Once a Troubled Youth, Astro Star Finds That It’s Not a Bad Life After All

Glenn Davis sits in the empty dugout and paws at the dirt with his bat, creating, perhaps by accident, the sign of the cross. He is talking about the day he found religion, when he dropped to his knees on the steps of his new parents’ home and pleaded for help.

“Sept. 15, 1982,” he says, head down, the bat still tracing lines in the dirt. “I’ll never forget that day.”

How could he? Just last season, after more than four years in the minor leagues, Davis became the starting first baseman for the Houston Astros and broke the team record of most home runs by a rookie, set in 1963 by Joe Morgan. Davis’ 15th homer, one more than Morgan hit, came against the San Diego Padres on--you guessed it--Sept. 15.

No twist of fate was this.

“That’s a God-incidence,” Davis says.

Already this year, Davis has 23 home runs and 73 runs batted in, which places him securely among the National League leaders, including his boyhood idol of sorts, Mike Schmidt of the Philadelphia Phillies. The totals go nicely with the 20 homers and 64 RBIs he had last season in only 100 games.

There are other reminders of his good fortune. He has a new one-year contract worth $120,000, a $70,000 raise from his rookie season. Davis, 25, also was named to the All-Star team, and soon he and his Korean-born wife, Teresa, who received her U.S. citizenship during the past year, are expecting their first child.

So where’s Norman Rockwell when you need him?

But this is a happy ending that came with a price. Davis says he still is learning how to love his wife, to show affection, to be loved. Then again, he has had so little practice.

Wasn’t it Mark Twain who once quoted a schoolboy as saying: “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so”?

Davis knows a thing or two about faith and the mirages that accompany it. He had it as a child in Jacksonville, Fla., but that was before his mother and father began fighting. When he was 7, Davis’ parents divorced. Soon thereafter, his innocence made way for frustration and, later, rage.

“When I was a kid, I didn’t know the meaning of love,” he says. “Life had no meaning to me. Basically, I was living in hell.”

Hardly a day passed when Davis didn’t receive a beating from his mother. One time a belt might be used, the next time a 2 by 4, maybe even a bat. This was a family in name only.

On Sunday, he and his mother would arrive at church and listen to the sermons of their preacher. Come Monday, however, the beatings would begin again. Davis, bitterly frustrated, turned to delinquency--and to sports--for release.

He is without a police record, but he says that’s only because he was one step quicker than the law, a con boy with a straight face and a knack of quoting Scriptures at the first sign of trouble. Also, he had an uncle on the police force.

Davis stole. He fought. He drank. He was 15 going on prison.

There are other stories. Davis once punched his elementary school principal in the face . . . he was suspended from junior high school . . . he made ill-fated attempts to visit his father, only to be caught by his mother. You can figure out the rest.

“I just guess I felt like nobody loved me, nobody cared about me,” Davis says. “I had nothing. I didn’t have a mother or father, I was different from everybody else. I guess I ruined all my family. My mother wouldn’t let me see my father’s part of the family, so in return, I wouldn’t go see her side of the family. I didn’t have anybody.”

Davis says he remembers going to his bedroom, shutting the door and sobbing until there seemingly were no more tears. In the dark and quiet of the house, Davis would cry out.

“Why is all of this happening to me?” he would say. “Why can’t I be like other people? Why can’t I be loved?”

Some nights he would sit in his bed and hold a knife at his stomach. He would wonder how it would feel for the blade to enter his skin.

Other times, he would sneak around the house and take the gun that his mother kept in case of a robbery or such. “I guess she thought I didn’t know where it was,” he says.

Davis would return to his room and hold the gun in his hand. He would stare at its barrel and then slowly place it to his temple.

For nearly seven years, Davis says he thought of killing himself. Weapons were plentiful. If he couldn’t get his mother’s pistol, someone else in the neighborhood could supply him with the family hunting gun.

“I would think about the way I was being treated and I’d say, ‘Well, I guess I can get back at them,” he says. “If I take my life, they’ll be sorry about what they did to me. Everybody will be sorry and they’ll regret it. It will make them all upset and they’ll really think about it.’

“But I never could do it.”

