Tigers' Cabrera soberly makes changes in his life

When I last saw Miguel Cabrera, his head was buried in his hands. He was sitting in a solemn visiting clubhouse at the Metrodome. The Tigers had blown a seven-game division lead, culminating in an epic loss to the Twins in Game 163. He was embarrassed, and what happened on the field was only part of the reason.

A night of drinking with White Sox players over the previous weekend had changed everything. He came home drunk at 6 a.m., which led to a physical altercation with his wife, Rosangel. She called 911 and said he had hit her. Cabrera later registered a .26 blood alcohol concentration on a police breath test. But no charges were filed, and Cabrera didn’t miss a game.

It was easy to blame Cabrera for the Tigers’ collapse. I know I did. To his credit, he admitted to making a serious mistake — albeit a few days after the fact. I remember asking him in Minnesota if he would use the winter to get his life in order. “That’s what I’m going to do,” he said.

Which brings us to Thursday, when I saw a smiling Cabrera at Comerica Park. He stood before a couple dozen reporters and told us that, yes, he had fixed the things that needed fixing.

Alcohol? He said he hasn’t touched the stuff since the October night in question.

Counseling? He has been going to sessions with a doctor for the past three months — and his treatment will continue indefinitely.

Family? He talked about being a better husband and father.

Solutions? He has resolved to avoid alcohol by sticking to specific plans for the offseason, spring training and regular season.

“When you see you’ve got a problem, you’ve got to take responsibility,” Cabrera said. “You’ve got to do something and ask for help. I feel good right now. I’m going to do the right steps for (his) life.

“I’ve got better communication with my family and my wife. I feel good with my daughter. It’s a beautiful life right now. Everything is coming through perfect. I’m happy.”

With that, Cabrera and the Tigers hope they can close the book on last season’s cataclysmic conclusion. And they are right to embrace the hope of a new year. But while Thursday’s news conference was an important step in Cabrera’s public battle with alcoholism, words alone won’t make the struggle end.

The Tigers will succeed or fail in 2010 based largely on the strength of Cabrera’s will — his ability to resist having postgame beers in the clubhouse (where alcohol inexplicably remains available), on the team airplane, at hotel bars or around the American League’s various nightspots.

If he can do that, the AL will have its Albert Pujols. The drop in Cabrera’s performance from night games to day games — makes sense now, doesn’t it? — should go away.

He said Thursday that drinking sometimes made him feel “tired” and “kind of lazy” during games — perhaps because he wasn’t getting enough rest. If he stays dry, that should happen less frequently.

“If I (don’t drink),” he said, “I think I’m going to be a better player.”

And bear in mind: He has a career .311 batting average and 209 home runs at age 26.

But remember, too, he’s not trying to come back from a sore knee. Alcoholics cope with their disease, but there is no cure. Staying sober is difficult for mechanics and teachers and investment bankers. The trappings of fame make it even harder for professional athletes to do the same.

And in the era of TMZ, Deadspin and cellphone cameras, plainclothes monitoring is at an all-time high. For evidence of that, look no further than baseball’s foremost case study in sobriety: Texas Rangers slugger Josh Hamilton. For years, he has talked openly about his efforts to stay clean. But his night in an Arizona bar last year turned into the most-visited Deadspin story of the decade.

“It’s something that he has to deal with on a daily basis, and he’s prepared to do that,” Tigers club president Dave Dombrowski said of Cabrera. “He’s in a much different place mentally, with what he has done. … He’s opened up about a lot of his problems, which is the way you correct them.

“If you’ve been educated about alcoholism, which I have been throughout the years, you realize that people have a problem. There’s an addiction involved. The way you fix it is to do what he’s been doing. But it’s still a daily battle. Anybody that has an addiction of any sort knows that it’s a daily battle.”

The Tigers talked Thursday about forgiving Cabrera for his costly transgression, and, really, what other choice did they have? He is under contract for six more seasons — and $126 million. There were whispers of his availability via trade this winter, but no other team could swallow the money whole. They are stuck with each other … and that’s not a bad thing.

Not sure whether it’s time yet for a new entry on our Sports Apology Scorecard — sorry, I misplaced mine after the McGwire boondoggle — but the Tigers handled Thursday’s proceedings quite well (this, after being as effective in the immediate aftermath as they were in sewing up the division). A Spanish-speaking interpreter stood by Cabrera’s side throughout and assisted with his word choice from time to time, which sent a poignant message: Our player has something to say, and we want to make sure that he’s able to communicate it well.

“I feel happy,” Cabrera said. “I feel more comfortable with you guys (the media) talking. I feel like something in my life happened — something good. I feel great. I feel happy. Right now, it’s going to be a new season, a new life for me.

“I want to be a better dad, a better husband, a better baseball player and better with the fans.”

Thanks to what science has taught us about alcoholism, Cabrera may find most paying customers are sympathetic to what he is enduring. But people cheer for home runs, not sober days. The quickest way for Cabrera to remake his image will be to lead the league in home runs — as he did in 2008 — and lift his team into the playoffs.

October heroics trump January revelations. Didn’t Alex Rodriguez teach us that?

The fallout from Cabrera’s night on the town has been the biggest wakeup call of Cabrera’s career – but not the only one. His party-going ways were well-known within the organization and throughout the industry. In 2005 and again in 2007, the Marlins benched him for showing up late to afternoon games.

Lenny Harris, the longtime pinch-hitting expert and a veteran on the ’05 team, remembers a couple of veteran players “got all over” Cabrera for being late.

“He was really down,” Harris recalled Thursday in a telephone interview. “I took him aside. I told him, ‘Everybody’s counting on you. You’re making it worse for yourself. Just be on time and go about your business.’ I thought he felt really bad about it, like he thought it was slipping away from him, all his success.

“I think it woke him up a little bit.”


Maybe it did. But the self-awareness didn’t last forever. This time, I hope it does.