Mr. 3,000

One day in the classic comic strip Hagar the Horrible, main character Hagar was shown toasting the New Year. Another character quipped “Does he really have to toast each day individually?!” During that same year, I made a “resolution” to have at least one drink every day of the year. I was all of seventeen years old and I think I made it to somewhere in mid-May. Yeah, drinking was pretty much life from an early age. It took me nearly 20 years to realize the folly of such habits but it didn’t take nearly that long to learn I was an alcoholic.

Sometime around 1991 I read an article stating a person could be considered an alcoholic if he had a certain amount of drinks per occasion on a certain amount of occasions per week, month etc. I knew then, yet I did nothing. Drinking was too damn fun to even consider the possibility that it just might become a problem. The real problem is a drunk doesn’t know how big of a problem it can become until it becomes too big.

Those of you who have read past blogs of mine and the special few who helped me through those days know that I was in a very dark place when I took my last drink. I was contemplating suicide for the first and only time in my life. I just wanted the pain to end. I thought of so many different ways to do it and I had narrowed it down to a few different ways to make it look like an accident; at one point I actually practiced “accidentally” catching my arm in the seatbelt and plunging onto the street and into the path of an oncoming car. I was that desperate. Past blogs go more into detail of those days and if you’re so inclined, you can find the links on the page you’re reading now.

If there is any wisdom I can share, it’s that there is always hope. I’ve met people who thought their lives were over at 19, and others who got sober in their 70’s. I know men who lived out of shopping carts, eaten out of dumpsters and went years not having any food that hadn’t already had a bite taken out of it. I know women who were estranged from their entire families and guys who watched their fathers die in the bottom of a bottle of whiskey while setting upon the same paths themselves.

These people are now living lives beyond their wildest dreams; having seen their grown children for the first time in decades and their grandchildren for the first time ever in the same day. They’re living lives of service to others and creating joy not with the bottle but without it. They’re having children who will never see mommy or daddy drink and they’re going to ballgames with their sons and daughters; still enjoying the tailgate parties and drinking twice as many Pepsi’s as they used to margaritas and they’re enjoying cherished friendships with those who can drink like normal people. And they’re doing it all because they made a decision to seek change.

Several months ago I came upon the idea of checking up on how many days I had been sober. After all, sobriety is achieved one day at a time. Upon entering my sobriety date I learned I would, lord willing, reach 3,000 days sober on January 5^th, 2019. 3,000. That’s a milestone number in baseball terms. I thought about that first day, 24 hours sober for the first time in who knows how long. Over the years you may have heard a baseball term or two describing things outside baseball and the family I gained during my years in baseball proved to be vital in achieving and sustaining sobriety. It’s safe to say I very well may never had even a single day sober without certain members of my Padres family.

I left the Padres the day after I took my last drink and with less than 12 hours of sobriety under my belt, I had an early-morning conversation with my good friend Summer Serrano. That conversation did something for me I could not do for myself; see life from a perspective other than my own. Without getting into details, she told me how alcoholism affected her as a child, as a teen and as an adult.

Since then, she and her mom Delia have been huge supporters of my writing; it is safe to say that no one has been more supportive of my work. To show my humbled appreciation, I often shared my blogs with Summer before I shared them publicly, making her the first person to read them. Last week, I was excited not only for the opportunity to reach such a milestone of sobriety, but even more so to share it with her.

Now, I can only imagine the look in her eyes and the knowing smile she would have given me when I told her about it. Summer passed away suddenly and unexpectedly on Wednesday. There is really no way to accurately describe how I felt when I received the news. Initially I thought she was posting about another loss to her family and when I realized it was her; it took all I had to keep from breaking down in the lunch room at work.

When Tony Gwynn passed away, we all had each other. Fans gathered at his statue and we laughed, we cried, we consoled each other. When I think of Summer, I think of her as the epitome of “Each Other”. She was what it meant to be a fan. Her dedication to the Padres made the word “Fan” seem downright trivial, and understatement. As I had told her on many occasions, if baseball fandom was the military, Summer and the Madres would be Seal Team Six.

For a brief moment, I considering scrapping plans for this blog piece, at least the title. How could I use such a term when my Padres family is mourning such a tragic loss of a loved one? Then I laughed at myself, for I know damn well what Summer would have said to the idea. She would have given me that stern look of hers and said “Don’t you DARE let go of that idea, I love it!” She probably would have even shed a tear or two, considering her love of baseball and her even stronger love of the REAL Mr. 3000 in San Diego. Yeah, I think there would have been some tears. Tears of joy; rooted in her knowledge that she played a vital role in this sober life of mine.

I don’t know what heaven is. I know people have an idea of what it might be like, and we all have our ideas of what we hope it’s like. And if it’s anything like I hope it is, Press Gate Bruce surely came in for late inning relief of St. Peter sometime Tuesday night. Kevin Towers was just behind the gate, smiling and holding a bottle of Patron. Tony and Cammie are offering a seat next to them, and Summer is giving them that sly grin of hers while they wait for her to decide. Peach is there, along with Mike Darr, Darrel Akerfelds and all the loved ones our Padres family has lost over the years. But of course, Summer declines all their invites and takes a seat with her beloved grandparents, her chair right next to 106-year old rookie Ray Chavez.

And somewhere, from even higher above; from heaven’s press box, a familiar voice says “Oh Doctor, you can hang a star on that life..”