A turn for the worse

Eric needed a shoulder to cry on, or at least closure, and so that offseason, he arranged a visit with Les.

According to Cara Mia, Eric had an idealistic view of what a father-son relationship should be. Hugs. Slaps on the back. Surprise trips to Disneyland. The problem with Les, as far as Tyler could tell, was that he was "like a stone … formal … no warmth at all." And after the Rose hit, Eric was finally going to confront him on it.

He invited Les to his home, and Eric poured them each a glass of wine. He didn't drink often, but Eric thought alcohol might be the only way to take the edge off. He told Les, "Let's put all the cards on the table" and he methodically brought up the abuse, on and off the baseball field.

According to Leslie, there were tears and angry words, and according to Cindi, Les took responsibility for nothing. He blamed his own upbringing, blamed Eric. The tone was contentious. Eric threw up his hands. Nothing was solved.

He returned to the Padres in 1986 feeling unwelcomed but grateful that he at least had the Pep Boys in his corner. But, about midyear, Thurmond was traded to Detroit, and then, on July 4, 1987, Dravecky was dealt to the Giants. "I think we all wondered aloud, 'God, what's Eric gonna do now? His guys are gone,'" Gossage says.

On July 7 in Chicago, Eric pitched without his allies for the first time, and Andre Dawson greeted him in the first inning with a towering home run. Dawson was killing San Diego pitching. He had homered off Eric in May, and he had gone deep twice July 6 against Mark Grant, who'd been acquired in the Dravecky trade. Dawson was the streakiest sort of hitter, and when he stepped up again in the bottom of the third, he engulfed home plate, waiting for more meat.

Eric would tell Tyler later that he just meant to brush Dawson back, to take back at least a piece of the plate. But Eric's pitches tended to run inside anyway, and this one ran right into Dawson's face. "The Hawk" was down, blood gushing, and Chicago pitcher Rick Sutcliffe charged after Eric, followed by a small army of other Cubs. Dawson writhed on the ground for what seemed like an eternity, then slowly began to uncoil.

"I saw him come up with blood on his face and big ol' eyes," Flannery says. "The Hawk looked scary. I knew he was going to try to kill him."

Dawson chased Eric all over the infield, and even as first-base umpire Charlie Williams escorted Eric off the playing field -- honestly fearing for the pitcher's safety -- Dawson was still after him. "I think there was even a point where I kind of [would have] liked to have seen Andre get his hands on him," Gossage says.

[+] Enlarge Courtesy of Show FamilyShow took his guitar on team road trips and would play in hotel stairwells, for better acoustics.

Alone in the clubhouse, Eric was literally quivering. "I went back up there, after the game resumed, and I remember he looked like he lost a family member, like his dog got hit by a car," Grant says. "He was sitting at the picnic table, and he was writing a handwritten letter to Andre Dawson, apologizing."

But Dawson wouldn't accept the apology, and some insinuated the beaning was racially motivated. It was more Birch Society fallout; it had never gone away. Eric received a death threat and changed hotels. He didn't have the makeup to handle this alone. Dravecky and Thurmond were gone at the most inopportune time, and he was sinking. He didn't love the game enough to be able to stomach this.

"Eric's dad got his wish to live through his son, but it robbed Eric of something that was inherently him," his friend Augustin says. "Maybe Eric wasn't cut out to play baseball. Maybe he would've been better suited as a musician."

Cara Mia had been listening to the Dawson game on the radio while doing dishes in the kitchen and flew straight to Pittsburgh, where the Padres were headed next. She found Eric inconsolable. Nationally, he was a pariah, and Tyler says, "I didn't get it. Drysdale or Gibson were headhunters. They were lionized for that sort of thing. Eric does the same thing, tries to brush a guy back, and now he's like [Charles] Manson."

Not a single Padres player believed Eric was aiming for Dawson's face. At his core, they knew he wasn't violent or racist. But no one heard them. Cara Mia says the Dawson incident was the last straw, the worst day of Eric's baseball life -- which is saying something.

