COMMENTARY : Howe Remembers the Good Days

The parishioners at Yankee Stadium were in a forgiving mood. Not only did they absolve Steve Howe of his off-field transgressions, they apparently pardoned him for his previous performance in the ballpark. In their eyes, there’s no telling which was the greater sin, the addiction to drugs or the association with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Then again, perhaps it had been so long that the majority of the 30,967 in attendance on a sunwashed Saturday afternoon failed to remember it was Howe who recorded the final out in the New York Yankees’ last World Series appearance. At the time, October 1981, he was a young man on the verge of great things. Ten years and a score of tribulations later, his return to the mound in the Bronx was acknowledged for what it was, baseball’s comeback story of the year.

Howe’s pitching accomplishments long have been overshadowed by his personal problems, which have been rehashed in great detail since he was invited to spring training by the Yankees. But he wasn’t about to forget a singular moment of triumph when he walked into the stadium for the first time in a decade Friday afternoon. He looked immediately to center field. “I remember where Bob Watson flew out,” he said.

He was 23 at the time, a brilliant reliever who had won the National League’s Rookie of the Year award the previous season and now was entrusted with closing out the Dodgers’ first World Series championship in 16 years. He responded with 3 scoreless innings as Los Angeles romped 9-2 in Game 6, a defeat that was so galling to George Steinbrenner, he spent the final innings composing an apology to New York fans. Neither Howe nor the Yankees have been in such an exalted position since.

The Dodgers expressed little appreciation for the tradition of Yankee Stadium during their visits in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Several members of the team railed against the treatment they received from the fans. Howe, who didn’t join the team until 1980, recalled the rubbish dumped on the canopy in the visitors’ bullpen. “It sounded like a hailstorm,” he said Saturday. “And I did get hit in the face by a 50-cent piece.”

It seemed incongruous. The man was smiling as he told the story. But when you’ve had the kind of career he’s had, it’s understandable that he would look upon that moment as a highlight.

Howe was suspended six times for substance abuse under the reign of two commissioners, Bowie Kuhn and Peter Ueberroth. In his long and winding road back to sobriety and redemption, he has pitched in the American League twice (brief stints with the Minnesota Twins and the Texas Rangers), Japan, the American Association, the Dominican, Mexico and the Class A California League (on two occasions). In addition to his ongoing rehabilitation for dependency, he entered a hospital for minor elbow surgery 11 months ago and developed a blood clot in a lung.

Through it all, he said, he believed he would be back in the major leagues someday. “I’ve had tremendous people behind me,” he explained. “I won’t tell you I didn’t get discouraged when I was lying in the hospital (last year) with nitro under my tongue thinking I was going to kick (the bucket).”

But make it he did, overcoming a disease, to walk through the sunshine from the Yankee bullpen to the mound for the start of the ninth inning Saturday. The drama, like the adversity, was of his own making. Oakland was leading 10-2 and had replaced so many regulars as to bring to mind a spring training game. Still, these were major-league hitters, and Howe hadn’t pitched under such circumstances since the last day of the 1987 season. Then he followed an encouraging late-season trial with the Rangers with a violation of his after-care program, earning his release.

He said he was so focused on what he had to do on the mound, he didn’t even hear the cheers that greeted the announcement of his name. “I blocked it out,” Howe said with a glibness that was surprising. “My mother said I was good at blocking out her calls when I was 5.”

The man wasn’t perfect in his first inning back, but he was sharp. First he struck out Jamie Quirk. Then, after issuing a walk to Lance Blankenship, he induced Willie Wilson to bounce into a double play, inspiring a standing ovation that Howe welcomed.

“We’re not going to jump to any conclusions,” Manager Stump Merrill said. “But he was around the plate, which is a positive.” Howe’s biggest problem in spring training was control.

Still, he threw well enough for the Yankees to send him to their top farm club in Columbus, where he pitched 18 innings without yielding an earned run. Of course, his past problems had little to do with the condition of his arm. From San Antonio, his first pro stop out of the University of Michigan in 1979, to Salinas, where he doubled as a player and pitching coach in 1990 before the elbow operation, his talent never was in doubt.

“Even when I had shoulder surgery (in 1985), I was throwing 94 miles an hour,” he said. “I always had a real well-developed arm.”

Mental and emotional maturity have been more difficult to attain. Only Howe himself understands what it has taken. He has been clean for two years now and he doesn’t expect any favors.

The man no longer is a star. And until he succeeds on a consistent basis, he may be an item of curiosity. But he did what he set out to do. “I made it,” Howe said. “If I didn’t pitch another inning, I did it. I got back (to the majors).”

They can’t take that away from him any more than the memory of 1981, when he closed out the Yankees. “That pitch (to Watson),” he said with a wink, “got me a swimming pool.”