Lonnie Smith’s Career and Spirit Are Reborn

NEW YORK â€”  Lonnie Smith reluctantly sat down in front of his locker and lit a cigarette and then, moments later, another. It was the only sign of nervousness found in a man who very much understands his lot in life.

Lonnie Smith, dragged down in the early 1980s by a drug scandal, is enjoying a rebirth of spirit as well as career.

Flourishing as the left fielder for the Atlanta Braves, Smith is the improbable early candidate for comeback player of the year. He knows he is a good story, a poignant story, not because of where he is and what he is, but because of where he had been and what he had become.

“When I talk to youngsters, now, I bring up the fact that during those days I wasn’t considered human and I didn’t consider myself human,� Smith said. “Because I did a lot of unnatural things, in my way of thinking and acting. And when I went into rehab, I went in to not only clean up my life, but to learn how to be a human being.�

Unnatural?

One night in Philadelphia in 1983, Smith, then a St. Louis Cardinal, stood in left field at Veterans Stadium and invited the obligingly hostile Phillies fans to throw any object they chose at him in an eerie “hit me if you can� dare.

The incident occurred because Smith had been teased by the Phillies’ mascot and he had so viciously tackled the Phanatic between innings the mascot, David Raymond, sprained both ankles.

Smith was a favorite target in Philly to begin with. His career started bizarrely there years before. He was the athlete gifted with speed but cursed with an inexplicable inability to stay on his feet. He was derisively nicknamed “Skates� because of his constant slipping on the basepaths and in the outfield. That night, the Phanatic was mimicking Smith when the mascot was blind-sided by the player.

When Smith took the field again, beer bottles and cans rained around him in left field, so many that Smith considers it a miracle he was not hit. The umpires suggested to St. Louis Manager Whitey Herzog that he remove Smith from the game for Smith’s own protection.

It was obvious something was very wrong. “The thing I did on Dave Raymond could have actually broken his ankle or kneecap,� Smith says now. “As it turned out, he was pretty hurt. Fortunately, he wasn’t seriously hurt.�

But Smith was hurting, seriously. He was living in a cocaine and marijuana haze. To this day, he does not even know if he was high or not that night. He does know he scared himself enough to take action. Shortly after that incident, Smith -- a marijuana user since 1974, a cocaine user since 1977, not to mention other drugs -- voluntarily checked into a drug rehabilitation center.

He has been in different forms of rehabilitation ever since, some voluntary, some not (the baseball commissioner’s edict on drug users cost Smith 10 percent of his salary in 1986 and he was ordered to donate 200 hours to community service. That indictment still embitters Smith; he refers to Peter Ueberroth’s punishment as his “sentence.�)

But Smith also knows he could be dead from a drug overdose. “I think back on some of those things and wonder how in the heck I could do things like that,� he said. “But that’s how far gone I was. That’s how much control the drug had over me.�

It was Smith’s responsibility to change his lifestyle. It was his obsession to save his career.

He was not Keith Hernandez or Dave Parker. His talents did not make it mandatory that the game make room for him. When his “sentence� was handed down, he was a Kansas City Royal. When he spoke out against the commissioner, the Royals were angered.

“The press is always bringing it up because it’s a good-interest story, but I don’t mind talking about it,� he said. “But they (the Royals) didn’t understand. I used it as a way of therapy.�

By the winter of 1986, the Royals decided they could live with Smith, only if the player-turned free agent agreed to a full-time role as designated hitter and outfielder and accepted a salary cut. Smith refused and found himself out of Kansas City and in free-agent limbo, caused by the now-proven collusion by the owners.

When Kansas City was allowed to re-sign him May 1, 1987, Smith came back admittedly out of shape. That physical state and the deteriorating relationship with the Royals started a skid to the minors.

That December, the Royals, citing bad attitude and deteriorating skills, released him. By the following March, no team would even listen to Smith’s agent. “I started calling around myself,� Smith said.

Only two people listened -- Atlanta General Manager Bobby Cox and Hank Aaron, the Braves’ vice president in charge of player development. They were interested, but there was a catch. He had to go to Richmond, the minor leagues. He had to go to winter baseball in Puerto Rico. He had to fight all the way back.

Smith, then 32, could have easily walked away. But, he said, “I was in a position where I had no choice. I wanted to continue playing. I was willing to try anything.�

Smith proceeded to hit .300 in Richmond last season. This past winter, his .366 average won him an MVP of the Puerto Rican League. He now plays every day for the Braves in left field.

Smith may seem to fly in the face of the Braves’ youth movement but, says Manager Russ Nixon, the Braves’ farm system had turned out a host of youngsters, but mostly pitchers. It did not produce a young leadoff hitter. It did produce Smith.

“We needed him,� Nixon said. “And he needed us. It’s worked out great.