How a WS-winning father and son found their way back to each other

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- The father and son gather at the glass case commemorating World Series champions and start looking for their rings.

“There’s yours, ’64 and ’67,” Scott Spiezio says to his dad.

Ed Spiezio looks at the ’64 memento in the case, and then at the ring he’s wearing on his left ring finger.

“Yeah, that’s this one,” he says proudly.

On Scott’s right hand, meanwhile, are the rings he won with the Angels in 2002 and the Cardinals in 2006.

“There’s my Angel one here,” Scott says, pointing again at the case, “and there’s my Cardinal one here.”

Most visitors of this third-floor jewelry display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum are merely observing the evolution of how MLB champions have commemorated their triumphs. But for the Spiezios, the exhibit is more personal.

Ed and Scott are one of only eight father-son combos in which each has played for a World Series winner, and they are the only father-son combo in which each has played for two champs. That they both won a World Series with the Cardinals franchise only adds to their special spot in the sport.

“You think of all the great players who never got a chance to win or even be in the World Series, and we were in five, winning four out of five,” Scott says in amazement. “And it all started in the backyard.”

It’s Memorial Day weekend, and Ed and Scott are touring the museum prior to participating in the Hall of Fame Classic -- the annual legends game at Doubleday Field. To walk alongside them is to witness their profound perspective on baseball history.

Ed, who is 81 years old, tells stories about his father, Ed Sr., playing semi-pro ball against Negro League legends like Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe, about playing in the World Series with Bob Gibson and against Mickey Mantle, about negotiating his contract with Branch Rickey and notching the first hit and homer in Padres history.

The 50-year-old Scott, who has no doubt heard all these stories countless times, still listens in awe and appreciation of his dad. Then he’s reunited with the bat he had donated to the Hall in 2002, after hitting one of the biggest Series-shifting home runs ever.

As they tour the Hall, the Spiezios chat so much and so long that other family members accompanying them roll their eyes and shake their heads.

“Once they get going,” says Ed’s wife and Scott’s mom Verna, “they don’t stop.”

And yet, as hard as it is to believe on a night like this, there was a time when the conversation did stop. There were years in which Ed and Scott were estranged, as the son’s problems with drugs, alcohol and depression spiraled out of control.

Scott and Ed can tell you an awful lot about winning in baseball. But what’s more important is what they can tell you about how substance abusers and their families overcome addiction.

*****

From pay phones in Bakersfield, Calif., or Bellingham, Wash., or wherever Scott happened to play while navigating A-ball in the California League and Northwest League in his first season of pro ball in 1993, he would call his dad collect and go over the notes he had taken on his recent at-bats.

“Bob Wolcott is pitching,” he’d say. “First pitch, slider low and away.”

On the other end of the line, back home in the small town of Morris, Ill., Ed dutifully listened and offered advice on plate approach where he could.

That’s how it always was with these two.

Ed played 554 games across nine seasons in the big leagues as a third baseman and outfielder. He played his final game in 1972 -- the same year Scott was born.

“I felt that if I kept him as a priority and just never overdid it and made sure he enjoyed [baseball],” Ed says, “he had a chance.”

Scott reached the pros as a sixth-round Draft pick out of the University of Illinois, then reached the big leagues with the A’s in 1996. His seminal moment came with the Angels, in Game 6 of the 2002 World Series. The Halos were facing elimination against the Giants and were down, 5-0, with one out and two on in the seventh inning when Scott belted a 3-2 pitch from Felix Rodriguez over the right-field wall to pull the Halos back in the ballgame.

A dead-quiet home crowd erupted, and Ed, sitting in the stands at Angel Stadium, where the Angels would go on to win that game and the next to take the title, could barely believe it.

“Your kid makes the big leagues, that’s one in a million,” Ed says. “He makes the World Series, that’s maybe one in 10 million. He’s a star in the World Series, that’s maybe one in 20 million.”

Ed would soon learn that having a child who becomes an addict is far more common.

*****

It began in Spring Training in 2004. Spiezio had just signed a three-year contract with the Mariners to be their everyday third baseman. In his first spring with his new club, he went to field a pop fly and tripped over the pitcher’s mound. The back strain he suffered was so bad that doctors initially feared he might not be able to play again.

To that point, Scott had lived a pretty clean life. He rarely drank, he didn’t do drugs, he was even reluctant to take ibuprofen. But at the moment of that injury, his life was beginning to teeter. He felt like the Angels had forced him out, and he was adjusting to a new environment. Meanwhile, his marriage to his high school sweetheart, Amy, had fallen apart.

