Playing Through the Pain Read online

  Copyright © 2022 Dan Good

  Cover © 2022 Abrams

  Published in 2022 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021949393

  ISBN: 978-1-4197-5363-3

  eISBN: 978-1-64700-256-5

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  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: Batman

  Chapter 2: The Valley of Heart’s Delight

  Chapter 3: (Not So) Big Man on Campus

  Chapter 4: College Try

  Chapter 5: Red, White, and Blue

  Chapter 6: Bus Rides and Empty Ballparks

  Chapter 7: Houston, We Have Liftoff

  Chapter 8: Down

  Chapter 9: Winter Ball

  Chapter 10: Job Security

  Chapter 11: Feel the Heat

  Chapter 12: Fresh Faces

  Chapter 13: Long Road

  Chapter 14: Earthquake

  Chapter 15: Strike, You’re Out

  Chapter 16: New Beginnings

  Chapter 17: Getting a Boost

  Chapter 18: Legend

  Chapter 19: Planes, Sprains, and Automobiles

  Chapter 20: TG

  Chapter 21: Capture the Flag

  Chapter 22: Falling Down

  Chapter 23: Moving On

  Chapter 24: Warning Signs

  Chapter 25: Old Dog

  Chapter 26: Lost and Found

  Chapter 27: The Truth Will Set You Free

  Chapter 28: Relapse

  Chapter 29: Greatest Day

  Chapter 30: The End

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Note on Sources

  Index of Searchable Terms

  INTRODUCTION

  Ken Caminiti’s world was falling apart, again, but he was in New York City trying to make things right.

  The veteran third baseman spent his career waiting for this moment—he’d endured so many lost years on bad teams in worse uniforms. He was finally playing for a winner, the 1998 National League champion San Diego Padres. Going into the World Series. Four wins away from baseball glory.

  But there was a problem. Those four wins would have to come against baseball’s most successful franchise—the New York Yankees—in its most successful year. The Yankees steamrolled the American League in 1998, winning 121 games during the regular season and playoffs. No team had ever won that many games in a season.

  But minutes before the start of Game 1, Ken’s mind wasn’t on the Yankees, or the lost seasons, or that night’s pitcher, or his hitting approach. He was dealing with other problems. Ken was back to using drugs and surrounding himself with the wrong people, leaving his marriage frayed and fueling an endless cycle of disappointment and frustration and shame.

  * * *

  Ken shouldn’t have been playing.

  His legs were failing him … but that never stopped him before, and this was the World Series, dammit. Bruce Bochy—the legendary skipper managing in his first World Series, who adored Ken like a son—wrote his name on the lineup card, as usual. What other options did he have? A hobbled Ken Caminiti meant more to the Padres at third base in reputation alone than a healthy George Arias or Andy Sheets (no offense meant to either, but they weren’t badass former MVPs whose scowls intimidated fellow players). There was always the hope that Ken would rise to the occasion, just like he had in Monterrey, Mexico, two years earlier when he got food poisoning and took IV fluid and ate a Snickers bar and, barely able to stand upright, still smacked two home runs. He wobbled as he rounded the bases that day, his accomplishments burnished into legend. Or weeks before the World Series, in the playoffs against the Atlanta Braves, when he slugged a tenth-inning home run to put the Padres one step closer to the Fall Classic.

  History was not on San Diego’s side. The Padres had reached the World Series once before but lost. The Yankees, meanwhile, had won twenty-three world championships on the strength of players like Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle and Berra. One more title would tie the Yankees for the most championships in North American professional sports.

  On paper, Yankees versus Padres in 1998 made David versus Goliath look like an even matchup. As if the challenge wasn’t difficult enough for San Diego, the World Series was opening in Yankee Stadium, a concrete-and-steel cathedral that had experienced more winning than a two-headed coin.

  The night of Game 1, October 17, 1998, was crisp and clear, 56 degrees—fans brought long-sleeve shirts and 60-grit-sandpaper personalities. The 4 and D subway lines shuttled the sardines decked in navy and white to 161st Street. The unfortunate souls who chose to wear San Diego gear could expect to face death threats and Fuck-the-Pad-res chants. It wasn’t personal. It was the Yankees.

  Red, white, and blue bunting covered the stadium’s edges, a patriotic touch for the extra-special occasions such as the 1998 World Series—the capstone to one of major league baseball’s magical seasons, when a home run chase between sluggers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa enthralled the nation. The two men went on a summer-long testosterone tour, smacking dingers at a prodigious rate. Few questioned the home run display, and those who did were brushed aside. We were blinded by power. We were back in love with baseball.

  * * *

  The drive from Yankee Stadium to the Bronx’s Hunts Point section takes less than fifteen minutes if traffic is thin.

  The direct route takes you east on 161st Street, underneath the elevated subway platforms, swerving around pesky double-parkers. The route twists and turns, and you follow it. Along the way, the rust and graffiti and decay become more prevalent. Duck under a highway overpass, and then you reach the 1200 block of Seneca Avenue.

