Unbalanced
How a shocking Home Run changed the course for Donnie Moore’s life.
Sports fans who want you to believe that the results of professional games are intertwined with the realities of life really need to get a life! The burden of giving up an important home run in a playoff or world series game shouldn’t ruin anyone’s life? Yet for some it does. Even kills them. Perhaps not directly or instantaneously but slowly and methodically. Like a slow torture until it eats you up inside and you feel like there is no other choice but to kill the pain. Sometimes it is booze and pills which are the weapon of no one’s choice but becomes the instrument of what ultimately kills them. Other instances it is simply the barrel of a gun to the head. One could argue that the athlete themselves are to blame and that they need better coping skills so not to let the “Fanatic” get under their skin and drive them to the point of wanting to kill themselves. Yes, ultimately it is the athlete that should be able to walk away and not let one or two losses from a game overwhelm their life.
Imagine making a mistake at your own job and being screamed at by your boss everyday? How about not only your boss calling you a “loser” each morning but as you walk in the hallways and stairways random employees you never met before, greet you with spitting in your direction while calling you and your family filthy names. Now imagine going to work everyday after making a vital mistake and carrying the burden of depression. How would you survive this?
Donnie Moore was not perfect. He carried a dark secret of physically and mentally abusing his wife for years while showing the world he was in control until he wasn’t. This is something I discovered once I began gathering my research. Donnie Moore shot his wife three times on the afternoon of July 18, 1989, and then himself. He died and his wife survived but his kids have suffered the long term effects of his abuse and his death. There are no winners in this story only tragic figures.
The pivotal day in Donnie’s life came on October 12,1986, a game in which he should never had come into pitch. There is some indication that Moore had been suffering from depression for years and living with memories of a childhood nightmare that his wife, Tonya Moore, refused to explain. As much as Donnie hurt Tonya over the years she was still protective of him even after his death.
He could hear the crowd growing restless in the bright California sunshine during the 1986 Baseball American League Championship playoff game against the Boston Red Sox. Angels were leading 5 to 2 in the top of the ninth and one strike away from going to the World Series. Mike Witt, the Angels starter, appeared to be cruising until Red Sox Designated Hitter Don Baylor hits a 2 run home run to make the score 5 to 4. Witt was able to get another out to make it two outs in the 9th and one out away from the World Series when Angels manager Gene Mauch decided to make a pitching change. He sends out the pitching coach Marcel Lachemann to signal for the change in pitchers. Catcher Bob Boone and third basemen Doug De Cinces both wonder out loud why they would take out the pitcher with one out to go? Lachemann barked back;
“It’s not my decision”.
The decision to change pitchers and go with the call for Gary Lucas statistically was not the wrong idea. Red Sox batter Rich Gedman had been hitting Witt hard all day while lifetime he was 0–4 against Lucas. Unfortunately the left-hander’s first pitch to Gedman was so wild it hit him in the head. Gedman never got a chance to get himself out and was on first base with two out. The restlessness from the crowd went to a slow and deep roar that pounded into the chests of each Angel. Infielders nervously kicked dirt in front of them and compulsively spit from their dry mouths while tapping their gloves trying to will the end of the game instead of just winning it. Their hands once dry with confidence now drenched in sweat of despair.
Donnie Moore continued to warm in the bullpen and in-between each throw glancing out over the outfield wall to the pitchers mound hoping to catch a peek at the next decision. Lachemann’s slow walk from the dugout before signalling to Moore created a rumble among the angry crowd. Not because Moore was coming into the game but because they had to make two pitching changes to get one out. However, there was a problem. Moore’s pitching arm felt sore and lacked the power he was used to after a necessary cortisone shot from the night before to his back. Without the proper push off the mound and bend from the back to the legs, it tends to ware on your arm. Normally when a player receives a cortisone shot they will not pitch for a couple of days. The reason for this is that the cortisone shot is given to the area that is hurting. Therefore, soreness in the spot giving you pain makes it impossible to throw the ball with as much power as you did when healthy. In Moore’s case his “out-pitch” was a devastating split finger fastball that, when healthy, he could throw for a strike or not for a strike depending upon the count and the batter’s willingness to swing at it. Once he developed that pitch Donnie Moore became a premiere closer and was paid well for it by signing a $3 million dollar contract in 1986 for three years with the Angels. Now it was a matter of throwing it effectively with a chance to go to the World Series.
