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I'm mad as hell

I’ve spent the last two days trying to talk myself out of writing this article. In general I don’t believe sports should be used as a vehicle to promote political ideas or causes especially baseball. It’s a kids game grown men get paid a lot of money to play and it is strictly meant to be entertainment. Adenhart’s tragic death along with the other poor souls that perished in the same totally needless accident was the straw that broke this camels’ back. 

 

I have had to deal with drunk drivers off and on for most of my life and the sad fact here is most of you that read this all have similar stories you can share and yet we continue to do very little about the problem as these irresponsible animals get behind the wheel of a car and slaughter us at will. Most of us know someone who will drink and drive in the next 48 hours and most of will do very little or nothing about it. I include myself for large periods of my adult life. We really do have no excuse. We tolerate it because a lot of those doing it are our friends or relatives and the majority of them fortunately do not injure or kill another human being, but because we tolerate it at all, we enable the habitual drunks who do end up killing thousands of good Americans every year all because they couldn’t be bothered with controlling their own behavior no matter what the result.

 

The people who drink and drive and rack-up multiple infractions are despicable human beings and I am sad to say I have had friends and family who either are or have been members.  Drinking problems I can understand. Been there myself but, driving a car while drunk or on mind altering drugs, I cannot. I was never drunk enough to know I shouldn’t be driving and neither are they. The bottom line is they could care less and I have to ask why do we continue to put up with this kind of behavior? Pyscho babble aside, we do not have to tolerate it and if we are going to remain on the sidelines we need to spend our hard earned money on developing solutions that may inconvenience us all but such is the price for not taking a more proactive role. I for one am totally fed up and if anyone reading this thinks I am off base here, don’t let this web page hit you in the butt on your way out.

 

This is going to get a little long, but I want to relate my personal experiences, partly to explain my ire, but primarily to get my readers to think about their own experiences. If everyone takes the time to reflect on their own story, I think the magnitude will really start to sink in. 

 

I grew up with a drunk in my home, my stepfather. He was at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 and never got over it, a problem he shared with my Mothers’ brother. We didn’t know about PTSD in those days and God knows how many guys came home from that war unable to cope with life while sober. I think it explains some of our tolerance over the years. My Mother used me to try and control his behavior. My job was to pull him out of the bars and get him home. I was an only child so I had a full time job. Naturally I left as soon as I was 18. Growing up, I got involved with everything I could to get me out of the house. Living on Coronado Island in San Diego provided many excuses and, despite the problem, I had a really good childhood. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if I had been stuck in a cold water flat in some large city.  

 

I battled the old demon rum myself but finally got a handle on it and I raised a couple of terrific kids, one of which was only a decision away from dying in a DWI incident his senior year in High School. My boy had just gotten his Eagle Scout badge and his best friend was scheduled to have his Eagle ceremony the following week. The two boys planned a trip to Tacoma, but my son had a commitment he couldn’t get out of so his friend went alone. His friend was killed in the middle of the afternoon by a drunk driving on the wrong side of a divided highway. We held his Eagle ceremony posthumously. There are no words that can express the grief we all shared that day. In Washington State we memorialize those that have died at the hands of drunk drivers by placing a small sign along the road with the persons name and time of death and the message “Don’t drink and drive.” I have made hundreds if not thousands of trips to Tacoma and I always see that sign and reflect on both the young man who died so tragically and how close my own son had come to joining him.  

 

I wish that was the only story I could relate but I have enough to fill a novel and sadly, I don’t think I am alone in that regard. I will share two more with you before wrapping this up.

 

A few years after my sons had left home I was driving home one evening after a Tacoma baseball game. I was on a four lane divided road. Long straight sections of highway are not common in Washington State and I had just rounded a curve that opened unto one of the longest straight sections of the highway in my area. Something just didn’t look right to me as I stared ahead at the lights of the oncoming traffic. I suddenly realized one set of the lights I saw was on my side of the highway. At that time I estimate I was about a third of a mile from the oncoming vehicle. I immediately started slowing down and pulling to the right as I turned on my emergency flashers. As the vehicle got closer, I could see it was a pickup and I started honking my horn. The truck wasn’t slowing so I rolled down my window, leaned as far out as I could and starting waving my arms, all the while honking my horn.  The driver did slow down and looked at me but he continued to drive down the wrong side of the road. Cell phones hadn’t been invented yet. I raced to the next exit, drove to the nearest phone I knew of and called 911. The next car he encountered didn’t see him in time and he and a young woman with three small children at home died in the impact. A friend of mine was a volunteer fireman who responded to the scene. He later told me that my call did result in the woman having a chance to survive her injuries but they were too severe. The drunk was consumed in the fire that resulted from the impact. For some strange reason his feet inside his boots didn’t burn so there were able to get a blood alcohol reading off his remains.

