published on May 11, 2024 in today

Its never too late: Scott Spiezio opens up on addiction and moving forward

For the first time in more than a decade, Scott Spiezio says he feels like himself.

His days, spread across his 46-acre property in Morris, Illinois, provide him with solitude. He does CrossFit, looking to shed some of the extra pounds he has added since retiring from baseball in 2007. Every once in a while, he’ll get to work typing out a few pages for a book on his 12-year MLB career and the struggles that followed it. He’s even considered starting a podcast. In his free time, he’ll stop by to help out his father, Ed, at the furniture shop he’s had for years nearby.

Spiezio’s kids visit often to use the home gym in his garage. Sometimes, they’ll ask their father to toss them a few pitches in his home batting cage or challenge their old man to a game of H-O-R-S-E at the compound’s basketball court.

A year ago, the former frontman of Sandfrog — Spiezio’s metal band — taught his oldest son, Tyler, how to play guitar along with a few power chords. Cody, born at the height of his dad’s playing career, learned to play the drums.

When Spiezio, 47, talks about what’s next, it ideally could look something like this. Perhaps he could get into coaching or broadcasting. Tyler is a tight end at Williams College in Massachusetts, and Cody is set to attend Spiezio’s alma mater at the University of Illinois. Maybe one day Spiezio could go back to school and finish up that business degree. The three could get an apartment together, maybe even start a band.

That’s what Spiezio dreams about now.

“I think it’s great,” he said with a chuckle. “They don’t, but we’ll see.”

It’s not that Spiezio doesn’t enjoy talking about what he is best known for — the eight pitches and a prayer that led to his momentum-turning three-run home run off Félix Rodríguez in Game 6 of the 2002 World Series. But it took until the second hour of a recent conversation with The Athletic for the at-bat to even come up.

“It’s the biggest moment of my career, probably,” Spiezio said.

Earlier this month, Fox Sports West revisited the Angels’ lone World Series title in 2002 and had the franchise hero stand in his garage to record a short video for the team’s official Twitter account. For the umpteenth time, Spiezio described the play.

Our guy Spiezio took a trip down memory lane and chatted about his clutch three-run homer. 🙌 #CallingAllAngels pic.twitter.com/KJTGc8eJPr

— Los Angeles Angels (@Angels) April 30, 2020

But it’s the moments that have come since that Spiezio is ready to talk about.

Around the 50-minute mark of our phone call, he stopped and glanced above his TV. He spotted the photos of his four children, whose lives he considered himself lucky to still be a part of. He then spotted an engraved cross with “II” marked in Roman numerals.

Spiezio said the same number appeared on the coins that he handed out on April 5, when he and his family celebrated his two years of sobriety from alcohol and substance abuse. He said he began to feel like himself at the 12-month mark. After 14 months, he said he started to regain some memories. Now at a full 25 months of being sober, Spiezio is ready to start thinking about the next chapter — one that he said he’s fortunate to even have.

“I finally had had enough,” Spiezio told The Athletic. “I had to change my ways. I wish it was sooner than that. There’s a lot of things I wish that I hadn’t done.

“It gets to the point where you’re like, ‘Either this is the way I’m going to live the rest of my life and I’m either going to get in deep trouble, or I’m going to die.’ I did not want that to be on my gravestone, the way that my kids remembered me.”

Spiezio, who came up with Oakland as a sixth-round pick by the A’s in 1993, enjoyed the best stretch of his career as an Angel in 2002 and 2003, establishing himself as a quality switch-hitting option at first base. But after the 2003 season, the Angels wanted to move Spiezio into a limited role, potentially shifting Darin Erstad from center field to first base. A last-ditch effort to bring back Spiezio as a utility man with a pay cut that the Los Angeles Times dubbed as “more than 50 percent” was rejected. Ultimately, Spiezio took a three-year, $9.15 million deal with Seattle to be the Mariners’ everyday third baseman.

His offense dropped off a cliff. A fluke back strain while fielding a pop-up near the mound in spring training threatened his career. “They were telling him he’d never play again, and never walk again,” his father Ed said. Spiezio’s OPS dropped more than 100 points to .634 in 2004, and then in 2005, an oblique issue kept him off the field yet again. That August, Seattle released Spiezio, whose batting average over parts of two seasons with the club was .198.

“I started kind of feeling bad for myself,” Spiezio said. “I didn’t want to leave Anaheim. I felt a little bit forced out. Once I left Anaheim, it kind of changed everything, not necessarily for the better.”

