It's been 5 years this Christmas season since my brother Doug took his own life. Having once been a predominant MLB record holder, his death made headlines within the sports world and lasting scars for those he left behind. Compelled to process our relationship through writing, the following piece was published several months after his death.
Doug Ault 1950 - 2004
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts . . .
Shakespeare
Life will always contain drama. Just as darkness shares the experience with light, so we share our years of conscious evolution with circumstances that contain challenges. This life has taught me that I have the opportunity to let my free will direct dramas that hopefully contain deep, life-altering meaning rather than vacuous soap operas. This particular drama involves two brothers - players as different in temperament and personality as in age.
My brother Doug was an anomalous creature. Ten years older than me, he seemed to have entered the world swinging. The constructive swinging came in the form of a baseball bat as he channeled that energy all the way to the major leagues. The destructive swinging came in the form of fists and fits of rage that were as unpredictable as the hurricanes that sometimes visited our little corner of the world in Texas.
As a child, I learned to stay out of his way. Having once unknowingly provoked him, I found myself hurling through the air towards a wall, where on impact, I nearly bit my tongue in two.
Doug left home right after his high school graduation, pursuing dreams of playing baseball through various college scholarships, eventually landing a spot in the majors. He was as charismatic as he was volatile, and at 6’ 4” tall, he was a handsome, giant presence that seemed to endear himself to sports fans as a destined iconic hero. He had managed to rise above the poverty of our upbringing and fashion himself into a seemingly successful sports figure. He broke records during his years with the Toronto Blue Jays, graced the pages of Sports Illustrated and endorsed Brut Cologne for the folks in Canada.
My life path, my world, was vastly different and there was little to no interaction with him through the rest of my adolescence and early adulthood. It was rare that my family ever found themselves fully together. Usually, Doug was the one who never made it back. If he wasn’t playing ball in the states, then he sought out ball playing opportunities in other continents. He had married, had a child, divorced, had other relationships, had another child, remarried again.
In the ensuing years, the skills at which he had played baseball waned and he fought for and occasionally won various coaching positions with Triple A franchise teams. He also fought years of substance addictions exacerbated by on-the-job injuries.
It was never really discussed openly, but at some point, my immediate family knew that the absences were no longer about his work, but more about his lack of work and the dark descent one travels when you have robbed Peter so many times that Paul doesn’t even expect payment anymore. His career had dried up and so had the high 6 figure income he had relied on to sustain his habits.
In our particular drama, I thought Doug had systematically begged and borrowed from just about everyone and that I would somehow be exempt. I never expected that our characters would share dialogue on life’s same page.
I was wrong.
My mother’s voice over my cell phone was surprisingly frantic.
“Your brother is there - in LA. You have to go help him!” she pleaded.
“Where?” I questioned.
“Somewhere on Sunset Blvd,” she answered. “He called and told me he had taken a bus there. He’s sleeping on the streets. Please! You’ve got to go help him!”
It was rare that my mother took the initiative to call and I had not heard my mom this rattled in awhile. All those adolescent jealousies of how she loved Doug the most – he was the first born male child – he was the sports hero – the one she had been able to brag about to everyone – came flooding back at me.
“Mom, Sunset goes on for miles and miles. I gotta have more info than that.”
She relayed some landmark that he had mentioned and at least it narrowed my field of searching to a 3 block radius in the heart of Hollywood.
I got in the car and headed that way.
“What am I suppose to do with him once I find him?” I thought.
I was scheduled to be a keynote speaker the next evening at a conference in Austin, TX and my plane was to leave at 6:30 in the morning. I could not miss this conference. My entire predicted monthly income was derived from this event.
My stomach churned and tightened at the thought of missing the work and at what unexpected developments awaited me at the sight of a brother I hadn’t seen or talked to in years.
I found the landmark my mother mentioned and drove as slowly as traffic would permit, peering down the side streets for any signs of this man that felt like a complete stranger. I circled back, parked the car and got out. I glanced between buildings and finally, down an alleyway, I saw him. Bundled up in a coat, and sitting with his back against a brick wall, was my brother.
“Doug, it’s David,” I called out.
Upon seeing me, he started to stand. The once tall, larger-than-life figure seemed hunched over, his skin was leathery and burnt, his right hand clutching an over-stuffed suitcase.
He started to cry.
His voice drenched with remorse, let go a stream of apologies that flooded from his lips.
“It’s OK,” I said, “We’ll figure something out.”
Truth be told, I hadn’t a clue as to where to begin.
Every phone call to local substance abuse facilities turned up futile. No one had a free bed. Every recommendation from one only led to the same story from another - no room. I was resigned to the fact that I wasn’t going anywhere until I found a place for him to detox.
“Maybe I could just leave him at my place – go do the conference and come right back?”
“Are you nuts!?, the internal voices warned. He’s admitted taking combinations of 25 to 30 muscle relaxants/amphetamines a day in combination with whatever else he could get his hands on. Do you realize what he’ll do to your place when he needs more?”
My anger and resentment began to rise. Here I was placed with an opportunity to practice love and compassion, towards a blood brother no less, and I resented being put in this position. I hated what he had done to himself. I hated the way he had cheated my mom out of money, hurt his children. Then, as if resurrecting some ancient, transferable, child-like fear, I wondered what he might do to me if his need for medicated relief became too strong.
Finally a local facility recommended the Salvation Army in the skid-row section of downtown Los Angeles. The drill was to line up at 6:30 AM and go through an intake. If there was a bed, you were allowed to stay there for 21 days. That would buy me some time till another bed opened. I made the call and cancelled my conference appearance.
