New Page 1


	The Manhattan Adult ADD Support Group We Offer Support & Information To Adults In NYC And The Surrounding Communities With ADD/ADHD We Are Not "Lazy, Crazy, Or Stupid"

ADD IN THE NEWS
New York Daily News, 4/29/06 EX-YANK HOWE DEAD AT 48 DRUG PROBLEMS, SUSPENSIONS TARNISHED CAREER by Peter Botte Steve Howe, who gets final out of 1981 World Series, is embraced by teammates after the Dodgers beat the Yankees. Steve Howe, the relief pitcher whose promising career was derailed by cocaine and alcohol abuse, died yesterday when his pickup truck rolled over in Coachella, Calif. The Yankees observed a moment of silence before last night's game for Howe, whose death came nearly 10 years after a star-crossed career marred by cocaine and alcohol abuse -- and seven substance-related suspensions -- concluded with the Bombers in 1996. He was 48. "This is very sad news, especially because Steve loved life so much," said Joe Torre, who managed Howe briefly in '96. "Although I only managed him for a short time, I will always remember his passion and determination." Howe, who won the 1980 NL Rookie of the Year award with Los Angeles in 1980 and was a key member of the Dodgers' World Series championship team the following season, was killed at 5:55 a.m. PDT, Dalyn Backes of the Riverside County coroner's office told The Associated Press. The accident occurred about 130 miles east of Los Angeles. According to reports out of California, the former pitcher was driving westbound on Interstate 10 around 5:30 a.m. when his truck drifted into the center median and flipped over after hitting an embankment. Howe reportedly was not wearing a seatbelt and was partially ejected from the vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene; police officials declined to say if there was evidence of drug or alcohol abuse, pending further investigation. Howe had been in Arizona on business and was driving back to the family home in Valencia, Calif., business partner Judy Welp said. Howe had owned an energy drink company in Arizona. "Steve played for me for five years and I thought the world of him," longtime Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda said. "I am truly sorry to hear about his passing and my deepest sympathies go out to his family." Howe made 229 of his 497 career appearances with the Yankees between 1991 and 1996. He finished his career with a record of 47-41, 91 saves and a 3.03 ERA with the Dodgers, Minnesota, Texas and Yankees. "I wish more people knew Steve Howe the way I knew him," Yanks GM Brian Cashman said. "His struggles in life were well documented, but he always tried to fight through them and I will always respect that." Howe was first suspended in May 1983 with the Dodgers and checked himself into a drug rehabilitation center for treatment for cocaine addiction. He was suspended again in September of that year after skipping a Dodgers team flight to Atlanta and refusing to submit to a urinalysis test. Three more failed drug tests that winter led commissioner Bowie Kuhn to suspend Howe for the entire 1984 season amid the most rampant era of drug use and corresponding suspensions in baseball history. The Dodgers and Twins both released an ineffective Howe after his reinstatement in 1985, starting him on a career path through various independent teams and Mexican League clubs over the next five years, as well as numerous relapses into drug dependency. With George Steinbrenner serving a suspension for the Howie Spira/Dave Winfield scandal, the Yankees signed Howe to a minor-league deal to help him finally get clean in February 1991. He posted a 1.68 ERA in 37 appearances for them that season. Still, Howe received a lifetime ban -- the first in baseball history for substance abuse -- from commissioner Fay Vincent in June 1992 after he was nabbed purchasing a gram of cocaine in Montana. That November, however, Howe was reinstated when an arbitrator ruled that the reliever depended on cocaine for helping him with attention deficit disorder. The Bombers quickly re-signed him, and after a brief stint in the minors, he donned pinstripes again late in the 1993 season. Amazingly, Howe was handed the job as full-time closer in 1994 and pitched brilliantly, recording 15 saves and a 1.80 ERA. By the next year, his struggles resurfaced and he was relegated to setup duty. After going 0-1 with a 6.35 ERA in 17 games in 1996, Howe was released by the Yankees for the final time in June -- midway through Torre's first year in the Bronx and the first of the Yanks' four World Series championship seasons in five years. Two days after the Yanks cut him loose, Howe was arrested at a Delta Airlines terminal at JFK Airport when a loaded .357 Magnum was discovered inside his suitcase. He later pleaded guilty to gun possession and was placed on three years' probation and given 150 hours of community service. Howe tried one more comeback in 1997 with Sioux Falls of the independent Northern League. In August of that year, he was critically injured in a motorcycle accident in Montana and charged with drunken driving. Howe is survived by his wife, Cindy, daughter Chelsi and son Brian. Copyright 2006 Daily News, LP ------------------------------------- A TRAGIC LIFE Steve Howe had a 17-year career in baseball that was marred by wasted potential. Here's a look back at his star-crossed playing days. 1980: Saves 17 games for Dodgers and beats out Expos' Bill Gullickson for NL Rookie of the Year honors. 