Sports became an outlet. He played linebacker on his high school football team, well enough to attract the attention of college recruiters. He has a linebacker’s body, muscled and compact. “I’d take out a lot of my aggressions there,” he says. “When I was out on the field, I was somebody.”

Davis always could hit a baseball. Even his mother knew that much, though she detested the idea of him spending so much time on playing fields. In sandlot games, opposing outfielders would creep back to the field’s limit when Davis came to the plate. Davis was no less successful in high school.

His University Christian High School team was coached by George Davis, father of Storm Davis, who now pitches for the Baltimore Orioles. The team would later win back-to-back state championships.

As his 18th birthday approached, Davis, tired of the daily battles with his mother, vowed to leave home. He began spending nights on park benches. He continued to steal. He mowed yards. “Thousands of yards,” he says. He toiled in a Jacksonville brickyard. “Anything to survive.”

Shortly after high school graduation, Davis moved in, conveniently enough, with George and Norma Davis. It was an easy transition. He spent much of his time there anyway, and the names were the same.

Even the middle names of all the men in the family were the same: Earl.

“We were aware of his problems at home,” Norma Davis says. “He was a very troubled young man. He was angry most of the time.”

The Davises, a deeply religious family, taught Glenn how to drive a car, arranged his first double date. They made space on the family’s trophy wall for Glenn’s mounted bass. To this day, Norma Davis refers to Glenn’s official arrival in the house as “the day the fish moved in.”

She says: “There were no questions asked. We just wanted to love him.”

Davis attended the University of Georgia on a baseball scholarship and later transferred to Manatee Junior College. The Astros drafted him in the secondary phase of the January, 1981 draft, gave him a signing bonus worth at least $25,000 and sent him to Sarasota, Fla., and the rookie league. “But he was still a very miserable young man,” Norma Davis says.

In six month’s time, Davis had spent $20,000 of his bonus. He bought a Trans-Am sports car. He had a condominium overlooking an exclusive Sarasota golf course. He drank and partied and womanized. “A lot,” he says. Then it was gone “and I found out that all my friends just wanted to use me.”

In 1982, Davis played in Daytona Beach and hit .315. The Astros promoted him to Columbus, normally good news, except that Davis says he felt no elation.

“It seemed like the things I was doing had no meaning,” he says. “I remember saying, ‘Am I ever going to find peace or happiness?’ ”

Before he returned to Jacksonville, Davis had a chance meeting with the team chapel leader. The talk bothered Davis. Hypocrisy was the subject, something Davis knew well. When he arrived home, Norma Davis, the woman he now regarded as his mother, seemed bothered.

“I’m not so sure I want you to call me ‘Mom’ anymore,” she told Davis. “You’re not fooling anybody with what you’re doing.”

Davis was stunned. “I couldn’t say anything,” he says.

“You still have a place to stay,” Norma Davis said to him that day, “but we’re going to quit being your mother and father.”

Davis began crying. He dropped to his knees.

“Look Mom,” he said, “My life’s in total confusion. I need help.”

So there on the steps of Norma and George Davis’ house, Glenn found religion.

People magazine and Sports Illustrated are planning stories on Davis. There even has been talk of a movie. Davis wasn’t quite ready for the attention.

Last week, he called Norma and complained of the constant phone calls and interviews. He said he couldn’t understand why everyone was so interested in his story, in his troubles. “I’m nobody special,” he said.

Said Norma: “Honey, fame is harder to handle than poverty.”

Davis isn’t an evangelist. He is a ballplayer, he says, “and all I did was asked to be saved.” He keeps his religion tucked well beneath his sleeve.

But the letters, and there have been many, Davis says, have convinced him that maybe he has some impact on others.

“I think baseball will be worth it all to me if I keep one person from pulling the trigger,” he says.

Happiness has found Davis, but it sure took its time. Denis Menke, the Houston batting coach, says you will soon be able to count on Davis for 100 RBIs and 25 or so home runs. And while no whiz with the glove at first base, he is expected to get better with time.

“There’s nothing but big things for him,” Menke says.

As for the rest of it, Davis will do his own predicting, thank you.

“Something always had a chain, a grip on my life,” he says. “Now I’m having so much fun.”