  If heroes are made at Yankee Stadium, people are overlooked on Seneca Avenue. A man sits on a stoop, scanning the passing cars. Children play in the shadows of surveillance cameras, throwing matchbox cars at birds. An apartment building is wedged in the middle of the block, identified by a stucco sign on the front: the ruth ap’t.

  On a different October day not far removed from his World Series appearance playing in “the House That Ruth Built,” Ken Caminiti spent his final moments here.

  He could have been anywhere else.

  CHAPTER 1

  BATMAN

  Kenny was always trying to fly.

  That’s what he was doing on the stairs at two and a half years old—he thought he was Batman, the caped crime-fighting crusader played on TV by Adam West. Instead of flying, Kenny tumbled down the stairs, 30 pounds of energy and dreams and rug burns. Come to think of it, Batman never actually could fly.…

  Given Kenny’s aerial and athletic pursuits, Cordoy Lane was just about the perfect place for him to grow up. The street—part of the Cambrian Park neighborhood in southern San Jose, California—was developed in phases, starting with Kenny’s section in the 1960s, then growing to include a perpendicular addition so it resembled a curved L shape. The curve at the intersection of those two ends made an ideal spot for pickup games.

  The neighborhood was surrounded by plum orchards and open fields and rock quarries, and give
n the proximity of schools—more than a dozen within two miles—you could usually find a baseball, football, or basketball game in progress by hopping on your bike and riding around for a few minutes. With so many young families, kids’ voices served as a neighborhood soundtrack. The neighborhood and houses and street and schools and sports fields were all new, a reflection of San Jose’s growth. It was a nice middle-class upbringing, in contrast to the city’s overlooked minority and lower-income neighborhoods and the ritzy town of Los Gatos a few blocks south.

  Kenny’s family lived at 5129 Cordoy Lane, a split-level home with a garage and four bedrooms. Their house had a swimming pool in the backyard. Families living nearby would become the Caminitis’ friends. The Rosses. The Weedens. The Costantinis and Noriegas. Steve Rienhart lived across the street from the Caminitis and was Kenny’s age. “It was a dead-end street for a lot of years, so out in front of the houses, out in the orchard next to us or the field a few blocks away or the quarry, there was plenty of open dirt to go play in,” Rienhart said.

  Peggy Weeden recalled Kenny being a sweet, innocent, inquisitive boy. When he was five or six years old, before the neighborhood was fully developed, the Weedens had the last house, and beyond their house was a large field that filled up with water whenever it rained. “There were frogs there. Kenny was fascinated with the frogs, and kept pointing out, ‘Look, there’s a double-decker … and another, and another … ,’ not realizing they were mating,” Peggy Weeden said.

  Chris Camilli’s family lived one street over on Elrose Avenue. “If I went outside my front door and I threw a tennis ball over two houses and bounced it on the street, I could probably one-hop it to his house,” Camilli said.

  Chris and Ken normally got grouped together because of their names—strong, powerful Italian surnames starting with “Cami-.” The curly-haired, soft-spoken Chris came from a sports family. His grandfather Dolph played twelve seasons of major league baseball during the 1930s and ’40s, hitting 239 career home runs and winning a Most Valuable Player award, while his uncle Doug caught one of Sandy Koufax’s no-hitters for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

  Chris and Ken would spend hours playing traditional sports and inventing their own games, like seeing who could hit a rock with a bat the farthest. Ping! Ping! They’d play until someone hit a house—Ping!—or they got into trouble, and that would be the end of it, until they came up with something else to do. Kenny wasn’t one to stay indoors. “He was a restless kid,” Camilli said. “He didn’t like to play board games and watch TV.”

  Kenny and the other kids were expected to be outside all day, and parents generally weren’t keeping track of what their children were doing. You’d ride your bikes to the rock quarry, and bike on a trail or do some jumps, and when it got too hot you’d go to someone’s house and hose yourself down, then sit in the shade and cool off, then maybe go to 7-Eleven and get a Slurpee, then go out and ride your bikes some more, and you came home for dinner, and stayed out until dark, and everything seemed so innocent, even if it wasn’t.

  * * *

  Glenn Caminiti was tough, the kind of kid who would truck you in a flag football game just because. But he was also nurturing and protective of his brother, who was two years younger—a trait he shared with their sister, Carrie, who was four years older than Kenny. Glenn could have dumped Kenny and left him behind, embarrassed and ashamed to hang out with his kid brother. Instead, he included Kenny in games with the older kids.

  Kenny consistently tagged along and played sports against Glenn’s friends, the smallest kid on the field. Kenny was talented, but he was also pint-sized. No matter how hard Kenny hit, no matter how hard he tried to prove himself, he was known as Glenn’s little brother.

  Glenn was the three-sport star who towered over everyone—a physical beast and a badass in football, basketball, and baseball. Glenn’s little brother happened to play the same sports. Given the Caminitis’ competitive household—even something as casual as Ping-Pong could turn into all-out warfare—Kenny inevitably found himself locked in a sibling rivalry, losing the arms and legs race against his older, bigger brother. Glenn and Ken couldn’t help but get grouped together: two brothers, two years apart, with the same interests and passions, jockeying for attention and approval and respect. Their names even rhymed. Glenn and Ken. It was his oldest, truest rivalry, one born from love and lineage.