1983: Enters drug rehab for cocaine in May, is suspended for missing Dodgers team flight in September and is suspended for 1984 season for positive drug test in December. 1985: Is released by Dodgers in July and signed by Twins in August. 1986-87: Pitches for independent team in California, then in Mexican League before catching on with Rangers. 1988-89: Out of baseball. 1990-91: Back in independent league, then joins Yankees on minor league deal before being called up and serving as reliable setup reliever. 1991: Is arrested in Montana for cocaine possession. 1992: After pleading guilty to misdemeanor for attempting to buy cocaine, having had six previous suspensions from baseball, receives permanent ban in June, which is overturned by arbitrator in November. 1996: Two days after being released by Yankees, is arrested at JFK for carrying a loaded gun in his luggage. Receives three years probation. ----------------------------------------------- New York Daily News, 4/29/06 HOWE LIVED A LIFE WITHOUT RESTRAINTS by Filip Bondy The police are saying that Steve Howe wasn't wearing a seatbelt when his pickup truck rolled over early Friday morning in Coachella, Calif., which should surprise no one who knew the guy. Howe died tragically, though it is not at all clear what happened this time, why his vehicle drifted and hit a center divider. There is no sense in guessing, because Howe was as unpredictable as they come. He lived life a little crazily, even while he would brag to teammates and friends about his two beloved kids back home. He'd had a ton of problems with drugs, had risen and fallen and driven several managers to the brink of madness along the way. "He was always on the edge, pushing the envelope," Don Mattingly said Friday night, after the Yankees lost to Toronto, 7-2. "He was wired all the time." Howe, 48, was the perfect reliever in that way, built for crisis. There was no greater adrenaline rush than coming into a game right smack in the middle of a mess, trying to clean it up. Howe had become an expert at that, in real life. In his own private world, though, Howe had usually caused the jam in the first place. He didn't need a starter. He was suspended or banished from baseball several times in his career because of drugs, and yet Howe owned the innate talent to pitch his way back onto the mound every time, whenever somebody gave him that opportunity. The man who gave him those second, third and fourth chances was usually George Steinbrenner, who has always demonstrated a very public soft spot for the troubled and the lost. Steinbrenner had been suspended from baseball himself when the Yanks first signed Howe in 1991, but then soon The Boss was back and Howe was suspended. Somehow, Howe convinced an arbitrator that he required cocaine for his attention deficit disorder, a tactic that would never fly today, and so a ban was lifted and there was Steinbrenner yet again, arms open. He gave Howe another shot in 1993 and before you knew it the pitcher was the Yanks' most effective closer in 1994, with 15 saves and a 1.80 ERA. The rebirth didn't last forever. No career ever does. And two days after the Yanks cut him in 1996, Howe was arrested at Kennedy Airport carrying a .357 Magnum. He squirmed off that hook, too, getting only probation and community service. He didn't always tell people the truth, and that probably included himself. But Howe made memories in New York, was a real character with real character flaws. Bernie Williams talked Friday about exactly that -- how Howe was wacky in the clubhouse, dead serious on the mound. "He'd do anything for his teammates," Williams said. "He tried to keep us loose in the clubhouse. He was a prankster. He took me under his wing." It is hard to imagine how a wild personality like Howe would be something of a mentor for a steady, straight-arrow star like Williams. But Howe was like that. He could be extremely helpful, amiable. He also just happened to be in trouble, almost all the time. Sometimes now, immersed in the steroid scandals that began in the late 1990s, we forget that cocaine was the real scourge back in the late `80s, early `90s. The drug did in Dwight Gooden, and it effectively ruined Howe's career. You can remember Howe today any way you'd like. As a pathetic drug addict, subverting his own cushy lifestyle, kidding himself and everybody else who loved him. Or as a battler with a disease, who could never quite conquer his own demons. As a tomato can on the mound, in his last couple years at Yankee Stadium. Or as a dominant reliever for the Dodgers, with a championship ring from 1981, with a 1.44 ERA and 18 saves in 1984. You can wonder, too, what would have happened if some authority figure had been tougher with Howe earlier in his career. What would have happened if Steinbrenner had turned his back? To this day, Micheal Ray Richardson credits NBA commissioner David Stern with saving his life by banning Richardson from basketball for his cocaine