Live and learn: Beimel grows from hefty mistake

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VERO BEACH, Fla. -- Brand new tattoo this year for Los Angeles reliever Joe Beimel, and the count is full.

"Five months and two days," he says, slowly, in the early morning quiet of the Dodgers clubhouse here, glancing at the date on his wristwatch for accuracy. "Been five months and two days ago that I quit drinking."

Which puts today, the day of our conversation, at ... five months exactly since the Dodgers opened their NL divisional playoff series with the New York Mets, playing from behind immediately because of the absence of their left-handed relief specialist.

Joe Beimel appeared in 62 games last season with a 2.96 ERA. (Getty Images)

Beimel was unavailable because he had badly cut a finger on his pitching hand in a 2 a.m. bar room accident two days earlier. He lied about it, bled all over himself in the bullpen when he tried to take his stitches for a test drive, and had to go home and watch the playoffs all by himself.

Yes, as he looks to put the pieces of his career back together, Beimel this summer will find himself in plenty of full counts -- and not just the three-balls, two-strikes kind.

The tattoo is on his right bicep and depicts a heart cracked in half, with a sketch of a city skyline inside and a banner stretching across that reads "Only God Knows Why.".

The heart represents his. The skyline is New York's.

"It's just something to remind me of what happened," Beimel says. "And of what can happen if I go out and drink. The consequences you take, the risk in doing something like that ..."

He pauses to let the words soak in, and continues his story. It is a story he doesn't mind telling, not because all has been forgotten and forgiven, but because he learned the hard way that a man who is dishonest with others is rarely honest with himself, either.

"I'm not going to be afraid of it," he says. "It's something I did. It was a big part of my life. It changed me forever. As hard as it was to get through, I look at it as a positive.

"I quit drinking. It made me open my eyes and realize what I have here. I'm in a position everyone wants to be in as a kid. When you do it your whole life, literally I've been playing since I was 4 years old trying to get to the big leagues ... I'm where I want to be. And to risk it with everything doesn't make any sense."

He is not a marquee name. He is not a star. Beimel has been kicking around professional baseball for nine seasons in the have-gun-will-travel way that lefty relievers often do. Pittsburgh. Tampa Bay. Minnesota. The Dodgers.

"It's kind of weird," he says. "Because in '04, I had probably the worst season I've ever had. Then, last year was the best season I ever had. But that last month pretty much ruined it."