Off the field, Spiezio was in the midst of a divorce from his first wife, and then he quickly remarried. Being a free agent gave him the chance to start fresh, or so he thought. He finished that year unsigned. The depression of unemployment pushed Spiezio even further downward.

“I think that really hit him like a ton of bricks,” Ed Spiezio said. “His world was coming to an end, at least he thought so. I think he felt that maybe it’s time for me to do what I want to do instead of doing what I’m supposed to do. I think his whole perspective on life changed in that, from that point on, it led to really bad choices.”

Scott Spiezio said someone close to him suggested that he try cocaine to take off the edge. According to him, that November was the first he did drugs.

“I didn’t know if I was going to play again in 2006,” Spiezio said. “I knew it was wrong. I did it, and the bad thing was I liked it. I didn’t think it was that bad. The problem is, it’s like the devil. It lures you in and then it becomes a burden on you.”

To Spiezio’s recollection, he managed things pretty well in 2006. The Cardinals signed him to a minor-league contract early in spring training. He wore the same No. 26 for the Cardinals that his father did in his five years in St. Louis including two World Series runs.

Tony La Russa, then the Cardinals’ manager, lauded Spiezio’s competitiveness. The utilityman earned a spot with the club and found a role off the bench as a pinch-hitter, third baseman and outfielder. His goatee made him a fan favorite. He had his best offensive season, posting a career-best .862 OPS as the 83-win Cardinals stormed to an improbable World Series title.

However, Spiezio said he spent that 2006 season in the early stages of an addiction that would overcome his life for more than a decade. Spiezio, who said he rarely drank during his time with the Angels, began to drink heavily in St. Louis, often mixing his drinking with his cocaine use.

“There’s a person that might do some evil things or horrible things while they’re under the influence and not act like themselves, but that’s not who they really are,” Spiezio said. “That’s alcohol and drug-induced psychosis.”

His parents lived just four hours away, but Spiezio said he wasn’t on speaking terms with either of them. His grip on what had originally been a habit was slipping. Ed and Scott Spiezio became the first-ever father and son to each win a World Series with the same franchise, but neither acknowledged the feat until just before Opening Day 2007, when Scott invited Ed to present him with his ring as Cardinals announcer Mike Shannon (Ed’s former Cardinals teammate) highlighted the accomplishment to the Busch Stadium crowd.

Ed labored over the decision. He spoke to his wife, Verna, asking if it was time he reconnected with his son after two and a half years. The toll of stress and constant worry had worn on each of them. Ed said he fell into a depression of his own. Constantly, the parents questioned how a son who refused to so much as take aspirin in the minor leagues would suddenly allow his life to be overwhelmed by addiction.

“He didn’t like pills, he didn’t like booze, he didn’t like anything,” Ed said of Scott. “It’s hard to believe how things like that can turn around 180 degrees. You’re just not ready for it.”

Ed and Verna agreed to take the one-day trip to St. Louis to present Scott with his World Series ring. They also attended a day-long seminar aimed at parents of struggling addicts to educate themselves on how to get back the version of the son they knew.

“I must’ve taken like 30 pages of notes,” Ed said, “trying to figure out and make it happen.”

Scott Spiezio’s last major-league at-bats came in 2007. (Jeff Roberson / Associated Press Photo)

When the Cardinals signed Scott Spiezio to a two-year, $4.5 million deal that offseason, he felt scared — afraid to reveal the personal issues that were tearing apart his life and that would ultimately end his career. He said he used the death of Cardinals teammate Josh Hancock, who was killed that April driving while intoxicated, as an excuse to use even more. Spiezio said he started to drink before games. By August, things reached a point where he approached the Cardinals, who put him on the restricted list as he went to a rehabilitation center in nearby St. Charles.

Then-Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he had no idea of Spiezio’s issues before the infielder approached him. When he returned that September, Spiezio told reporters he was “out of control.”

“I know that they probably had people that I could’ve talked to, but I was afraid that I’d lose my job or something like that,” Spiezio said. “I was afraid that there would be consequences at the end if I did. But finally it came to the point where I knew if I didn’t do something, I didn’t know what would happen.”

Spiezio struggled, even in rehab. He admitted to the Los Angeles Times in 2009 he only did enough to get back to baseball as soon as possible.

It was the first of 11 trips Spiezio would make to rehab over the next decade. The 12 games that Spiezio played after his return in September of 2007 were his last in the big leagues.

His struggles escalated that December, when a night of drinking in Huntington Beach culminated in Spiezio skipping his car into a curb and crashing into a fence, then punching a friend while attempting to help clean up. The Cardinals released Spiezio that February when Orange County officials issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of hit-and-run, driving under the influence and assault and battery. Spiezio received three years of probation on a plea bargain. He tried latching on with the Atlanta Braves, but he said a return at that time “wasn’t in my heart.”