Deep down, he wanted out.

Dangerous addiction

Sometime in 1988, as best as anyone can guess, Eric Show tried his first amphetamine.

The theories of his wife and friends are threefold: that he was bored with baseball; that his back was constantly aching and he needed a boost; and, lastly, that he wanted an escape.

The clubhouse drug of choice in those days was Fastin, a greenie that Eric knew was prevalent all over baseball. For years, he resisted them. But, after the Dawson incident, the willpower was gone. "He would take an amphetamine to, I think, make him sharp for the game," Cara Mia says. "It took the back pain away."

[+] Enlarge Courtesy of Show FamilyShow in a jam session, circa 1986, during spring training in Yuma, Ariz.

The results were undeniable. Eric improved from eight wins in 1987 to 16 wins in 1988. Not only that, he threw 13 complete games, eight more than his previous career high. He also was staying up all hours of the night, sometimes until dawn, unable to come down from the chemically induced high. Teammates would be returning to the hotel at 2 a.m., just as Eric was heading out.

"I'd see him once in a while in kind of seedy areas by himself," Gossage says. "One time in Pittsburgh, I came around the corner, and boom, we were nose to nose. I just happened to be traveling through, and he was like a deer in headlights. He hurried away from me. There was a good guy inside of Eric, and I would've sat there and talked to him. But he was, 'I gotta go, gotta go.' I thought, 'What the hell was that all about?'"

By 1989, the drug use was backfiring. He'd always been a player who showed up 30 seconds before a 3 p.m. bus, but now, he was plain unreliable. He was supposed to start a 1 o'clock game in St. Louis on May 11 that year, and by 12:30, he still hadn't shown his face in the clubhouse. The team was scrambling to find a spot starter … until Eric rolled in at 12:35. He gave up five runs and was yanked after two innings. He seemed listless. All of that Fastin had masked Eric's back pain, but, in the process, he'd done damage to his disc area. He needed surgery during the season and decided a return in 1990 was implausible without some sort of drug, some sort of upper. He phoned the only addict he knew: his sister Cindi.

Les had damaged more than just his son, and Cindi -- a self-professed "wild child" -- had been using speed for years. Eric invited her out to lunch one day and asked whether she knew where to obtain Desoxyn, Prelude or Fastin. He knew all of the amphetamine derivations, but Cindi told him he'd need a prescription for those.

"Besides, Eric," she told him, "how can you use those? They drug test you."

"Nah, nah, they don't drug test," he said.

"Aren't you worried about being caught?" she asked.

"No, you have to be really blowing it for them to do that," he said.

In that case, she said, she had an idea. She couldn't get him prescribed pills, but she could buy something comparable on the street.

"You've probably heard of it," she said. "Crystal meth … methamphetamine."

So Cindi became Eric's supplier. Rather than risk his being arrested, she bought the meth for him. In a matter of days, he was hooked.

"Eric got addicted very fast," Cindi says. "I mean, he was using massive amounts from the very beginning. I'd get him about a month's worth, at least, but he'd call back like the next week and go, 'I accidentally flushed it down the toilet' or 'It accidentally went down the drain.' I'm like, 'Eric, I don't know.' And he's, 'I really, really need it. Swear to God, swear to God.' So I'd get him some more."

Fairly soon, there was the 1990 season to play, and at times, Cindi and Eric were using meth together. He'd stay up three nights at a time, and he'd lie and tell Cara Mia and Augustin he had music projects he was working on. Augustin knew better. Cindi felt guilty and tried controlling his binges. "I said, 'Eric, if you use it, you've got to stop using it by a certain time of the day so you can sleep at night,'" she says. "I said, 'You have to eat. This stuff will make you not want to eat. You're an athlete. You need your energy.' But he'd go, 'Yeah, yeah.' He'd just go out and pitch on it."