With all that as a backdrop, the injury sent him into depression. His production cratered (.198 average in 141 games across two seasons in Seattle), and his drinking increased.

“As I drank, I made bad decisions,” he says. “And then it started to get easier to make bad decisions.”

Ed remembers a visit to Seattle where everything felt off. At the urging of Mariners hitting coach Paul Molitor, he had come to watch Scott take batting practice and offer advice on how he could fix his swing. But this time, he could tell his son was having trouble staying focused and relaxed.

“That’s when we all knew something was wrong,” Ed says. “He was distancing himself from us.”

Scott’s condition worsened, and the distance widened. He did not speak to his parents for most of 2005 and '06.

Reflecting now, Scott says the divide he erected between himself and his parents and other friends and family members is typical of addicts. The Mariners released him midway through his second season with them, and he sunk deeper. He tried cocaine for the first time to take the edge off, beginning an addiction to recreational drugs.

Improbably, even as he routinely mixed booze and drugs, Spiezio had a bounce-back season in 2006, after signing a Minor League deal with the Cardinals. He emerged as a valuable pinch-hitter and reserve outfielder and third baseman. He hit .272 with an .862 OPS and was a fan favorite for his red-dyed soul patch.

Like his father, Scott was a member of a championship team in St. Louis. But even more meaningfully, the Cardinals beat the Tigers in that World Series. For years, Scott had heard his dad bemoan the 1968 World Series his Cardinals lost to the Tigers as the “one that got away.” Now, he was part of the team that avenged that defeat.

It would have been quite the topic of conversation between the two baseball men … if only they had been on speaking terms. But by that point, Scott’s parents were far more concerned with what was happening to their son off the field than on it.

*****

The Cardinals wanted to celebrate the rare feat of a father and son both winning a World Series with them, so they asked Ed to come to Busch Stadium for their ring ceremony in 2007. The team was not yet aware of Scott’s issues or the estrangement, and the invite posed a difficult decision for Ed and the rest of the family.

“We all decided,” he says, “this would be something to do.”

Scott was standing on the top step of the home dugout, awaiting his introduction, when Ed’s former teammate, Mike Shannon, made the public-address announcement that a special, surprise guest was in the house. When Scott turned his head and saw his dad wearing his old No. 26 Cardinals jersey, tears flowed.

“I don’t think there was a dry eye in the whole place,” Ed says. “I remember being in the dugout with Adam Kennedy [afterward] and him saying, ‘You don’t realize how big a thing this is for [Scott].’”

It would be years before Scott would actually kick his addiction, and there would be many awful, humiliating and dangerous moments to come. He insists, though, that reconnecting with his dad that day and in that way was the first seed of change within him.

“That night, I talked to both of my parents,” Scott says. “I was still suffering, and I wasn’t really telling everybody everything that was going on yet. But that kind of got the ball rolling.”

By August of that season, Scott’s addiction was so bad that he had begun drinking before games. He told the Cardinals what was happening, and they placed him on the restricted list and sent him to a rehab center in nearby St. Charles, Mo.

Scott’s parents went to a different clinic. The Cardinals referred them to a counseling center where they could learn more about addiction and how to handle a family member in the throes of it. Ed and Verna spent about 16 hours one day traveling to and from an eight-hour workshop hosted by a licensed professional counselor named Mark Stevens.

Ed, who all those years earlier had instructed his son to take notes on opposing pitchers, came out of the session with about 40 handwritten pages of his own.

*****

Upon his return from rehab, Scott rejoined the Cardinals in September 2007 for his final big league stint. He didn’t stay sober.

“For me, as a Major Leaguer, it was hard to admit I was powerless over alcohol or anything,” he says. “That sounds arrogant, but you have to kind of be arrogant to be a baseball player.”

The addiction sent Scott into a spiral. Over the course of it, he was divorced twice, whittled his net worth to next to nothing and was arrested five times -- the worst of which was a 2013 incident in which he pulled a girlfriend’s hair and threw her to the ground, resulting in a domestic battery charge.

Scott has four children, and his addiction harmed his relationship with them. He did things that terrified them. The three oldest kids were adopted by their stepfather, and, to this day, he has limited visitation rights with his youngest son.

Health-wise, Scott was once put on a ventilator with a heart issue, and his liver became so damaged by a gallon-a-day vodka habit that he developed jaundice.

