Randy Ready’s Toughest Season : Baseball: Phillie utility player splits time between clubhouse and courtroom in lawsuit over his stricken wife.

It was early July, and Randy Ready was late for one of his life’s highlights.

Accompanied by the three children whom he serves as both father and mother, the utility player for the Philadelphia Phillies was hurrying to Veterans Stadium and the Phillies’ annual father-son game.

Andrew, 7, and twins Colin and Jared, 5, were dressed in tiny Phillies uniforms. They chattered excitedly about playing on a big field, with real equipment, alongside their hero.

Then there was a noise and steam rose from under the hood. The engine died. Ready cursed. A radiator hose had broken.

“The kids were yelling, ‘Dad, what happened?’ and I kept saying, ‘Nothing, nothing,’ ” Ready recalled. “Here it was, a big day for them, and we weren’t going to make their game on time.

“Then I told myself, ‘We’ve got to make it.’ “

The car coasted through a toll booth at the end of the bridge, where Ready saw a policeman. A police cruiser was soon pushing the Ready family vehicle.

Near the stadium, the policeman suddenly turned away and the car was gliding on its own again. But before it stopped, Ready waved down another policeman who pushed him the rest of the way.

“Can you imagine this sight--me behind the wheel, a car full of kids, all of us getting pushed past the people into the stadium?” Ready recalled smiling. “But you know something? We made it. The boys got to play in their game.”

That’s not all. Ready also got to play in his game, starting, surprisingly, against the Cincinnati Reds and collecting two doubles and driving home the winning run in a 4-3 victory.

Two months later, the early afternoon sky is heavily clouded and Veterans Stadium is empty. Ready finishes the story about the radiator hose, then picks up a baseball and idly tosses it off the back wall of the Phillies’ dugout.

“Wouldn’t it be something if all of my stories ended like that?” he said.

Ready would be thrilled if just one story ended like that.

It is the story of a young player beginning the prime of a baseball career when, on June 13, 1986, his beautiful young wife is stricken with a serious brain injury.

She is left in a near vegetative state with a severe loss of mental capacity. She can’t walk or care for herself, or speak much above a whisper.

The baseball player is left to care for her and their three young children, supporting them by playing a game that is difficult even if your mind is clear.

For four years, the story of Randy Ready and wife Dorene has been one of hardship and inspiration. A story of a man who refuses to abandon a wife in need of 24-hour care. A man who refuses to allow anyone to help raise his children except a sister.

It has been the story of many tears. When oldest son Andrew cries for his mother, Ready has learned it is OK to cry with him.

It has also been the story of many hugs. Above the sink in Ready’s home in Encinitas, there is a list of “100 Ways to Praise Your Child.” Every day, Ready uses one.

“My boys are growing up in a positive environment,” said Ready, 30. “We don’t walk around my house with our heads down. We suck it up. We fight back.”

During the summer, the story took a new twist. There was a new fight, one that left Ready both exultant and reeling.

Ready was involved in a 7 1/2-week trial in Milwaukee, where he had played with the Brewers. He sued two insurance groups and a doctor for prescribing diet pills that allegedly caused Dorene’s collapse.

He won the suit and was awarded $24.7 million, the largest personal-injury verdict in Wisconsin history. His testimony was so compelling, even though he originally requested money strictly for the care of his wife and children, that the jury awarded him an extra $4 million to cover personal loss.

“I didn’t ask for anything,” Ready said. “That’s not what the suit was about. I care only about stabilizing my family.”

But, as it has been since Dorene’s accident, Ready’s concern cost him a bit if his own stability.

You can talk of Orel Hershiser’s torn shoulder or the split between Tony Gwynn and his San Diego teammates or the many free agent stars who hit the skids. But because of the trial, no major league baseball player has endured a more difficult season than Ready.

For nearly two months, he had to relive the last four years, visiting a Milwaukee courtroom almost between at-bats.

Ready and attorney Don Shapiro charged that Dr. Vicenta Yap of Milwaukee had prescribed phentermine, a stimulant, to assist Dorene in dieting, even though, at 5 feet 2, she weighed only 115 pounds.

Ready testified that Dorene was unaware of the potential dangers of the drug, which, the case claimed, caused her to collapse on the floor of their home in Tucson. For seven to 10 minutes during that seizure, she received no oxygen to the brain, a condition known as cerebral anoxia.

Ready had to relive the months after the accident, when he left the San Diego Padres for the rest of the 1986 season in an attempt to calm his children while trying to understand when Dorene would get better.

He had to relive the moment that he realized she might not get better.

He also had to display, on videotape, an average day in Dorene’s near helpless existence.

“I had to narrate this thing in front of a jury and a packed courtroom,” Ready said. “I guess a couple of times, I lost it.”

And on two occasions, Dorene was wheeled into the courtroom. For Ready, the only thing harder than preparing her for the trip from Encinitas was watching her on display once she arrived.

