Lowe Reflects on Past Pain

The big-money pitcher was emotionally broke.

The coolest dude on the team was mentally cooked.

Eight months after breaking sports’ most legendary curse, Derek Lowe was too distracted to even break a bat.

It was July 2, a Saturday afternoon at Dodger Stadium, the bottom of the first inning, Lowe was in the dugout after giving up a home run to the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Chad Tracy.

The score was 1-1, but Lowe walked up to Manager Jim Tracy and pitching coach Jim Colborn with a message.

“I told them I couldn’t pitch anymore,” Lowe recalled. “I had reached my breaking point. For the first time in my career, I just didn’t care anymore.”

He asked them to remove him from the game. But the bullpen was too tired and the circumstances were too odd. They refused, urging Lowe to give it one more shot in the second inning.

First batter, first pitch, home run.

Second batter, first pitch, home run.

By the time he was removed after three innings, he had given up four homers, one-third as many as he once gave up in an entire season.

The Dodgers lost, 7-5; Derek Lowe was just lost, period.

“I’ve pitched in so many big games in my career, I always thought I could overcome anything,” he said. “But last summer, what happened in my personal life, I couldn’t overcome.”

Lowe was talking about his publicized marital problems with wife Trinka, a situation that brewed through the season before becoming public in late July amid reports that he was having an affair with Carolyn Hughes, Fox Sports Net’s Dodger reporter.

Lowe has since filed for divorce and moved in with Hughes, and says he finally has a handle on his personal affairs. The Dodgers have agreed by naming him the opening-day starter.

But last summer’s situation cost Hughes her job and nearly cost Lowe his sanity.

“It was hard, it was hurtful, it was embarrassing,” Lowe said Wednesday in Vero Beach. “You look at athletes, they say it shouldn’t affect you, but you take your uniform off and you drive home and you’re a person, and when things are bad, it’s really tough.”

Lowe wouldn’t talk about this last season. Few newspapers wrote about it in detail because players’ unsubstantiated private problems are generally considered unworthy of print unless they affect their play.

While not diminishing the pain felt by his wife and three children, Lowe now says that the impact on his work was huge.

“I don’t care what you do for a living, when you go through a divorce, it really affects your job,” he said.

He says he lost 25 pounds. He says he couldn’t eat or sleep. Clubhouse workers at Dodger Stadium confirm that on at least one occasion, he stayed there all night.

Known as a clubhouse leader, he said he became a drain.

“Young kids looked at veteran guys for leadership, but I was horrible at it,” he said. “I couldn’t help the young kids. My mind wasn’t in the right place.”

Known as the center of clubhouse conversation, he found even his best friends were worn down.

“I talked about this 24-7, and the guys were great about listening to me, but eventually they got tired of it,” he said. “I alienated myself from the team. People knew I was having a bad day and they didn’t look at me, they didn’t want to talk to me.”

By late July, Dodger owner Frank McCourt flew to New York to discuss the situation with Lowe.

“We wanted him to know that we were thinking about him,” McCourt said.

In late July, the Hughes accusations surfaced on the Internet, then Trinka Lowe gave several interviews.

At this point, at McCourt’s urging, Lowe met with club President Jamie McCourt, who Frank says has experience in marital counseling and law.

Sources say that meeting did not go well and that she wanted to trade him, although Frank McCourt denied it.

“As far as trying to trade him is concerned, that never happened,” Frank McCourt said. “Derek expressed accountability, he faced this challenge like a man, and we only offered our support.”

Lowe, the winning pitcher in the Boston Red Sox’s three series-clinching games during the magical 2004 postseason, considered going on the disabled list for emotional distress.

“In hindsight, maybe that was the thing to do,” he said.

But he had never been on the disabled list and was proud of it.

So Lowe kept pitching and wound up with a career-high 222 innings, but he says now he barely made it past July 2.

“You realize, you’re not Superman,” he said.

He said that shortly after his Arizona meltdown, he began divorce proceedings and the pressure eased.

The night of the Arizona loss, he was 5-9 with a 3.96 earned-run average. The rest of the season, he went 7-6 with a 3.24 ERA.

“Once I moved forward, the burden was off my shoulders, and I started pitching like I should have pitched the entire season,” he said.

Lowe would not discuss his relationship with Hughes, only to say, “What happened had nothing to do with Carolyn, I could have been playing in Kansas City and this would have happened. Neither one of us left our marriages for the other person. She got a divorce. I got a divorce. Totally separate.”

Lowe added that, “People are amazed we’re still together. People thought we had a fling. It was not a fling.”

Lowe said he also has a feeling of permanence in the clubhouse.

“After all that happened last year, I learned a lot about myself, I learned a lot about leaving personal stuff at the door,” he said. “I’m a better pitcher and better person today because of it.”

Not to mention, for the second consecutive season, an opening-day pitcher.

Grady Little said when he became the manager of his former player this winter, his opening-day-starter decision was easy.

“I’m doing this because he’s been there,” Little said. “He has seen the circus. He has learned how to deal with it.”

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.