He was in so deep, the typical meth-induced paranoia set in. Fages, his old high school catcher, visited for a game at Jack Murphy, and Eric told him he was "being tormented regularly by demons that would sit in the stands and hiss and scream at him." The dead giveaway to the Padres was his 5.76 ERA. Something was amiss. During homestands, he'd play his guitar all afternoon until Cara Mia had to remind him to get to the stadium. Otherwise, he might not have shown up at all. She was seeing all the signs of a grown man crashing down. She stood by him, still went to Jack Murphy Stadium on nights he pitched. She'd sit alone, writing letters or listening to music on her headphones. The games were becoming hard to watch.

The Padres weren't planning to re-sign him after the '90 season. He started out 1-8 and got booed by fans, got called selfish by teammate Jack Clark. When Grant asked him one day how he was hanging in there, Eric sang a stanza from the Don Henley song "The Heart of the Matter":

There are people in your life who've come and gone. They let you down, you know they hurt your pride. You better put it all behind you baby; 'cause life goes on. If you keep carrying that anger, it'll eat you up inside, baby … I've been trying to get down to the heart of the matter. But my will gets weak, and my thoughts seem to scatter … But I think it's about forgiveness Forgiveness. Even if, even if you don't love me anymore …

Then his Padres career was over, in a blaze of glory. On the final night of the '90 season, stuck on 99 career wins, he beat the Dodgers 7-3 for victory No. 100. He was the winningest pitcher in franchise history, but somehow, as he walked out the clubhouse door in a black leather jacket, it just didn't feel that way.

Plunging to scary depths

He found a team to take him in 1991, the naive Oakland A's. It was more of the same: a bloated ERA and irregular behavior. Augustin came to visit for a day game, and afterward, the two sat in an empty Oakland Coliseum dugout.

"Can you smell that?" Augustin asked. "Can you smell the fresh-cut grass?"

"Why you ask?" Eric said.

"Because this is your baseball career. One day it's going to be over. You're not going to be here to have this perspective. … Can you smell that? Appreciate that?"

"Nah … let's go have a beer," Eric said.

The A's picked up his option for 1992, but over the winter, Eric's world continued to deteriorate. Les was showing signs of dementia, and Eric was the one who took him to the doctor. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and Eric told Les it was important to find Christ. Les waved him off.

Meanwhile, according to Augustin, Eric was beginning to favor cocaine over meth, and his drug-induced paranoia was getting over the top. He was convinced a dragon was after him. … He swore one night to Cindi that Marilyn Monroe was in the room with him. … He was certain someone was going to implant a tracking device inside him. … He carried around that same .22-caliber pistol from his college days in Riverside.

Then, in spring training of '92, it all went public. He skipped an A's workout and showed up three days later with bandaged hands. Police told the team Eric had been acting peculiarly near an adult bookstore and that, when approached, he'd tried hopping a barbed wire fence. There also were rumors he'd freebased and had cocaine blow up in his hands. No one knew the truth. All A's manager Tony La Russa would say was, "It's clear to me, if the stuff doesn't change, what's the use of having him?"

[+] Enlarge Courtesy of Show FamilyShow, seen with Andy Hawkins, spent his final year in baseball, 1991, with the Oakland A's. His sister, Cindi, says he pitched high on methampetamine.

Days later, Show was released, and worse yet, Cara Mia kicked him out. In her mind, it was tough love. He stayed with Augustin and eventually entered rehab. He owed it to Cara Mia and his marriage. He went to a treatment center in Louisville, Ky., and saw in the paper that Dravecky, who'd lost his left arm to cancer, was speaking at a local Fellowship of Christian Athletes dinner. Eric begged to go, and the center let him out, accompanied by two staffers. Dravecky saw him during his presentation and shouted, "Eric! Good to see you! Whatever you do, don't leave until I talk to you."

They had barely seen each other since the '87 trade. Dravecky gave him his contact information and asked him to call. Eric lost the number.

He moved back in with Augustin in July 1993 but kept complaining there were evil men in the attic. He was convinced his sister Leslie was an imposter who worked for the police. Augustin says Eric was "scaring the hell out of me." He asked Cara Mia to drive over, and they took Eric to a treatment center in Lakeside, Calif. But Eric had conned his way through that program three times before, and a staffer advised them to drop Eric off at county detox in downtown San Diego. Eric used to drop people off there himself.