addiction. Maybe it would have worked with Howe. Maybe not. We don't know enough about Howe anymore, except that he drove without a seatbelt until his dying day. Copyright 2006 Daily News, LP ----------------------------------------- New York Times, 4/29/06 A LIFE FILLED WITH TROUBLE COMES TO A SAD END by Murray Chass Slightly more than 16 years apart, Steve Howe and Billy Martin, two troubled baseball souls whose most notorious times occurred with the Yankees, died in similar accidents while riding in their pickup trucks. Martin, who died on Christmas in 1989, had a stormy tenure as the manager of the Yankees and was most notoriously known for his departures. He resigned under pressure once, and George Steinbrenner fired him four other times. Baseball commissioners suspended Howe seven times, the last time when he was pitching for the Yankees. Both are baseball records. Howe was killed yesterday, the authorities said, when his pickup truck rolled over in Coachella, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles, at 5:55 a.m. Pacific time. In 1997, when Howe was trying to make a comeback in an independent league, he was badly injured in a motorcycle accident in Montana. In that instance, he was charged with drunken driving. There was no immediate word on the cause of Howe's fatal accident. Howe, who turned 48 last month, was addicted to cocaine and alcohol. Even his biggest supporters, including his baseball agent, Richard Moss, acknowledged that he had problems. Howe preceded the steroids era, but he underwent more tests for drugs than any player ever will for steroids. Fay Vincent, the baseball commissioner who issued Howe's seventh suspension, which an arbitrator overturned, recalled yesterday that when Howe was out of baseball after suspension No. 6, he appealed to Vincent to be reinstated. "He wanted one more chance," Vincent said in a telephone interview. "He begged me to give him one more chance. He got religion and had cleaned up his life. I sent him to the minors and had him tested. He passed all the tests. The Yankees brought him up. He almost immediately bought drugs from an undercover agent." Vincent suspended Howe for life in June 1992. The players association challenged the suspension, and in a departure from usual practice, Moss, the union's former general counsel, argued the case before an arbitrator, George Nicolau. "He was misdiagnosed," Moss said in a telephone interview. "He was sent to programs that had nothing to do with his disease." Howe, Moss argued, had attention deficit disorder, and that caused his addictions. Yankees officials strongly supported Howe, an effective relief pitcher. "George Steinbrenner was not sympathetic to Howe," Vincent recalled of the Yankees' principal owner, whom Vincent had suspended for other reasons. "When I called him and told him what I was doing, he said: 'You won't have any problem from me.' But I had problems with Michael and Showalter." Gene Michael, the Yankees' general manager, argued that baseball's drug policy was bad. Vincent strongly reminded Michael that as a club executive he was obliged to support the policy, not fight it. It's difficult to believe that any club executive today would criticize baseball's steroids testing policy. He wouldn't be around long if he did. The Mets, for example, issued a statement yesterday after one of their minor leaguers was suspended for 50 games for testing positive for use of an illegal performance-enhancing substance. "The Mets," the statement said, "are obviously disappointed that a member of our organization has tested positive. The Mets are fully supportive of Major League Baseball's joint drug policy." Nicolau agreed with Moss's argument on attention deficit disorder, finding that "an underlying psychiatric disorder" had contributed to Howe's cocaine addiction, and overturned the suspension, reducing it to time served. Howe pitched for the Yankees into the 1996 season, and they released him in June. Howe's troubles didn't end there. Two days after he was released, he was arrested at Kennedy Airport when security officers found a loaded .357 Magnum in his suitcase. He subsequently pleaded guilty to gun possession and was sentenced to three years' probation and 150 hours of community service. Moss said he hadn't seen Howe in a long time, but had last talked to him just before Christmas. "He told me his daughter was going to get married," Moss said. Moss, who generally felt very highly of all of his clients, said Howe was a good person despite his problems. "He got vilified in the press and got this reputation for being a bad guy," Moss said, "but talk to any player on the team he played for, and they'll tell you he was a wonderful guy. He was a sick guy and misdiagnosed." Moss added, "One of the proudest moments in my professional life was being able to get him back into baseball, seeing what his disease was and having him treated." The grievance victory had to be a highlight of Moss's career. Any time a lawyer can use something like attention deficit disorder to extricate a player from his seventh baseball suspension, he has to feel good. Howe, however, needed more than a good lawyer.

Home Page \| Preceding Article > \| Mailing List \| Contact Us