Some months ago, I found some old news articles on John Wetteland's playing days and assembled them into a post on his personality during his teens, as well as his time with the Dodgers and Yankees, in 1989 and 1990, then again in 1995.
Today's news about him calls for a need to understand something about his past and how it likely relates to his hospitalization in Texas.
In 1995, a New York Times profile of him explained that he'd been born in San Mateo, California in 1966, and father Ed Wetteland had pitched in the minors for the Chicago Cubs, then became a San Francisco musician.
Along with obviously following in his father's footsteps as a pitcher, Wetteland's a devoted guitar player. Ed and Wetteland's mother divorced when Wetteland was 16. Wetteland told the Times:
"I guess I haven't [adjusted to the divorce and his dad remarrying]. But it's not like I can't stand him or anything. My dad and I have a good relationship. We had to live with it."
The Times reported:
Wetteland almost died twice around the age of 17. Once he nearly overdosed on a combination of drugs, including LSD, at a Grateful Dead concert. Another time, Wetteland was in the front seat when a drunken friend rammed his car into a telephone pole. Something happened. He trudged on. He kept playing baseball and guitar. He kept walking crooked.
Unaware of Wetteland's occasional struggles, the Dodgers signed the 18-year-old right-hander out of Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa, Calif., in 1985. He lost 10 straight games in his second minor league season, but was promoted from Class AAA Albuquerque to the Dodgers three years later and went 5-8 with a 3.77 earned run average. Jay Howell, a friend and former teammate, still called him a "lost soul."
In Wetteland's rookie year with the Dodgers in 1989, he started 12 games, made 19 relief appearances, and went just 5-8, but with a decent 3.77 ERA. A half-year later, in spring 1990, Wetteland was 1-4 with a 7.52 ERA.
In words that seem eerily suited to describing his current situation, he said: "It's like I've landed in a hole deep enough so that they have to pump sunlight to you. I've got to find a way out. This is the worst time of my career. All I can hope is after I pitch 10 years, I can look back on these two months of pure hell and know that it was worth it.
"I'm so intense, it's been like, every time I've gone out there, I've said, 'This is it, this is my chance.' And I can't do that. You can't keep heaping emotion on top of emotion."
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