“It was a real workout,” Ready said softly.

Ready made three trips to Milwaukee, each time rushing out of the courtroom and catching a plane so he could rejoin the Phillies for that evening’s game.

“Once, when we got him to the airport, the plane had already left the gate,” Shapiro recalled. “We told the airline of our problem and they actually called the plane back.

“Randy got on board, made the game and that night he had a base hit.”

But for the first time in his career, those hits did not come easily for the reserve outfielder-infielder who is valued for his pressure hitting. With a week remaining in his fifth major league season, Ready was batting .241, the lowest of his career.

He had only one home run, after having averaged nine in each of the last three seasons. He had 26 runs batted in.

In recent years, he has denied that his home life has affected his work. But one thing Ready has stopped fighting is the truth.

“Man, I don’t get out of a phone booth with an ‘S’ on my chest,” he said. “I hate to admit it, but I would have to say yes, this has affected me on the field. But who wouldn’t it affect?”

Ready said he doesn’t think about it when he is swinging at a fastball or chasing down a fly ball. But before and after games, and even sometimes on the bench, he can think of little else.

“There is no way to apply brakes to what is happening in my life,” he said. “It just keeps steamrolling. There is no way to keep it off the field. No way.”

He has done his best to isolate his personal life by not talking about them, not even with his teammates.

“I don’t think my teammates know what to ask me,” Ready said. “But I also like to be a little bit selfish and try to keep that part of my life away from the ballpark.”

Gus Hoefling, the Phillies’ strength coach and Ready’s confidant, has seen the inner struggle.

“I’ve seen a lot of strong men, but Randy is one of the strongest,” he said “In baseball, we live in a fishbowl, unaware of the world around us. Randy has been forced outside that fishbowl, yet he still has to keep his concentration while he’s here. Strong as anybody I’ve seen.”

Only a couple of times in five years has Ready talked about his situation with reporters. When he does, he requests that nobody close to his situation be interviewed except Shapiro and sister Cindy, who politely declined to be interviewed for this story.

“Nothing personal,” he said recently to a reporter. “But I can’t believe I am talking about this with you.”

He paused, his eyes reddening.

“You know, I haven’t talked about this in so long,” he said. “But it’s always there.”

The son of a waitress and a carpenter, Ready has never been one to talk when his actions spoke just fine.

“I’ll never forget something Frank Howard told me when I was breaking in the game,” Ready said of a former coach. “He told me there were 1,000 people out there who would tell me what I couldn’t do. But nobody would tell me what I could do.

“He said I had better show a belief in myself. And he was right.”

It is with the help of this quiet belief that he can carry his unusual burden.

Against the advice of legal and tax experts attempting to ease his financial responsibilities, he will not divorce Dorene.

“I could have done it before, but I have no desire to divorce her,” he said. “It was hard enough putting her in a nursing home. I did not choose it, but it had to be done.”

She has not shown great improvement since the accident, but he has not quit attempting to help. Last winter he moved her from a facility near their home to a local hospital for several months of more intense rehabilitation.

“It was great, she made some real gains,” he said.

But when his money ran out, she moved back to the first facility.

“And she regressed again,” he said. “That’s why I want to use the money from the award to move her home with us, to get her full-time care and get her back around the children full-time.”

He paused.

“Yeah, I know it could be hairy. But I want her back in her own home. I’m sure she gets lonely. She has to get lonely.”

In the meantime, he stays in constant contact with her and those who care for her.

During the season, when the children and sister Cindy live with him in Philadelphia, this is done by phone. During the off-season, he and the children visit her often.

“He doesn’t come by the place and say hello, he really gets involved,” Shapiro said. “He even goes to some of their staff meetings.”

Said Ready: “The kids will make school projects and bring them to her. He tries to get her interested. It’s just hard on those days when she is not in tune.”

The hardest part about visiting is coming home. The children, particularly Andrew, have questions. Although the twins were infants when Dorene suffered her injury, Andrew already knew his mother.

“Andy is the one I have to be careful with,” Ready said. “He’ll go to friends’ houses and see their moms and come home and ask, when is he going to get his mom back?”

On those occasions, Ready, who for several years insisted on being his family’s “rock,” is not afraid to share his son’s tears.

“I have to let my kids grow up and let them see me as I am,” he said. “I have to tell them, it’s OK to cry. I have to cut them some slack.”

Because of appeals, Ready probably won’t see his $24.7 million for several years, and even then there may be a lesser settlement. But Ready can wait.

“This is a story without an ending,” he said. “I would like for it to have an ending.”

Sometimes he tries to concoct that ending. Sometimes Ready will take Dorene to movies, just him and her, sitting in the back row, the way it used to be.

One of these days, a funny scene is going to appear on the screen and she is going to laugh. He just knows it.

“Somebody once told me that whatever you give of yourself, you never lose,” Ready said. “I really believe that’s right.”