Later that night, Eric wandered the downtown area, yelling, "Somebody's trying to kill me!" Police sprayed him with pepper gas and dragged him into a police car. He kicked out a back window and tried climbing out head first. He admitted to using crystal meth, and the cops checked him into a psychiatric hospital.

His mother came to take him home to Riverside and called his old friend Tyler. Tyler walked in to find Eric soaking his feet in Epsom salts; he'd cut them while kicking out the window. Eric seemed lucid. He told Tyler he had asked the police to shoot him that night. Tyler began to tear up.

They went for a walk, and Eric promised to quit drugs. He told Tyler about the time he had loaded up a bowl of heroin and cocaine and thought to himself, "This may do it, man. This may be too much." When he then lit it up, Eric howled, "It's in your hands, God!" But the drugs hadn't killed him.

Maybe he had unfinished business.

The saddest of endings

Eric went to see Les again, to see whether he could finally talk sense into the old man. He walked in, and his father stared at him blankly. Eric asked Les whether he knew what year it was, and Les said something like 1959. He asked him who the president was, and Les hadn't a clue. Eric had come to help his father find Christ; but how could he do that if his father hadn't the faintest idea who Christ was?

[+] Enlarge Courtesy of Leslie CifelliShow spent much of his adult life trying to reconcile with his father; the closest he came was when Les was diagnosed with Alzheimers.

He returned a second time, and Les was a little more forthcoming. There seemed to be a minor breakthrough. Eric squeezed his hand. They posed for a nice photo together.

But it's about forgiveness. Forgiveness. Even if you don't love me anymore.

Eric told Cara Mia about the visit, and she remembers him half-smiling, half-cringing. "I think he did make peace with his dad," Cara Mia says. "But when I asked him about that, Eric still looked sad. He probably wanted his dad to grab him around the shoulders and hug him and say, 'Eric, I'm so sorry I hurt you and abused you growing up. But I want you to know I love you and please forgive me for how I've hurt you.' He probably wanted some acceptance from his father. Because that's why Eric was always running. Running from the hurt. Running right to the amphetamines."

And on cue, he ran back to drugs again. He relapsed in early 1994 and told Cara Mia, "You'd be better off if I was dead." He wouldn't play his guitar anymore, an ominous sign. Cara Mia, Tyler and Augustin all thought he might be giving up.

"I told him I loved him and if he didn't quit drugs he'd chase the dragon right off the edge of the world," Tyler says. "And I just got the sense there was this flatness. About life in general. About everything."

On Feb. 12 of that year, Eric entered rehab one more time, at the Rancho L'Abri center in Dulzura, Calif. This time, he stayed for 30 days and apparently laid it all out for the counselors: Baseball was the culprit. He'd had a gift for it. He pleased his father with it. It was easy money. But he was always at the wrong place, wrong time. A John Birch bookstore during spring training … Pete Rose and 4,192 … Andre Dawson and a fastball with a mind of its own. Why me?

But after his 30th day, Eric had a premonition Les was dying and called Augustin to say, "I need to see my father." Augustin planned to pick him up the next afternoon, March 14, 1994, but first went surfing that morning. He wrapped his keys in a towel at the beach, but when he returned, the keys were gone. He asked his friend Bob Bell to go get Eric.

Bell had no idea Eric was leaving Rancho L'Abri against medical advice, and says Eric seemed sober and wistful on their hour's ride back to San Diego. Eric told Bell he was worried his father might be too far gone to find Christ. He talked about a math equation he'd been working on for days. He said his marriage was on the rocks. Bell asked him whether he needed a place to stay, and Eric said he was going to meet up with friends Bell didn't know. It was a red flag. Bell begged him to stay with him, but Eric said, "No, I'm OK, Bob, I'm going to see these friends. I'm fine; don't worry."