 

In my third incident, I decided to intervene and prevent something like the above from happening. I was at dinner with my wife at a Chinese restaurant we frequented quite often. Great spring rolls and chicken noodle soup. The restaurant did have a bar attached. I was sitting there enjoying my meal as I watched a man and woman exit the bar. The man was so drunk he had a hard time making the left turn to the door leading out of the restaurant. I watched in disbelief as he staggered down the walk outside, fumbling for his car keys. I don’t remember consciously thinking about my actions but I got up from my table and went outside. By this time the man was at his car trying to get his key in the door lock. I went around behind his car and came up from behind him. Neither he nor the woman with him noticed me. I quickly reached in and snatched the keys out of his hand and stepped back behind his car where I threw the keys as far as I could into a field next to the parking lot. My wife later told me the guy was so drunk he kept on trying to open the car door even though he had no keys in his hand. I walked back in, sat down and went back to my chicken noodle soup. The drunk, no doubt thinking (if possible) he had left his keys in the bar came back in and that should have been the end of it but one of the other customers informed the owner that I had taken the keys. Unbelievable! I told the owner I had the guys keys and I was going to keep them until the police arrived if he wanted to pursue it. He asked me to leave and the next day I called and told him where to look for the keys. I never went back and I think that was okay with the owner. Later, I ran into his wife who waited tables for him and she apologized to me for her husband’s behavior.  Needless to say no one died that night from that mans hand. It does show how complex this issue is and how we tend to protect those that practice this abhorrent behavior.

 

So what the hell are we going to do about it? We can donate to MADD and I have but this problem is huge and it’s complex. How many times can we say, “Don’t drink and drive!”? That’s akin to telling teenagers to “Abstain!” Nice thoughts but if you think either is really working I got a bridge you really need to buy. Do we really have the intestinal fortitude to always snatch the keys out of their hands? I did it once and got chastised for it. Intervening isn’t easy. Nice thought just like abstaining is but in that case life happens. In this case death happens.

 

I mentioned in a previous article that we have the technology that can keep drunks from driving cars. If anyone sitting in the front seat of a car is inebriated the car won’t move. Complete systems are not cheap though mass producing them would lower the costs and they could require all of us to submit ourselves to the type of testing diabetics have to deal with though requiring interlocks on all automobiles would result in a ton of research to make systems less intrusive. Older model cars would have to be retrofitted and there would have to be severe penalties for those that don’t conform, like penalizing them 30% of their annual income with a credit for installation of the system. There would need to be aid programs for the poorest among us.

 

Sound too draconian? Consider the toll in this nation while I was typing this article. According to CDC statistics 120 people were injured or died as I wrote this. 4 to 5 of them died. One in three of us will be involved in at least one accident with a driver under the influence in our lifetime. I just revealed part of my story on how driving under the influence has impacted my life. Still too draconian? That’s your call. In my case, show me where I can sign up.     

 

Where does all this leave baseball? All parks I know of serve alcoholic beverages. Believe me no one enjoys a beer, a dog and garlic fires at the game more than I do. I get to walk to the games but not everyone can and regulating the ability to drive after imbibing even a small amount would seriously impact the commercial and entertainment aspects of the game. 

 

What should baseball do regarding the recent loss of Nick Adenhart? Certainly they will memorialize him in some way during the season but should they start a drive to collect funds to counter drunk driving? Owners, players and fans are no different than anyone else. Everyone is a victim here. Personally I don’t think solving this problem rests any more on baseballs shoulders than it rests on the shoulders of all of us. 

 

There is one thing I will encourage everyone to get behind. If any legislation or technical innovation comes of this I think we should call it the Adenhart Law or the Adenhart Interlock because his tragic demise could become the fuel that ignites a nation to finally do something about the carnage on our streets and highways.

  

For more info: Seattle Sports Examiner, Sports Media Examiner