LaCock Hardly Misses a Beat in the Heartland : Despite Undergoing Recent Angioplasty, Former Major Leaguer From Taft High Continues Through Life on the Move

At first, Pete LaCock didn’t know what to make of the sensation in his chest.

Maybe it was indigestion, he thought, the aftermath of a Fourth of July barbecue a few hours earlier. Or maybe there was some other harmless reason for it.

Only briefly did he consider that the slight pain might be from his heart. He had run several marathons and was training for a triathlon. He was a former major league baseball player. Forty-three-year-old people in that kind of physical condition don’t have bad tickers, he figured.

However, the discomfort would not disappear.

“I probably would have totally ignored it if I hadn’t worked for the American Heart Assn. for five years,” said Janna LaCock, Pete’s wife.

They decided not to take chances and went that evening to a hospital near their home in Overland Park, Kan.

“The EKG [electrocardiogram] was fine and the blood work-up was fine, but they suggested I go back the next day for a stress test,” LaCock said. “They found out I had 100% blockage in the left side of my heart.”

LaCock was admitted to the hospital and had a heart attack that night, although he didn’t feel it. The doctors performed angioplasty a few hours later and LaCock returned home earlier this week to recuperate.

“I learned that you can’t fool around with those things,” LaCock said. “It’s been a real eye-opener.”

Strangely enough, LaCock believes that training for a triathlon helped him survive because it made the right side of his heart stronger.

“It would have been a lot worse,” LaCock said. “The training saved my life.”

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Ironically, trying to help save lives is the reason LaCock runs.

Formerly an outstanding football and baseball player at Taft High and later a nine-year major leaguer with the Chicago Cubs and Kansas City Royals, LaCock has been involved the past few years in raising funds for the Leukemia Society of America through its Team in Training program.

The program, which started with one runner at the New York City Marathon in 1986, has grown to more than 7,000 members. It raises money to combat leukemia through pledges secured by participants, in the name of someone afflicted with the disease, at marathons around the world.

LaCock has run in several marathons on behalf of ill children and Janna is an executive director at the society’s Mid-America Chapter in Shawnee Mission, Kan. He was preparing for the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii in October, a new fund-raising venture for the organization, when he was forced to stop last week.

“I had just finished a ‘brick workout,’ ” LaCock said. “That’s when you ride the bike for so many miles and then you run for so many miles, back to back.”

LaCock started visiting hospitals in Kansas City when he joined the Royals in 1977 and was moved by the plight of the children and their families. One incident in early 1979 touched him deeply.

At the University of Kansas Medical Center, LaCock met the family of Bob Shipley, whose 9-year-old son, Nathan, was undergoing treatment for leukemia. The family traveled from Dodge City, in the southwestern part of the state, to the hospital in Kansas City.

“They basically lived at the hospital,” LaCock said. “They stayed in the room with their son.”

The stay lasted five months. Nathan died that June but LaCock’s visits to the hospital sparked a friendship that continues today.

“Pete has been a very special friend of ours,” said Shipley, an alcohol and drug counselor in Dodge City. “The thing that impressed me the most about him was that he would come up to the medical center and spend eight, nine hours with the kids. He always had time. . . . Pete is a person who just gives from his heart and he really cared about our family.”

After meeting the Shipleys, LaCock wanted to make it easier for the families of hospitalized children to endure the ordeal. He organized celebrity golf tournaments in Kansas City with the help of his father, “Hollywood Squares” host Peter Marshall, with the proceeds going to the first Ronald McDonald House in that city. The tournament was held for 13 years.

“My dad would bring in 30-40 celebrities from California and the community would become involved,” LaCock said. “The people here just open their arms to great causes.”

Now, much of LaCock’s time is divided among his home life with Janna and daughters Janae, 16, and Nicole, 14; his commitment to Team in Training, and his baseball camp in Branson, Mo., home to the largest collection of country music theaters outside of Nashville.

“It’s in the good old Bible Belt,” LaCock said. “It’s really a family-oriented area.”

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It’s a long way from America’s heartland to LaCock’s athletic roots in the San Fernando Valley.

He was born in Burbank and grew up in Woodland Hills. Relatively speaking, that is. For the most part, LaCock spent his free time surfing California beaches with his brother David.

“If there were waves, we were there,” LaCock said.

Back on dry land, LaCock played football and became an All-City and All-American defensive and offensive tackle at Taft. He was the West Valley League player of the year in 1969, his senior season, and was recruited by several four-year schools. But baseball got in the way.

Although LaCock wasn’t interested in playing baseball for the Toreadors, Coach Ray O’Connor talked him into it. O’Connor, also the school’s football co-coach, reasoned that a guy 6 feet 4 and 215 pounds who was loaded with athletic talent could help keep the powerful Taft program strong. LaCock, though, at first wasn’t sold on the idea.

“He asked me if I wanted to play baseball,” LaCock said. “I said I didn’t think I could do that because I wanted to surf.”

The coach persisted and got his man.

“I looked at him and said, ‘Pete, how much money can you make in surfing?’ ” O’Connor recalled. “He had a great arm and good speed. He could throw a football 55 yards without any problems, so I knew he could throw a baseball.”

A left-handed center fielder with a smooth swing, LaCock batted around .500 his senior season and signed for $58,000 with the Cubs, who made him their No. 1 pick in the January, 1970, draft.

After a few productive seasons in the minors and two brief stints with the Cubs in 1972 and ‘73, LaCock started the 1975 season with the club in the outfield and took over at first base when Andre Thornton injured his hand. However, he batted only .229, and dropped to .221 the following year.

The Cubs traded LaCock to Kansas City and he found American League pitching to his liking. LaCock, playing mostly first base, batted .303 in 88 games in 1977. He became the Royals’ starting first baseman the following season. He batted .295 and carried his hot hand into the playoffs, batting .364 in a league championship series won by the New York Yankees, 3-1.

In 1979, LaCock led AL first basemen in fielding and drove in a career-high 56 runs, but his average dipped to .277. The Royals traded with the Angels for Willie Aikens, a left-handed hitting phenom. LaCock split time between outfield and first base in 114 games.

The only splitting LaCock did after that was to the Japanese league. He became a free agent after the 1980 season and signed a two-year, $800,000 deal with the Yokohama Taiyo Whales.

“It’s a difficult transition for an American player,” LaCock said about Japanese baseball. “It would take all day to go into details.”

Some of his and Janna’s frustrations in Japan were chronicled in U.S. newspapers. The couple lived with their two daughters in a predominantly English-speaking section of Yokohama, a port city about 45 minutes south of Tokyo, but never felt at home.

LaCock’s problems with Whale management magnified the couple’s displeasure.

The Whales wouldn’t allow LaCock to chew tobacco, talk with opponents before a game or even smile at first base. He was fined once for leaving a game to be with Janna at a hospital for the birth of Nicole, and another time for laughing when a pop fly dropped between him and the pitcher.

By the middle of the second season, the Whales grew weary of the disagreements and bought out LaCock’s contract.

Back in Kansas City, LaCock worked for a finance company and briefly played for Winter Haven in the old Senior baseball league. Then he turned to running for the Leukemia Society of America and to his baseball camp.

The heart problem, LaCock said, will slow him temporarily but won’t keep him from participating in future marathons and triathlons.

“I’m just thankful I’ll be able to do [the Ironman] next year,” he said.