Sure enough, Eric went on a drug binge that night. He hadn't gone to see Les; instead, he'd concocted a speedball. Augustin would later learn that Eric ingested four $10 bags of cocaine, felt unsettled and then ingested eight $10 bags of heroin. He then chased it with a six-pack of beer.

He vomited several times afterward and was up all night before meeting Augustin for lunch the next day, March 15. "He looked haggard, worn out," Augustin says. "He wouldn't eat. I knew he needed to go back to rehab. But he went to the house he had with his wife."

Eric had written a love letter he wanted to personally deliver to Cara Mia. On the way over, he used the last of his heroin. When they met that night, she had something to tell him: She wanted a divorce.

She said that she couldn't continue to be "dragged down," that he needed to head back to Rancho L'Abri to get clean. He said, "I know, I know, I'm just going to give it all to God now." She called the center to come fetch him, and when the van arrived, she kissed him and said, "You go get 'em, honey, you're going to be just fine."

That night, she dialed Yvonne to say Eric was safely back in treatment. Yvonne was relieved -- until Leslie called her the next morning in hysterics.

Eric was dead, at 37. He'd been found unresponsive in his bed, at about 8:05 the morning of March 16, with that same .22-caliber gun under his pillow. According to the toxicology report delivered to Cara Mia, he had died of acute morphine and cocaine intoxication. Cara Mia says she had no idea he'd done a speedball or she would've rushed him to the ER herself.

As for the gun under his pillow, Eric's friends say it was due to his chronic paranoia, to all the dragons he saw. It was loaded with five bullets.

On his finger was his wedding ring.

A life remembered

They never told Les he was gone. What would be the point of it? If he couldn't remember Eric, the news would mean nothing to him. And if he could remember his son, it'd be torture. Even Leslie, who had disowned her father years before, conceded that Les adored Eric, that his intentions were pure. He just had zero control of himself.

Courtesy of Show FamilyCara Mia picked out an emerald green casket because "Eric would've liked it.'' She also placed a baseball and a guitar inside.

It rained at the funeral, and only one Padres player showed up: Dravecky. But there were letters from people all over the U.S. who wrote that Eric had encouraged them to get back into church. There were stories of him stopping traffic so a mother could carry her groceries across a street with her young child. Stories of how he wanted to save the whales. No one brought up Pete Rose.

Cara Mia ordered an emerald green casket -- "He would've liked it," she says -- and placed a photo of herself in his pocket. Cindi, who had turned her life around, inserted a letter in his other pocket that read, "I wish it had been me, not you."

They also put a guitar and a baseball in the coffin -- one his passion, the other his penance. "If he'd been a musician, he'd still be here today, with gray hair," Cara Mia says.

But life moves on. Les died a year later, and not long after, Yvonne was diagnosed with cancer, and she died in 2000. Before she slipped into a coma, Tyler went to visit her. And as Yvonne rubbed his hair from her wheelchair, Tyler sensed she was imagining Eric. He says it was one of the saddest moments of his life.

Augustin continued to operate Eric's music store and made copies of Eric's first recording, "America 4/4 To Go." He turned Eric's collection of Christmas songs into a CD titled "Oh Holy Night" and made it available on iTunes and cdbaby.com. He says that if Eric had lived, he'd have played music in venues the size of baseball stadiums. "He was that good," Augustin says.

[+] Enlarge Courtesy of Show FamilyShow took the homeless out to dinner and forgave his abusive father. To his family, that should be his legacy; not the Rose hit.

Cara Mia remarried. But she kept most of Eric's trinkets, including an autographed ball from Rose that said, "To Eric, A Great Competitor." The first year after he died, she would occasionally slink into a Padres game at Jack Murphy Stadium and sit in the wives' section. It was odd because she was never much of a baseball fan. But she wanted to smell the grass her husband couldn't or wouldn't ever smell. She wanted to take one more look around for Eric.

So she'd wait for the moon to come out.

Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN.com. Friend was the beat reporter for the 1985 San Diego Padres for the Los Angeles Times, San Diego edition.

Eric V Show