For Wills, Basepaths Led to His Own Private Hell : Baseball: After battling drugs and depression, the former Dodger shortstop finally feels part of a team--and important as an individual.

Maury Wills was about to tee off at Los Coyotes Golf Course when he saw a camera crew trudging toward him.

It was Dodger Day at the Buena Park course, that October day in 1972. So Wills thought the camera crew was coming to interview him, to get a look at his swing. You know, do one of those cute features.

Wills hit a strong drive down the middle of the fairway and, when he looked up, the camera was rolling. Feeling proud, he strode to the microphone.

“Maury,” the reporter said, “you’ve just been released by the Dodgers. Do you have any comments?”

Wills was shaken, his insides screamed and his mind began to race. He said all of the right things, but the words didn’t come from the heart.

This was exactly the way Wills had not wanted it to happen.

Hadn’t the Dodgers assured him they would tell him in advance, that he wouldn’t find out from the media, or from a car radio? Maybe he would even have a news conference, as Willie Mays and some other players had. Hadn’t the Dodgers assured him of that?

And then, resentment set in.

“The best years of my life, genetically speaking, were when I was young, productive and strong, performing away at life and trying to perfect something,” Wills said of being released.

“But for the amount of time I really enjoyed, the rewards are very few. And now, I’m on my way down, going through hell, trying to hold on as an older player. And now, I’m out of the game and I’m trying to make this transition, and they don’t need me anymore.

“Some baseball players, after their career, go on to have nice normal productive lives, but a lot of us fall prey to disaster, because (life after baseball) is the (real) big leagues.”

Wills spent 8 1/2 years in the minor leagues before he made it to the majors. In 1959, he was called up by the Dodgers to replace injured shortstop Don Zimmer. The Dodgers traded him to Pittsburgh in 1967, and he also played 47 games for Montreal before returning to the Dodgers in 1969.

As hard as Wills worked at being a player, he has struggled far more since his playing days. Merely trying to deal with life.

Sometimes, merely trying to get through a day.

If I could do it all over again I might change it and be something else. If I could look in a crystal ball, maybe I wouldn’t have worked so hard to be as good as I was. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so important to me to win. Because the reward of the ring and the World Series share does not measure up to the disaster that I have been through.

--Maury Wills, Jan. 18, 1990

It wasn’t as though he became impoverished, unless poverty is measured as a lack of contentment. By 1981, Maury Wills as poor.

He had been the most exciting player on the base paths since Jackie Robinson. In 1962, Wills won the league’s most-valuable-player award when he stole 104 bases, breaking Ty Cobb’s record of 96 set in 1915. Most baseball experts agree that Wills’ baserunning style revived base stealing as a major offensive weapon and made him a legend in the sport.

His next endeavor, as a broadcaster, also was successful. He was a baseball commentator with NBC for six years and then spent another year as the co-host for his own show on HBO.

And in 1980, his boyhood dream of being a manager came true, with the Seattle Mariners. This time, however, he was not a success. And when he was fired by Seattle after 82 games, on May 6, 1981, Wills says he became a drug user.

For 3 1/2 years, he rarely ventured from his bedroom, the master suite in his 14-room house in Playa Del Rey. He sat alone, day after day, in total darkness, using drugs and alcohol. Somehow, cocaine made him feel right, and made everybody else wrong.

At night, he stared at the Pacific Ocean through the big bay window in his bedroom until he saw imaginary people looking in on him. Then he put the blankets up, leaving them there all day to keep the sunshine out.

Sometimes, when things got real bad, he would find some old black and white photographs of himself as a ballplayer, and, in the stillness of the night, he could even hear the cheers.

But the cheers had long since turned to jeers and criticism. As a manager, he had not only failed in the won-lost column, but in his ability to communicate with his players, coaches and the media. He had been erratic and troubled, and it reflected on his performance.

Wills now says his troubles were triggered by a broken romance. He says the love of his life, whom he declined to identify, broke up with him and ran off with another ballplayer, someone Wills had introduced her to. It made him crazy. He couldn’t concentrate, and he was obsessed by it.

“I’ll never forget,” Wills said. “I was in Milwaukee in this big suite in the hotel. There were rooms all over the place and I’m the major league manager, and I cried myself to sleep all night long. Everyone I called back here in California that I needed to talk to, I couldn’t reach. I couldn’t reach her.

“This is a time when my disease is surfacing, I’m getting into depression now . . . and my irregular behavior is beginning to develop and is coming on.”

“So now I go back (to Los Angeles) and the season is over and I can’t find her, and I went crazy all winter.”

Shortly after spring training began, in 1981, Wills learned that the woman had run off with the ballplayer. He says that pushed him over the edge.

Wills says he also became “acquainted” with the drug scene that winter before spring training. But he says he did not start using drugs until after he was fired by Seattle, three weeks into the regular season.

Humiliated and embarrassed, Wills locked himself up in his house.

Then in August, 1983, Fred Claire, executive vice president of the Dodgers, and Don Newcombe, former Dodger pitcher, took Wills to a substance-abuse center. Wills didn’t want to be recognized, so he registered under an assumed name, Donald Claire.

“I had been there about 10 days, and I wasn’t really participating, I was just there,” Wills said. “The first time that I was in a group discussion with other patients, I wouldn’t look the leader in the eye, because I didn’t want to talk.

“Well, it was finally my turn to talk. I got a lump in my throat and tears welled up in my eyes and I stood up and said, ‘First of all, I have to admit to you that my name really isn’t Donald Claire.’ And the whole group looked up and said, ‘No kidding, Maury!’ ”

It was a 28-day program, but Wills lasted only 25. He went back to his house and locked himself up. And when he ventured out, he got into trouble.