Scott’s addiction didn’t just endanger his life and career; it broke the hearts of those around him, especially Ed. In that workshop with the counselor, the father had been warned that the path to sobriety can often be long and painful.

“They’ve got to hit bottom and turn it around, and then you can help them,” Ed says. “For some people, it takes a short time. For a lot of people, it takes a long time.”

For Scott, it took a very long time. He wound up making 11 trips to rehab clinics in the span of more than a decade. Scott’s rock bottom finally came in early April of 2018. He was in the hospital with liver issues and was told he might need a transplant. He finally realized the prospect of an early grave was very real and very present.

That’s when Scott finally got sober. With the help of his family and his dear friend Tonia Boyer, with whom he lives, he turned his life around. He underwent counseling, went to A.A. meetings, and, upon his father’s insistence, rededicated himself to his Christian faith. He is closer with his children now.

Scott knows there is no excuse he can offer for his awful actions. His focus, rather, is on being open and honest about his story in the hope that it can help someone else.

“His whole character has come back to where it was before anything happened,” Ed says. “He tells everyone he loves them, and he doesn’t leave without giving you a hug, because he’s so grateful that God gave him another chance. The whole family is back like it used to be.”

Last October marked the 20th anniversary of Scott’s magic moment in the World Series in Anaheim. Yet, the five years of sobriety he marked on April 5 of this year means more to him.

“When I got my five-year [sobriety] coin, Tonia had called the Angels and arranged for [Mike] Scioscia, Bengie and Jose Molina, [Tim] Salmon, Benji Gil, Aaron Sele … tons of them made videos congratulating me on my five-year anniversary,” Scott says. “I can’t believe how blessed I am now to have gotten through it and the support I’ve gotten. It’s overwhelming.”

Ed never would have imagined his squeaky-clean son succumbing to addiction. He has since realized how common addiction is.

“Talking to people in our town and finding out that their son or their daughter had been through the same thing and is still going through it -- you don’t realize how much it’s happening around you,” Ed says. “You just think it’s happening to your kid, no one else.”

*****

On a recent afternoon at the Morris warehouse where Scott gives hitting lessons to young ballplayers, Ed popped in. Scott was finishing up a session with a kid, so Ed sat near the cage and watched.

Scott was giving hitting pointers:

“Coil like a snake and pop!”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait … and wait some more!”

“Hit through the ball, no love taps!”

At a certain point, it dawned on Scott, with Ed sitting there: These were all phrases Ed had taught him and that Ed’s dad had taught Ed.

“I’m so lucky that he’s still here,” Scott says of his father.

Scott is not the only survivor of his addiction. His dad, his mom, his sisters, his children, his closest friends … they all had to endure it with him, and they all earned valuable insight along the way. Insight they are eager to share.

Recently, the family of a current Minor Leaguer suffering addiction reached out to Scott.

“He was a super talented kid who got addicted to Adderall,” Scott says. “Then he started mixing it with alcohol.”

So the player and his parents made the trek to Morris. Scott spent a couple hours with the player, and the player’s parents spent a couple hours with Ed and Verna. The Spiezios prepared the family for what might well be a difficult path to sobriety, but they were living proof of what’s waiting on the other side.

“Maybe [Scott] had to go through this to help people,” Ed says. “It makes you wonder if it was all God’s plan.”

A long time ago, before the booze and the drugs and the headlines and the heartbreak, Scott Spiezio came to the plate in a World Series that seemed cinched and, with one swing of the bat, altered the outcome.

Today, he reminds those dealing with addiction that they have the power to alter their outcomes, too.

“We don’t want anyone to go through what we did,” Scott says. “But if they do, there’s always hope. As long as you have a breath, you have a pen to write a great ending.”

As their tour of the Hall of Fame nears its end, Scott and Ed reach the plaque gallery and are swapping more stories about the greats they encountered in their careers. Ed watched in agony as Al Kaline robbed him of his would-be third World Series ring. Scott and David Ortiz chased each other for the RBI title in Triple-A. Ed played in an Old Timers’ game with Minnie Miñoso. Scott went deep off Mike Mussina. On and on it goes.

It's well past 11 p.m. on a Friday night. The other players invited to Cooperstown for the Hall of Fame Classic have all since boarded the bus back to the hotel. Museum staffers have long since begun to shut the place down for the night. The other members of the Spiezio family are sitting on benches and stifling yawns.

Finally, Ed and Scott make their way to the exit and out to Main Street, where their conversation continues.