Young restless for fresh start with Nats
By Scott Miller | CBS SportsLine.com Senior Writer Follow ScottMiller: Five things to know
VIERA, Fla. -- There is a pasture with horses running around it just down the road. It must be 25 miles to the nearest tree. If this isn't the end of the baseball earth, it's only a freeway exit or two away.
And the thing is, after the most traumatic year of his life, veteran Dmitri Young is still adjusting to his new surroundings.
"Let me put it to you this way: I'm surprised to be here in 2007," says Young, seated at a picnic table, eyes shaded by designer sunglasses.
Here in exile as a non-roster player, dressing at the Washington Nationals' minor league complex?
|
|
| Dmitri Young spent five seasons in Detroit before being released. (Getty Images) |
He pauses, allowing the words to soak into the still air that once was filled by cheering fans and a soaring career.
It was in November, he says, when he became so ill that his ex-wife called 911. He spent four days in a Fort Lauderdale hospital, three in the intensive care unit.
The diagnosis: Diabetes.
The result?
"I've found out who I am as a person," he says. "You realize you've got a second chance on life. I was supposed to be dead, with where my blood sugar was at. That's what the doctors and everybody who knows about diabetes told me, with where my numbers were at.
"They can't believe that I'm standing here talking about it."
There is plenty for Young to discuss this spring, stuff that would make Dr. Phil giddy with excitement, stuff that would fill a season's worth of some cheesy reality show.
Diabetes. As if there were a shortage of other demons dancing around his skull over the past 12-month period that, if it didn't ruin Young's life, certainly tarnished his reputation and forced him to search for a new blueprint.
There was the strained right quadriceps that shelved him early last season. There was the domestic violence charge over a May incident with a now-former girlfriend to which he pleaded no contest. There was the leave of absence from the Detroit Tigers so he could enter an alcohol rehabilitation center in Malibu, Calif., for a month beginning in late May.
There were the warm emotions when he rejoined the Tigers following that, only to watch them turn to ashes when he was released in early September. And there was the absolute agony as the team that was his life for the past five years stormed through the playoffs and advanced to the World Series while Young not only was forced to watch from the sidelines, but. ...
Well, the timing of this part of the story is almost unbelievable.
As the Tigers charged into their first postseason since 1987 and the city of Detroit roared in October, Young essentially was a prisoner in his rented house in Farmington Hills as part of his punishment from the domestic abuse charge.
"In October, I had to do a breathalyzer for 30 straight days before I could leave the state," Young says. "And I had clinical depression because the Tigers were in the playoffs and I wasn't realizing my dream.
"I couldn't really go anywhere because people recognized me all over and would throw me a pity party. I couldn't go get milk from the store. It was a drag. It sucked.
"Especially for as many things as I'd done for the city in previous years. To go out like that, especially when I'm not that kind of person ... it kind of wears on you."
Regarding the assault charge, Young, who also is going through a divorce, says he held the woman down during an argument "to keep her from hitting me. Naturally, she bruised up."
For that, he eventually received 12 months' probation. That isn't up until September. Once a month, he must check in with his probation officer in Michigan.
Regarding the alcohol rehab, he says, "it definitely was a positive to get away, to listen to other people's problems. You can apply those to yourself, listen to how people want to change. It helps change you."
Change isn't always something most people figured Young needed. The most perplexing thing about this tangled web is that, through the years, Young mostly has been viewed as one of baseball's good guys. Austin Kearns, an outfielder with the Nationals, was a minor league prospect in Cincinnati during the later part of Young's 1998-2001 stint with the Reds and still talks about his first major league spring training.
"He told us, 'Anything you need -- bats, batting gloves, shoes -- anything you see with my number on it, feel free to take,'" Kearns says. "And he told us we didn't even need to ask."
Sitting on the picnic table outside the Nationals' minor league complex on a warm Florida morning, those days seem so long ago. In Lakeland on Tuesday, Tigers manager Jim Leyland was blasting Young for something he said the other day, essentially that the Tigers released him because they didn't want any part of his legal issues and that for all he had done for the city and for the organization, it was cold and heartless. Young, Leyland said, was "out of line" and he was released because "he was not an asset to our club."
"He's not my manager anymore," Young says, refusing to back down. "I think what I think. I wish them all well."
Anyway, Young essentially has checked himself into another rehab clinic this spring -- a rehab clinic for baseball careers. On this Island for Misfit Toys of a team, the veterans here mostly are journeymen like Young looking for a second -- or third or fourth -- chance. And Washington, not in a spending mood until the club moves into a brand new stadium in 2008, is happy to provide it.
Nationals GM Jim Bowden -- who was Cincinnati's GM when the one-time slugger was there -- is Young's sponsor.
"I wasn't planning on playing baseball this year," Young says. "My agent was talking with (Bowden) about getting me here, and I basically said, 'OK, I'll do it because of Jim Bowden.'"
In Detroit, where they're still not fully sure how Young's downward spiral accelerated so quickly, many are pulling for him from afar.
"I think if Dmitri wants to finish his career on a high note, I respect that," Tigers hitting coach Andy Van Slyke says. "The way things worked out for him last year was not something any athlete wants to go through. The reality is, very few athletes go out on their own terms.
"Speaking as a former player, when you don't go out on your terms, it takes you a long time to get over it. When you're a passionate guy, there's almost a mourning period."
Young, who can play first base and the outfield, is expected to make a strong run at breaking camp with the Nationals. It isn't, after all, as if the Nationals are employing Harmon Killebrew at first base or Willie Mays in the outfield. Right now, with Nick Johnson recovering from a broken leg, Travis Lee, a veteran who has washed out elsewhere, and prospect Larry Broadway are the two most viable candidates to play first. And Kearns and Ryan Church line up at the corners in an outfield that could use depth.
Young's prospects for survival here seem fairly decent, at worst.
"That or bust," he says. "If I don't make the team, I'm going to travel. Anywhere, USA, where no one can find me."
Aside from reporting in to his probation officer, his ties with Michigan were cut completely at the end of October, when his 30-day breathalyzer stint finished. First chance he had in early November, he packed up and drove to his native California.
He still remembers crossing the state line and seeing Michigan in his rearview mirror, too.
"I was happy as hell," he says. "I screamed, loud. 'Finally, out of this bastard!'
"Not to say Michigan is a bad state, but the state it put me in, I was glad to get out."
His new state? He says the kids surrounding him in Washington's minor league complex have helped bring him back to his roots and rekindled his passion for the game. He will repay them, he says, by dispensing whatever advice and wisdom he can. How to act like a big leaguer. What playing in Fenway Park is really like.
"Who knows," he says. "There might be two future Hall of Famers in here."
Meanwhile, he injects himself with insulin four times a day, and grabs a soft drink or -- get this -- a roll of Life Savers when his blood sugar is down.
Honest to gosh, that's what he says.
Life Savers.