On Dec. 27, 1983, Wills, driving a car that had been reported as stolen, was stopped and arrested for possessing an estimated $7 worth of cocaine. The auto theft charge was dropped by the car’s owner, reportedly a friend of Wills, who said she had not known that Wills had borrowed her car.

On April 7, 1984, the drug possession charge was dismissed because of insufficient evidence. But the damage was done.

People say, “Oh yeah, he’s OK now . Well , how long is that going to last?” That is so cruel . There are no guarantees. I am fighting the greatest battle of my life now, and maybe it’s what I need to keep me busy. It’s an everyday, all-day job. I’ll never get well, I’ll only get better.

--Maury Wills

Maury Wills says he is clean today--clean as in drug- and alcohol-free--and he says he has been clean for six consecutive months. He says that is the longest time he has been clean since he started using drugs in 1981.

That first trip to the care center was the beginning of many such trips for Wills, who is now tested weekly at the Community Health Projects clinic and is in therapy with Dr. Joan Elvidge. The Dodgers pay Wills’ rehabilitation expenses, and weekly reports are sent to Claire.

Wills is working as a public-relations agent for Cellular Dynamics Telephone Company in Inglewood. He plays golf, has lunch and sign autographs for clients. He says he feels a part of the work team, the first time he has ever felt a part of any group.

“I never felt a part of it as a major league baseball star, “ Wills said. “I had 90,000 people in the Coliseum cheering, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ and at Dodger Stadium there were 56,000 and another 2,000 in the parking lot waiting for my autograph after the game. And I’ve gone home and cried myself to sleep.

“That’s why it’s so important to me to show I am really involved with this company. I’m not somebody they (the company) are exploiting, putting out there and pasting up like with so many athletes--with car dealerships and such. It’s not like that here at all.”

Wills, along with Mike Celizic, a writer for the Bergen (N.J.) Record, is also writing a book that is expected to be published in June.

At 57, Wills appears to be as fit as ever. He still has that gray patch of hair in front, but now it blends in better.

More important, Wills says, for maybe the first time in his life, he is finding happiness.

“Somewhere along the line, I left God, He didn’t leave me,” said Wills, whose father was a Baptist minister. “When I played, I used to thank God for every stolen base, every hit.

“Now, as long as I have God with me, to guide me and love me, as long as I stay in contact with God, I will love myself and be good to myself this time, and not let myself fall prey to things again.

“I know how to recognize danger signs of things that are not good for me and I don’t involve myself with it. I go into things now with my partner, my higher power.”

One of the things Wills tries to stay away from is talk of his failure to be elected to the Hall of Fame. Eligible since 1978, Wills came closest to election in 1979, when he received 166 votes, or 51%. That year, 324 votes were needed for election.

The votes are cast by 10-year members of the Baseball Writers Assn. of America. To be elected, a player must receive 75% of the vote.

“I used to make a conscious effort to try to stay clean and sober just to get through the voting period--if that’s what made the difference--so that maybe I could be elected,” Wills said. “But not making it affected my self-esteem, and, as each time went by, I would sink more and more.”

The number of votes cast for Wills dropped significantly after he was fired by the Mariners--from 163 votes in 1981 to 91 in 1982. The most he has received since is 127 in 1988--after a period during which Wills was somewhat visible again in the baseball community, although mainly at baseball card shows. Each of the last two years, Wills has received 95 votes.

“He hasn’t received much consideration on Hall of Fame voting, and one thing that hurt him was his problems as a manager,” said Allen Lewis, who covered the Phillies for the Philadelphia Inquirer when Wills was a player, and who is also a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame Veterans Committee.

“It’s probably unfair to penalize him as a player for what happened to him as a manager, but people are human. He didn’t play that long, perhaps too few outstanding years to get him in (as an overall player). But he influenced the game without question, and if he makes it, it would be because he helped change the game and made speed important.”

If Wills fails to make the Hall of Fame in the next two years, he will have to wait three years before he can be considered for election by the Veteran’s Committee, which is composed of 18 members.

Meanwhile, Wills says, he beginning to seriously doubt that he will ever be elected.

“There is something about Maury Wills that bothers people and diminishes their respect for me, and I don’t know what it is, but it has always been this way,” Wills said. “Maybe it’s that I was arrogant and cocky. But it has been a part of the problem and helped to contribute to my behavior problems.

“It’s not healthy for me to try to take someone else’s inventory and think, ‘Why?’ I had to let go of wanting to be in baseball in some capacity and let go of wanting to be in the Hall of Fame. I had to surrender and this is what helped me to get turned around. There is less rejection this way and a lot of my fears have left me.”

Wills doesn’t think he is capable of having an intimate relationship again. “Relationships and sex, that’s what got me messed up in the first place,” he says.

Wills also no longer aspires to a managing career, but he would like to be an instructor. He believes that he is one of the best instructors on baserunning in the game.

He would be content, he says, simply to spend a few weeks a season working with players. He doesn’t need any more than that now, he says.

“I’m in a position where having a higher power in my life allows me to have clarity, and gives me the acceptance to feel a part of it now,” Wills said.

“I’ve been in situations where people have been raving over me, but that is Maury Wills the baseball player, the base stealer. Nobody ever knew Maury Wills personally. I didn’t even know myself because I got wrapped up in the hoopla.

“Somehow, all the years that I was highly acclaimed, somehow, I was always reminded that still, I was just a nigger, just a baseball player.”

Now, he is merely Maury Wills, hoping that being Maury Wills is enough.