  “Glenn was always riding him. And that’s what kind of made Ken the person he is,” Kenny’s childhood friend Peter Morin said. “He always tried to be as good as his brother.”

  But Kenny wasn’t Glenn—Kenny was more sensitive than his older brother, a reflection of his closeness to his mother, Yvonne. His father, Lee, meanwhile, encouraged his athletic pursuits. “He was his mom’s boy,” Peggy Weeden said, adding, “He worshipped his dad, and he always tried to work hard to make his dad proud.”

  Nick Duerksen and Kenny used to ride their bikes to Little League practice together, two boys with their baseball mitts over their handlebars and wads of Bazooka in their cheeks. They played together in 1973 and 1974 in Union Little League. For Duerksen, one quality made Kenny stand out above everyone else—his cannon arm. Kenny could rifle throws from the hole in shortstop. With Kenny’s arm strength, no runner was safe on a ground ball. He’d rear back and fire, and the ball became a blur of white heat. An arm like Kenny’s could dominate Little League, with him pitching every few games and shifting between the mound and shortstop. After all, his daddy was a pretty good pitcher.…

  But that was the problem—Lee Caminiti, a former prep pitching and catching star himself, didn’t want his son pitching or catching in Little League. Kenny’s arm and body were too valuable. Too much wear and tear and Kenny’s gift would be gone, another boy who could’ve been something. So Lee Caminiti forbade Kenny’s Little League managers from allowing his son to pitch or catch. Kenny was an infielder. As a result, the best arm in Union Little League was largely hidden away. There would be time for Kenny to show off his arm strength.

  * * *

  Dave Moretti was six years old when he first met Kenny. Their brothers played on the same Little League team, and eight-year-old Kenny was the batboy, and Dave wanted to be a batboy, too. So for the next game, Dave dressed the part—he wore his San Francisco Giants pajamas. The pj’s looked enough like an actual baseball uniform to suffice, so Dave and Kenny started serving together as batboys.

  “Ken wasn’t real thrilled,” Moretti said. “He didn’t want to share duties.”

  Kenny’s mother, Yvonne, encouraged him to be nice, and halfway through the game he came up to Dave, and they started talking, and that’s how their friendship began. In a way, Dave represented the younger brother Kenny never had. They were both loyal and competitive and fiery, and they loved each other, and they butted heads, and then they wouldn’t talk for a while, and then they’d reconnect and pick up like nothing had happened.

  Moretti remembers going over to the Caminitis’ house with his older brother Mark when he was in fourth or fifth grade. Someone showed up with a six-pack. “The older guys were having a beer, and Glenn was bribing Ken not to tell his mom, with Popsicles,” Moretti said.

  Glenn didn’t want to explain to his parents why the Popsicles were gone … but the alternative would be worse. “Little Moretti’s not gonna say anything to his parents, and I gotta bribe you with Popsicles,” Glenn told his brother.

  Kenny got his Popsicles, and Little Moretti and Kenny both kept their secret. They were good at keeping secrets.

  * * *

  Lone Hill Elementary School was north of Kenny’s neighborhood, and the middle school was to the west, and the high school was south.

  The setup allowed the same children to go to school together from kindergarten to high school, a tight-knit bond that they’d carry throughout their lives. These are the people you grew up with. San Jose lifers identify themselves by their elementary school, and these were Lone Hill kids. The school was located next to a creek, and there was a culvert
underneath a chain-link fence.

  Kenny showed off his mischievous side at Lone Hill, pulling pranks he learned from older kids, and he’d giggle and give you that playful glance, letting you in on the joke with a glimmer of childishness in his eyes.

  “Kenny always had two sides to him,” Camilli said. “He had a side that he would be the kid that every parent would just love. And then he had the mischievous side where, when he was away from adults or around people he was comfortable with, he liked to push things a little bit. He’d like to make people laugh.”

  For Kenny and Chris Camilli and a group of their classmates, recess was all about sports—they would draft teams and play five-game series of football or basketball over the course of a week, then the next week they would draft new teams and play a new series. Stats were kept from the games. This was serious business.

  By fifth grade, when the boys began playing basketball, “some guys didn’t want to play on the same team as Kenny because he always shot,” Camilli remembers. A couple of them decided to keep track of Kenny’s stats and calculate his shooting percentage.

  “I think they did it over two days and then they shared that with everyone, and I remember Kenny was really hurt by that,” Camilli said. “People were laughing and stuff like that, and he just took it really, really bad.”

  Kids can be mean. But Sharon Rossell never saw that from Kenny.

  Rossell lived at the corner of Elrose Avenue and Michon Drive in the summer of 1974, so Kenny, then eleven years old, walked past her house with his bat and glove whenever he went to the park or elementary school.

  “He was like the Pied Piper, because he had all the neighborhood kids with him and they would follow him,” she said. “And if they were going to the park, fifteen or twenty kids would be following Kenny to the park.”

  Sharon would be outside with her son Greg, then a toddler, when Kenny returned from the park, and she would give Kenny cookies and lemonade.

  “Mrs. Rossell, I’m gonna teach Greg how to play baseball,” Kenny promised.