Ojeda Ends Silence, Prepares for Return : Baseball: Pitcher says slouching in boat seat saved his life in accident that killed two teammates.

Bob Ojeda says he never lost consciousness and knew almost immediately that his two Cleveland Indian teammates had been killed when their boat slammed into a dock on a central Florida lake three months ago.

Ojeda, nervous and with a scarred forehead visible beneath the bill of his cap, spoke with the media in public Friday for the first time since the March 22 boating accident that killed relief pitchers Steve Olin and former Dodger Tim Crews.

The three had gone onto Little Lake Nellie to fish after a family picnic when the boat, driven by Crews, hit the dock. Olin, 27, was killed instantly, and Crews, 31, was pronounced dead the next day.

Ojeda, 35, needed surgery to re-attach his scalp.

“We were going, and bam! I don’t remember the bam part,” Ojeda said, sitting in his uniform in the Indians’ dugout at Cleveland Stadium. “Then I heard some lady hollering, ‘Are you guys OK?’ And I told her, ‘No, we need help.’ EMS got there in five minutes, and if they hadn’t, I would have bled to death. They were tremendous.”

Ojeda said he saw Olin and Crews two seconds after impact and knew they could not be saved.

“I never was knocked out,” he said. “They were gone.”

Ojeda suspects he was spared because he slouches. Olin and Crews both sustained severe head injuries.

“I was inches away from the guys, but I slouch,” Ojeda said. “That’s why it missed me by half an inch.”

Beer and vodka were found on the boat, and tests showed that Crews was legally drunk at the time of the accident. Only negligible amounts of alcohol were found in Olin and Ojeda.

But both Ojeda and Olin’s widow, Patti, contend that Crews was perfectly capable of operating the 18-foot boat.

“That became an issue,” Ojeda said. “I can’t sit here and try to rebuff whatever. I know Crewser. I know he could have done brain surgery, if he was a brain surgeon. Certainly we’re not choir boys. . . . Everybody does things, then something bad happens, and we all look for reasons--why did that happen?”

Patti Olin, who has attended about a dozen Indian games this season, agreed that alcohol did not cause the accident.

“I suppose I could say that Steve was a passenger and Steve was sober, but people would say he should have been smart enough to not get on that boat in the first place,” she told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in a story published Friday. “We spent the whole day with them, and I’m telling you, Steve would never have gotten on that boat if there was any doubt.

“I don’t care what the legal limit was, Tim Crews was not drunk. If he was, I wouldn’t have let my husband go out on a boat with him.”

Ojeda said he went into seclusion for about a month after leaving the hospital. But he has since begun adjusting, and he now hopes to return to playing. The Indians have set July 17 for his return to the rotation.

“You get knocked down, you’ve got to get up,” Ojeda said.