Spiezio’s comeback attempt continued as he toiled away in independent ball. At 36 years old, the itch to play persisted, even as he battled his struggles with addiction. It lasted a combined 70 games for the Orange County Flyers of the Golden Baseball League and the Atlantic League’s Newark Bears. That remains the last organized baseball Spiezio ever played.

It would take close to a decade for him to get his life to where it is now.

“If I had to do it over in early 2007 and 2008. I would’ve been more honest than I was, and not as ashamed,” Spiezio said. “I would’ve just said, ‘Hey listen, if this is something that I don’t correct, it’s going to ruin my career and it’s going to ruin my life.’”

Spiezio doesn’t remember exactly when or what drove him on the day he decided to truly commit to sobriety.

Before then, he said much of his days in retirement were spent in his self-described man cave, sitting and watching TV. He invited friends, who brought beer and alcohol even if Spiezio himself didn’t indulge. Eventually, he did. He said one shot of alcohol became 10 or 20. The days faded and blended together. He said he found himself lacking energy or drive, and when he did see his children, he often found himself retreating back to the couch.

“I was out there playing in front of 50,000 people, whatever it was,” Spiezio said. “The adrenaline of playing every day, it was hard when I came off of that and was just secluded in the middle of 46 acres in a small town. It was a lot for me to deal with.

“I was sitting on money, and then also if I called anybody and said, ‘Hey, come on over and bring alcohol or whatever,’ I had a lot of people that would do that as well.”

Things reached the point where Spiezio handed over his bank accounts to his father, who still runs them to this day. Spiezio said he briefly gave up his car and driving altogether, as he sought any measure necessary to get his life back within a reasonable level of control. A doctor’s visit just more than two years ago brought with it a stern warning.

You’ve got to turn it around now, or you won’t be here.

“He realized at that time, they were very serious, and they knew what the hell they were talking about,” Ed Spiezio said. “I think it finally hit home.

“You get below the curb. You’re down below the gutter. It’s either you’re gonna make it from that point … or you don’t exist anymore.”

The friends who associated themselves with alcohol were gradually removed from Scott Spiezio’s phone.

“I’d block people’s numbers,” Spiezio said. “I still have people’s numbers blocked. In the past, I’d feel bad about that, but I don’t anymore because I have to protect myself and my family. Even people that don’t have bad intentions. They’re bringing stuff around me that could lead me down a path I don’t want to go in anymore.

“All my bad decisions were made when I was under the influence, things that you can’t take back. Whenever I felt a craving or something like that coming on, I would just think back to the negative. I call it ‘playing back the tape’ — the negative things that I did to hurt the people that I love dearly and I never would have done in my right state of mind.”

Spiezio said he underwent counseling once a week, attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and consulted frequently with doctors. He reinvested himself with his Christian faith at the urging of his dad. Before long, Spiezio reconnected with old teammates, speaking at different points with Albert Pujols, David Eckstein, Jim Edmonds, Troy Percival and Tim Salmon. To this day, Spiezio says he remains in contact with Mike Scioscia, Tony La Russa and Joe Maddon.

Spiezio’s ongoing sobriety has him feeling better than ever. At one point, he said, the cravings for alcohol and drugs just stopped.

But he is well aware of the ongoing battle he is facing. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Spiezio served as a guest speaker for baseball teams in the area, offering details of his own struggles in order to help others. He has remained vocal on Facebook, leading to multiple unexpected messages from former teammates asking for help with struggles of their own.

“It’s never too late to get help, never too late to get back on track,” Spiezio said. “Never give up, never stop fighting, tooth and nail. When you give up — 11 rehabs in 10 years is not fun, but it was just scratching and, eventually, it clicked for me. Sometimes, it clicks after one rehab for people.

“Sometimes, it sounds like I think that I countered it, but I know in my head you can never conquer this because it’s a disease. But I’m to the point now where I know how to stay on track and know what not to do to keep my life the way that I like it.”

As he spoke, Spiezio began tapping on the table. He noted his two-year coin on the desk, right next to the phone. It’s the same coin he gave his family, to those closest to him who helped him turn around his life.

“I told him, making the major leagues might be one in a million. Doing what you did in the World Series might be one in three to five million,” Ed Spiezio said. “But what you just did — turning your life around — that was harder than anything. That was the toughest thing he had to do in his life.”

(Photo of Ed, Cody, Tyler, Scott, Tessa and Verna Spiezio: Courtesy of Scott Spiezio)

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