Sobering Decision : CSUN’s Shepard Has Terrorized Opposition Pitching Since Giving Up Alcohol After Harrowing Experience

A year ago, a drunken Greg Shepard was thrown out of parties for behavior he describes as idiotic.

Recently, Shepard was thrown out of a party because he wouldn’t drink. His hosts did not want him around unless he was guzzling beers with them.

Sobriety also has made Shepard, a Cal State Northridge senior right fielder, less popular to opposing pitchers, who don’t appreciate his team-leading .344 batting average and 41 runs batted in.

Shepard attributes his improvement--he batted .266 with 34 RBIs last year--to swearing off alcohol on Aug. 22.

He woke up in a daze that particular morning, unable to remember driving a few hours earlier. His truck was parked in the wrong direction in front of his mother’s house in Battle Creek, Mich.

It might have been a routine hangover for some, but it scared Shepard to sobriety.

“I had one of those life-affirming, come-to-Jesus things where I woke up and said: ‘I can’t believe this,’ ” Shepard recalled. “This has got to stop. And it did. August twenty-first was the last day I touched a drink.”

Not only has Shepard given up drinking, he does not attend as many parties or stay out as late. A self-described “crazed dog” after last season’s NCAA Midwest Regionals in which he batted .333, Shepard has toned down his act on and off the field.

A regular party-goer, Shepard became a “mad drunk” after the Matadors were eliminated in the regionals by Minnesota, 7-6.

“I take this game very seriously and I’m very hard on myself,” he said. “I wasn’t happy with the way the team took it. I could feel it slipping away in the Minnesota game.”

Shepard responded to the loss by drinking even more. He returned to Battle Creek and joined a summer league team in hopes of advancing to the American Baseball Congress national tournament, but for the first time, baseball didn’t hold his interest.

“All I’ve ever wanted to do is play this game as long as I could,” Shepard said. “And then the game stopped being fun. Some nights I’d have rather been at a party than out at the ballpark.”

His dream of playing pro ball still intact, he attended a mass amateur tryout with the Cincinnati Reds organization on that fateful Aug. 21. At 210 pounds, 20 over his normal playing weight, he was slow. To make matters worse, he did not hit the ball well.

“I totally bombed and embarrassed myself,” he said.

Depressed, Shepard went out drinking. The next thing he knew, it was morning, and he was lying on the floor in the middle of his house wondering how he wound up there. Having hit bottom, Shepard realized he was using alcohol to deal with disappointments on the diamond.

“I just weighed what I wanted to do and what I had to do and (not drinking) is just one big way to help,” he said. “I will go out, but since I don’t drink, it’s not like I wake up the next day and I’m feeling bad. I’m the same every day.”

As he sobered up, Shepard rekindled his fire for the game by falling back on the familiar. Intent on doing the things that had made him successful in the past, he resumed his running regimen and tried to rid himself of overambitious expectations.

In his first season last year at Northridge, his desire to prove that he belonged in a Top 20 Division I program left him nearly helpless at the plate.

“Last year, I’d get in the batter’s box and I’d be shaking I was so scared,” Shepard said. “Now, I’m really relaxed.”

Shepard’s newfound comfort at the plate contrasts with the heavier offensive load he has shouldered this spring.

But he claims that his ability to come through--particularly with men on base or with two out--stems from learning to handle those situations last season.

The left-handed hitting Shepard sets the tone as leadoff batter, a role he has assumed for the first time in his college career. Aside from leading the Matadors in batting average and RBIs, he is the team leader in runs (37), hits (50), doubles (nine), and batting with runners in scoring position (.488).

“I feel like I can set the tempo of the game right off the bat,” he said. “I’m having a blast.”

Second baseman Chris Olsen views Shepard as the offensive leader, a player the team can depend on every day.

“I don’t know if it is because he’s not drinking,” Olsen said. “But he’s incredible.”

Shepard has more difficulty declining drinks than hitting curveballs. His first few months on the wagon were the most difficult because friends and fellow students laughed in disbelief when he turned down beers at parties.

“I haven’t done this alone,” said Shepard, who receives counseling and has attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

“My roommates (Olsen and pitcher Steven Morales) watch out for me. They step in and say, ‘No, he doesn’t drink.’

“A lot of other people give me positive support. They say, ‘Ah, Pepsi, that’s the secret.’ ”

His mother also has provided positive reinforcement, although for the first two months of Shepard’s sobriety, he kept his struggle secret from her.

“I didn’t know how she would act,” Shepard said. “But she has been supportive and concerned.”

Shepard grew up in Battle Creek, lived in Palos Verdes for his first two years of high school, and moved back to his hometown. He hit .542 in 1989, his senior year at Pennfield High.

Arizona State recruited him as a “preferred walk-on,” but after he suffered a knee injury the flow of correspondence from the Sun Devil coaches stopped.

With limited options, he attended nearby Kellogg (Mich.) College for one year and batted .302 with 20 RBIs.

Eager to return to California, Shepard secured an academic scholarship to United States International University in San Diego and walked on to the baseball team.

A few months later, USIU went bankrupt and announced that it would disband its baseball program after the season. Shepard, who started at shortstop, batted .280 with 20 RBIs, then scoured the West Coast for a Division I program to which he could transfer.

Having read several newspaper articles about Northridge Coach Bill Kernen, the Matadors were Shepard’s first choice. “It sounded like a military installation,” said Shepard, who had expressed his fondness for a boot camp mentality to his USIU teammates who nicknamed him “psycho.”

The name endured throughout a season in which the Gulls lost 44 games. Shepard handled what he calls the hardest year of his life by working himself into the ground.

“I couldn’t get to the (batting) cage enough,” he said. “I couldn’t take enough ground balls. I don’t take losing well.”

Still, Shepard has no fear that Northridge losses will drive him to drink. “It doesn’t come into my mind,” he said.

After the first loss of the season (to Cal State Sacramento), Shepard said, he went to a pool hall with his sister and several friends and was back at the team hotel by 11 p.m. When the Matadors lost again the next day to the Hornets, he stayed in his hotel room and took out his frustration in a playful way on Olsen and catcher Mike Sims.

“We beat each other up,” Shepard said. “We were really mad. And we went to some other rooms and beat up some (teammates).”

Shepard woke up the next morning alert, clear on the events of the previous night, and ready to play two.