When Nick Willhite moves around his one-bedroom apartment in Murray he does not bump into mementos from the old days. There are no photos of him posing with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, the Los Angeles Dodgers pitchers who were his staffmates in the '60s. There are no headlines
from the three World Series he and the Dodgers appeared in. The apartment's decor is early spartan. It has the look of someone getting started, not someone with a big league past.For Willhite, it's what he prefers. He's 50 now, 24 seasons removed from his last year with the Dodgers, in 1967, when he took a left arm that could throw in the 90's on a bad day, that had endorsed a $50,000 check just seven years earlier when he signed as an 18-year-old bonus baby out of Denver, and packed it on a plane bound for early retirement.
The arm wasn't the problem. Neither was being Koufax's understudy the problem (although coming onto the Dodger staff as a lefthander in 1963 could never qualify as terrific timing, no matter who you were). The problem was that Willhite, at 26, knew he was addicted to alcohol - that he had a real weakness for highballs. If he got away from the pressures of baseball he reasoned that he could also lose his grip on the bottle.
He was wrong of course. Life after baseball had its pressures too. He continued to drink - in an attempt to get rid of the problems created by his drinking. He bounced from job to job. For a time in the early '70s he worked with the pitchers at BYU, when Glen Tuckett was the Cougars head coach. He worked as a coach with the Kansas City Royals, the Milwaukee Brewers and the New York Yankees. All of them brief stints. The hard part was holding a job and a drink.
He was a walking country song. He went through three marriages, numerous houses, even more numerous jobs, quite a few friends, and all of his World Series rings, which he pawned.
The story would be too sad to tell if Willhite wasn't telling it in the past tense.
He's in recovery now. It's been almost two years since he's touched a drink. He's going to school at the University of Utah, training to become a Certified Addiction Counselor. He's back in touch with his six children. He's back in touch period.
"See, there's a lot of me's out there," he says, explaining why he's gone public. "If by telling my story I can help just one person, that's enough."
By that barometer, he is already a success. Dave Anderson, a columnist for the New York Times, recently wrote about Willhite and got a letter from a recovering alcoholic, citing Willhite's story as his inspiration. Anderson sent Willhite a copy of the letter. "Don't feel like it was all for naught," he told him.
Willhite hopes accounts of his story published recently in the Washington Post and USA Today have the same kind of effect. And he hopes the speech he gave at a gathering of ex-ballplayers, held in conjunction with baseball's All-Star Game last month in Toronto, hit home with other Nick Willhites looking for help.
"It isn't easy, telling where I've been," says Willhite. "But I feel like it's something I have to do. It's something I have an obligation to do."
Not only does he want to give other alcoholics hope and inspiration, and not only does he want to dissuade youngsters from getting started with a drinking problem, but he wants to especially let other retired baseball players know that there is help available - the same help he credits with saving his life.
He says candidly that he may have ended his life two years ago had it not been for an organization called BAT (Baseball Assistance Team). A volunteer group that's headed by Joe Garagiola, BAT funnels funds raised from a variety of projects to down-and-out ex-big leaguers. And it provides emotional help. It was BAT that flew Willhite to Toronto last month.
When BAT first learned of Willhite's problems in October of 1989 they paid for alcohol-abuse rehabilitation at a center in Ft. Collins, Colo., they helped fund his schooling at the University of Utah, they even helped him find his 1963 World Series ring and, through the help of the Dodgers organization, get it back.
He wears that ring now, on the little finger of his right hand - a reminder of where he's been, not where he's going.
"I know now I could have played 10 more years," he says, realizing with hindsight that he could have outlasted Koufax. But if he talks wistfully about his sport, he also talks without rancor. You're never too old to be a comeback kid - the big leagues have taught him that. Baseball has been very, very good to him.