gulped air and belched repeatedly. Screaming, “I can’t breathe,” he tore wildly at his uniform.

Dr. Paul Jacobs, the Brewers’ physician, had him taken to Mount Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee, where doctors twice injected him with sedatives, with little effect.

“They couldn’t put me under,” Eisenreich said. “That was probably the worst time.”

Upon the Twins’ return to Minneapolis, Eisenreich was hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation.

Of the three possible diagnoses that emerged--performance anxiety, or stage fright; Tourette’s and agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces--Tourette’s was quickly dismissed by Michienzi.

“I’m one of those who feels that the sufficient criteria are not there, although it could well be (Tourette’s),” Michienzi said. “I don’t deny that it might be, but he doesn’t satisfy my criteria.”

Many Tourette’s patients, Michienzi said, curse out loud at inappropriate moments. Eisenreich, who does not use profanity at any time, does not. Michienzi also believed that Eisenreich’s tics and breathing attacks were unrelated.

But Abuzzahab, brought in as a consultant, believed that Eisenreich did meet the criteria for Tourette’s. Abuzzahab has written a book on the subject, “Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome,” which is the affliction’s proper name.

Why, in his opinion, had the Twins’ doctors ruled out Tourette’s so quickly?

“I don’t think they know what Tourette’s is,” he said.

Eisenreich, convinced that his problems were not mental, clung to the diagnosis of Abuzzahab, who recommended two drugs, Haldol and Klonopin, to help Eisenreich control his condition.

The medication, Abuzzahab said, decreases the chemical transmission in the brain that controls the tics. Without medication, he said, the chemical transmission can sometimes be “like a car idling too fast, which is what produces the tics.”

But the heavy dosages taken by Eisenreich made him drowsy.

There were reports, denied by Eisenreich, that he fell asleep in the clubhouse and in the dugout.

“He talked about pulling the ball, about how good his reflexes were, and he was hitting the ball 10 feet wide of third base,” Michienzi said of Eisenreich, who throws and bats left-handed.

Eisenreich tried to return that season, but his problems arose again. His manifestations, Michienzi said, were increased tics, guttural sounds and purposeless movement of his arms.

When the season ended, he had played in only 34 games, batting .303.

In 1983, he again emerged from spring training as the starting center fielder, hitting .400 in Florida, but lasted only two games into the regular season.

“I thought it was going to happen again, and I didn’t want to go through that,” he said.

The Twins continued to probe, trying biofeedback, therapists, psychologists, hypnotists. Anybody.

Among those they brought in was a St. Paul hypnotist, Harvey Misel.

Revealing his distrust of the Twins’ medical staff at that time, Eisenreich said of Misel, who was widely thought to have helped him: “He helped me relax while I was sitting in a chair, but that has nothing to do with playing ball.”

In 1984, Eisenreich again emerged from spring training as the Twins’ starting center fielder. Manager Billy Gardner was so convinced of his talent that he said Eisenreich would mean 10 or 15 extra wins if he could play 140 games.

After 12, he was gone.

The Twins, upset that he was taking medication without their knowledge or consent, asked him to stop taking Haldol and go to the minors or retire. When they told him they would pay him the balance of his 1984 salary if he would agree to be put on the voluntary retired list, Eisenreich agreed.

His major league career seemed to be over. He was 25.

He had played 48 games.

Eisenreich returned to St. Cloud and played amateur ball for the St. Cloud Saints, who were only too happy to have him in their lineup. In 1985, he hit .540 for them and in 1986, he hit .460.

An avid fisherman and hunter--he stalks deer with bow and arrow--Eisenreich lived at home with his father, a retired schoolteacher, and his mother. He worked part-time at an archery shop and, although he describes himself as a reluctant student, took classes at St. Cloud State, where he had played.

He worked out with his younger brother, Charley, 23, who was signed by the Royals last February and is playing for their Class-A team in Fort Myers, Fla.

All the while, though, he talked of returning to the big leagues.

“I was born a baseball player--a pretty good one--so I’m going to stick with baseball as long as I can,” he said. “As long as God has given me the talent, I’m going to stick with it.”

One of those he talked to about a comeback was an old college teammate, Bob Hegman, a former Royal player who is now the Royals’ administrative assistant in scouting and player development.

He told Hegman that after several years of experimenting with various dosages of his medication, he had found a dosage that made him comfortable. He said he felt better and more alert than ever.

He said he hadn’t experienced an episode similar to those that had haunted him in the majors since 1984, when he was stricken--on a night when he hadn’t taken his medication, he said--while driving home from a wedding.

He felt cured, he said.

Hegman contacted his high school coach, Gary Halek, who sent him an article from the St. Cloud Daily News detailing Eisenreich’s exploits with the Saints. A rival coach from Eisenreich’s league, John Blanchard, sent Hegman a letter, telling Hegman that Eisenreich was dominant in the “town ball” league.

Hegman called his college coach, Denny Lorsung, and asked him about Eisenreich’s reflexes.

“He told me he had a guy who could throw in the high 80s and that Jimmy had gotten around on him and hit a ball 440 feet,” Hegman said. “He said there was no way his reactions were slow.”

Convinced, Hegman recommended Eisenreich to Royal General Manager John Schuerholz.

The Royals had stolen him.

Schuerholz won’t go that far, although he does allow that, “We had a little inside information through Bob that none of the other clubs had.”

Said Hegman: “I don’t think the other clubs wanted anything to do with him. They’d been scared off.”

Eisenreich went to spring training, Schuerholz said: “and our eyes lit up. The guy can do everything. And he didn’t show any abnormal reactions to any balls--either thrown or hit.”

Royal Manager Billy Gardner, who was the Minnesota manager when Eisenreich played there, said he was more outgoing and seemed more relaxed. He said he “wouldn’t hesitate” to have Eisenreich on his team.

Still, there were skeptics.

Michienzi, arguing that Haldol is a powerful drug and that Eisenreich’s medication is basically unsupervised, wondered who would be responsible should Eisenreich be fatally injured because his reflexes were impaired.

“I wouldn’t let him back in baseball,” he told Bob Nightengale of the Kansas City Times.

Last week, Michienzi reiterated his beliefs.

“When you have your own medication, you can do what you want with it--refuse to take it and become symptomatic and go home or, take more of it and go on playing,” he said.

“You know, I don’t have much faith in Jim’s integrity.”

Said Eisenreich: “He just doesn’t understand, I guess.”

Michienzi, still not convinced that Eisenreich has Tourette’s, said that Eisenreich’s problems begin “when he sees all those people in those double decks and hears all that noise.”

Schuerholz disagrees.

“No way do we impugn the integrity of (Michienzi’s) professional judgment, but people get better,” he said. “People get sick and they get better. Our doctors have examined him and Jim’s gotten better.

“And we’re fortunate that we’re the team that has him while he’s repaired himself.”

Using him strictly as a designated hitter, Schuerholz said, “might be the key that unlocked the box.”

Of course, there’s a chance that Eisenreich isn’t better, and that he’ll falter once again.

He’ll be this generation’s Jimmy Piersall.

He’ll be called a psycho.

Or worse.

Is it worth having to possibly go through all that again?

“I just want to play,” he said, arms tightly folded across his chest. “If there’s a hint of any trouble again, I just won’t. That’s all there is to it. But I don’t think there will be. I don’t consider it a risk. I believe that whatever is meant to be is going to happen.”