Moore made a conscious effort not to shake his arm or wince because of back pain at anytime where the crowd or cameras could see him having an issue. Perhaps in hindsight he should have. Not as an excuse but as a reality check that he was not fully ready to be pitch in any game let alone a deciding game. However, all athletes want to compete and find me a player that isn’t hurting or battling an injury as they do not exist. Moore was not an exception and 100 out of 100 times he would have wanted to be in this game. The batter Dave Henderson was batting .180 for the entire year and Moore on even his worse day should dominate. Don Baylor described Henderson’s swing the best;
“Nothing else to lose game on the line. Henderson was swinging not to lose the game”
The memory of a collapsing Angel outfielder Brian Downing’s arms to his side as he pressed himself against the left field wall in devastation is etched into baseball history. With his chin perched and angled upward watching the ball go over the fence then with a slight shake from side-to-side with disappointment followed. Downing echoed the sentiment of every Angel teammate and every fan witnessing the implosion before their eyes.
‘MAUCH’ MY WORDS
Angel manager Gene Mauch was no stranger to a collapse. The difference is the the Angel game took a few hours the one with the Phillies was slow painful death. With 12 games left in the ’64 regular season, the Phillies held a 6½-game lead in the National League. In those days, the math was a bit easier to figure out and the stakes were considerably higher. With no playoffs to speak of other than the World Series, it was a simple case of win-and-you’re-in. Over the next week and a half, however, the Phillies would go into a complete freefall, losing 10 consecutive games in seemingly every manner possible. On the morning of Oct. 4, 1964, the final day of the regular season, both the Cardinals and Reds took to their respective home fields with identical 92–69 records. The Phillies were one game back at 91–70.
For each of the three teams, the goal was clear, but without complete control over its destiny:
St. Louis needed to win and have Cincinnati lose to finish in sole possession of the NL pennant;
Cincinnati needed to beat Philadelphia and have St. Louis lose a third straight to the Mets to accomplish the same;
the Phillies needed to beat the Reds and have the Cardinals lose to force the first three-way tie in baseball history.
However, the Cardinals won their game putting them in the World Series and not the Phillies. Mauch had completed the unthinkable and he was right back at it in 1986 in the California Sunshine soon to be eclipsed by shadows of the past.
His body was wrapped in the standard sheet then an electric blue blanket as the coroner flanked by detectives pushed his body through the garage to the waiting station wagon. The end had come violently and to know surprise of his estranged wife Tonya. Being forced into retirement from the only thing he cherished more than life, to Donnie’s torture from an unspeakable childhood, onto an epic failure on the baseball field all pooled into a single unbearable moment.
“Your gonna shoot yourself in front of the Kids?”
Tonya Moore uttered those haunting words above. What would come next was unexpected. Rather than shooting himself, Donnie turned the gun on his estranged wife. For a brief moment everything went silent. Even the birds and the trees stood still. All the usual noises you became so used to hearing in the house suddenly quieted. As Donnie removed the gun from his pressed temple he pointed it at Tonya and shot the .45 caliber gun 5 times. Two missed her three hit badly. Perhaps it was the years of building up a spiritual thick skin and a toughness that trumped any NFL player allowed Tonya to survive such a brutal attack. As her body flew backwards and consciousness drained Tonya managed to scream in horror prompting her two daughters, Lisa and Demetria, to run into the house and aide their mother’s grave condition.
With wounds to her chest and neck the girls desperately tried to hold the gushing wounds closed with their hands. Remarkably, Demetria drove her mother to the hospital as Lisa coached their Mother to hang onto life. Donnie refused to go with them or even help their dying Mother. Moore pulled the trigger on himself shortly after they left.
Pulling the gurney through the narrow inside doorway of the garage, Donnie’s arm flopped to the side and outside the blanket revealing a gold plated watch signifying the success he had achieved and lost. A smudge of either his own blood or Tonya’s marked the unimaginable end. The hand that once held a baseball for so many innings was now closed and discolored. From her hospital bed, Tonya Moore was conscious enough to see the television where the breaking news of Donnie’s death was unfolding. Surreal to see her own garage and a body wrapped in a blanket being her estranged husband as a main news story.
The tragedy and the curse of Donnie’s suicide is that we new little of how he struggled with injuries at the time of giving up the fateful home run to Boston’s Dave Henderson. How Donnie struggled with migraines and depression. Also how Donnie was abusive to his estranged Wife, Tonya and how he tried to numb the pain of a brutal childhood through drinking. All not excuses for abusing his wife. As fans however we need remember that there are human beings inside the uniforms we root for and carrying on vulgar language and harassment to a player during and especially long after a game has ended is insane.
Despite the years of abuse, Tonya loved Donnie;