I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Just knowing he was out there in the living room, on the couch, kept me on pins and needles.
The next morning, freshly showered and with enough belongings and toiletries to get him situated, we drove towards downtown.
“When and why do any of us make such decisive turns in our human dramas that we could experience the pinnacle of record-breaking success to sleeping in alley-ways off Sunset Blvd? I wondered." No answer came.
It was brisk that morning and my hands were shoved in my pockets for warmth. I kept telling him not to worry - that I would figure something out while he got clean, still avoiding saying too much lest I spark some flammable emotional outburst or provoke him to take off and run.
Advancing to the front of the line, he was accepted and I felt a sense of relief, albeit temporary.
Within days, his remorseful demeanor soon gave way to demanding phone calls, wanting money and cigarettes. His detox experience brought out every conceivable story to try and enroll me in getting him out or providing him with a temporary loan. He told me how much physical pain he was in. He told me there were more drugs on the inside of this place and that he would be better off staying with me.
One request was viable. He gave me the name of a man associated with the Major League Baseball Association and demanded I tell him where he was. I questioned what good that would do since he hadn’t played in years. He kept insisting.
I called and tracked down the man Doug mentioned who seemed well aware of my brother’s ongoing situation. He asked that I give him 24 hours to figure out a solution. The next day he called back, relaying he had a 1 way ticket waiting for my brother at the airport. They would deliver him to a state-of-the-art rehab facility in Florida. There, he could stay for up to 3 months, receive proper mediacal care and in-depth psychological treatment. He would then be given opportunities for work placement programs as well as a place to live. They would continue to offer professional counseling and strive to help him turn his life around.
“Sheesh,” I thought, "He must have a monopoly on silver platters." It seems once you’ve been a professional athlete, no matter what befalls you, the national organization will find ways to support you in getting back on your feet. My job was to simply get him on the plane.
After repacking his suitcase, I picked him up from the Salvation Army and began the drive to LAX.
We rode in silence. He stared out the side window, nervously tapping his leg. Finally, I couldn’t help but say to him, “Doug, do you realize what an amazing gift you have been given?”
He sullenly shook his head.
That was in 1999, before 9/11 and I was able to escort him to the gate and watch him as he boarded for Florida. He never turned around to wave. He simply merged with the rest of the passengers and disappeared down the jetway. With a sigh of both relief and remorse, I headed back for my car.
“Well I guess that little drama is over with, AND I still haven’t a clue what it was really about.”
As I drove home, I felt this persistent voice keep questioning me.
“David, what is your greatest fear?”
“What?”
“What is your greatest fear?”
As I really pondered the question, I began to focus back on the knot in my stomach that had been overlooked by all the adrenaline of the situation - the income I was losing.
“You wanna know what the biggest, darkest fear is?” I shouted to the air. “I’ll tell you. It’s winding up on the streets.”
There – I’d said it. All that loyalty to lack that came from a childhood filled with uncertainty. Listening to my widowed mother repeat over and over again that that’s where we might wind up had settled securely in the very DNA of my bones. I had created it to be the horror or horrors – one that I would spend the rest of my life trying to avoid.
BOOM – it hit me.
“Oh, my God – don't you get it? That’s just what happened to Doug! He showed up and
played out my biggest fear. In glorious human - flesh -Technicolor- reality - he
lived out my worst nightmare. And what happened? He was totally taken care of. I mean REALLY taken care of."
The voice continued, “If it could happen for him (being cared for), do you have the slightest doubt that it could happen for you? And, do you honestly think it will ever get that far? Why, don’t you just drop the fear once and for all and make room for something better?”
That was nearly five years ago.
Doug took his own life this past Christmas (2004). He had left a note for a new wife that simply said, "check the car." In the front seat of that car, in a driveway somewhere in Tarpon Springs, FL, he used a gun to help him make his exit. I had not seen or spoken to him since that morning drive to LAX. He had not shown up for either of my sister’s funerals and we guessed that things had not improved. His drama was of a magnitude I will never comprehend and he played his part with choices vastly different than mine.
I trust his character is at peace now.
As far as my own drama? Well, it took my brother to show me in person how to change the course of it – to play my part in life more consciously – to teach me that I actually had nothing to fear. I would always be taken care of if I simply trust and believe. I would have liked to have thanked him for that in person but I trust now that as he waits in the wings for his next entrance, he knows.
postscript 2009: condolensces and e-mails continued to arrive over the years; stories from young adults who said how Doug had taken the time to autograph a shirt, a card, a glove or bat with such grace and presence. One young girl shared how Doug had gone out of his way to buy and send her brother a glove and ball after writing him about his hardship with leukemia. Many talked of their signed baseball cards and how that opening day game for Toronto will forever live in their hearts.
Through time we become aware that just because someone was unable to express love or compassion in one avenue of their lives does not mean they are totally void of those traits. Doug was fiercely loyal to many fans and made an indelible impression with them.
Did I open myself up to learn this year - really learn? The kind of learning that entices me to enroll in being a student of life with thirst and enthusiasm? Did I set an intention for uncovering more of my potential, letting divine intellect eat from my plate and stepping deeper into the waters of wisdom? Did I open a book, take a class, study a language, learn an instrument, write a poem, visit another culture? Did I learn to surprise and thrill myself with the infinite capacity I have to master more than I thought I could? If not, then I resolve to be and do better on my personal path of learning.
