The last few years the Dodgers have raised Angelino’s hopes of a World Series cham­pi­onship, only to break our hearts by los­ing ear­ly in the play­offs. This year’s team seems deter­mined to make up for shat­tered dreams. The Dodgers racked up the best won-loss record in base­ball, swept the Dia­mond­backs, and mowed down the mighty Cubs to move on to the World Series for the first time in twen­ty-nine years. 

I have fond mem­o­ries of the Dodgers’ last World Series run because of one play­er on that team. A big part of the 1988 Dodgers’ suc­cess rest­ed on the right arm of a jour­ney­man twen­ty-eight year old mid­dle reliev­er. If you men­tion his name in base­ball cir­cles today, even among die-hard Dodger fans, you’ll like­ly draw a blank stare, but I remem­ber him well, because he met with my Lit­tle League team ear­ly in the 1988 sea­son before any­one thought the Dodgers would win their divi­sion, much less the World Series. 

That meet­ing found its ori­gins in 1981. I was an asso­ciate in a cor­po­rate law firm. My ambi­tion to excel con­sumed me. I gave lip-ser­vice to bal­anc­ing work and home life, telling myself my fam­i­ly came first, but that was a lie. My career came first. Always.

Then my five-year-old son fell prey to a rare dis­ease. By the time the doc­tors diag­nosed it cor­rect­ly, his con­di­tion was crit­i­cal. He and I moved into a children’s hos­pi­tal and spent ten days there. He pulled through and made a full recov­ery, thank God. At the time, I thought those hor­rif­ic days were the worst of my life, but they turned out to be trans­for­ma­tion­al, teach­ing me a hard les­son I couldn’t seem to learn any oth­er way. 

Before my son got sick, I got a let­ter from the AYSO, request­ing vol­un­teers to coach. Too busy, I told myself. I’ll do it next year. But at the children’s hos­pi­tal I met par­ents whose kids wouldn’t live to see a next year. I’d been blessed with a sec­ond chance they wouldn’t receive. I couldn’t waste it. From there on, I coached my kids in sports and spent more time with my fam­i­ly. Don’t get me wrong. I was still crazy to suc­ceed. It was, and still is, my per­son­al demon. I didn’t always make the right choic­es after that scare, but I struck a more rea­son­able balance.

That bal­ance was the rea­son I coached my son’s Lit­tle League team in 1988. After their last game, I took the kids to a Dodgers game. One of my friends, a Dodgers exec­u­tive, agreed to set up a meet­ing for them with a play­er, but he couldn’t guar­an­tee who would be avail­able until we arrived. 

The night of the game, my friend ush­ered us down to a box behind home plate and intro­duced us to Bri­an Holton. After toil­ing in the Dodgers’ minor league sys­tem for sev­en years with lit­tle suc­cess, he’d final­ly made the team in 1987, and he’d pitched well enough to hold his spot on an awful Dodgers team that fin­ished fourth in its division.

When we met with Holton ear­ly in the 1988 sea­son, he’d only made a few appear­ances that year, and I’d nev­er heard of him. I was dis­ap­point­ed at first, but the kids were thrilled to spend time with a big lea­guer, no mat­ter who he was, and Holton turned out to be a good choice. He didn’t say any­thing pro­found or inspir­ing, but he had an easy way about him and he seemed flat­tered, and a lit­tle sur­prised, that the kids looked up to him. 

I fol­lowed Holton in the sports pages after that night. As the sea­son wore on, his name showed up more fre­quent­ly in the box scores, always in the mid­dle innings. The press gen­er­al­ly over­looked mid­dle reliev­ers back then, so he didn’t get much pub­lic­i­ty. Very qui­et­ly, he pitched 84 innings that year with a 1.70 ERA, and he closed the sea­son by post­ing 17 con­sec­u­tive goose-eggs on the score-board.

The Dodgers played the New York Mets for the NL Cham­pi­onship. The Mets had beat­en them 10 out of 11 games dur­ing the sea­son, so no one thought the Dodgers had a chance. Game 4 was piv­otal. The Mets were win­ning 4 to 2 in the sixth inning with Gary Carter on third with no outs. Tom­my Lasor­da pulled the starter, John Tudor, and brought in Holton. In tele­vised close-ups he looked ner­vous. I was, too, as I watched him, but he struck out Tim Teufel, walked Kevin Elster, and got Doc Good­en to hit into a dou­ble play, mirac­u­lous­ly keep­ing the Mets from adding to their lead. He blanked the Mets in the sev­enth inning and left the game. In the ninth, Mike Scios­cia hit a two run homer, tying the score, and Kirk Gib­son won it with a homer in the twelfth. Most Dodger fans remem­ber the hero­ics of Scios­cia and Gib­son, but Holton’s for­got­ten shut­down pitch­ing is what got them there. 

When the league sus­pend­ed the Dodgers clos­er, Jay How­ell, for three games in that series, I thought they were done, but Lasor­da turned to Holton to close Game 5 and he got the save. Amaz­ing­ly, the Dodgers took the Cham­pi­onship from the Mets, 4 games to 3, and moved on to face the Oak­land Ath­let­ics in the World Series.

Odds-mak­ers cast the Dodgers as the under­dog again. In the bot­tom of the ninth inning of Game 1, the A’s were up 4 to 3. With two outs, Mike Davis walked. Lasor­da pinch-hit Kirk Gib­son, who limped to the plate on crip­pled legs and pro­ceed­ed to poke Den­nis Eckersley’s back door slid­er into the right field bleach­ers to win the game. Many Dodger fans con­sid­er that home­run the most excit­ing moment in Dodger his­to­ry, but in my view, the real heroes of that game were the Dodgers’ relievers.

The starter, Tim Belch­er gave up four quick runs, and Lasor­da took him out in the sec­ond inning. Three relief pitch­ers shut out the A’s through the next sev­en. Holton blanked the A’s in the sixth and sev­enth. When he left the game, the score was 4 to 3, set­ting the stage for Gibson’s two run walk-off homerun.

The Dodgers went on to win the World Series 4 games to 1.

After such a great sea­son, I thought Holton would be a main­stay in the Dodgers’ bullpen for years to come, but one month after their World Series vic­to­ry, the Dodgers trad­ed him to Baltimore.

He was nev­er the same after that, pitch­ing two lack­lus­ter sea­sons for the Ori­oles and two more in the minor leagues. He gave up base­ball at age 32, and dis­ap­peared from pub­lic life.

The sports colum­nist, Bill Plaschke, tracked him down in August. His col­umn recount­ed Holton’s 1988 unrec­og­nized sea­son hero­ics and told his life sto­ry since then: http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-holton-dodgers-plaschke-20170812-story.html

It’s a sad tale. Holton felt he had failed as a play­er, and it broke him. Addic­tion to alco­hol and pain med­ica­tion. Divorce. Jailed over child sup­port. Then home­less for a time. Now, 57 and unem­ployed, he lives in Wis­con­sin with a friend, Kath­leen Wells, who’s nurs­ing him through two knee replacements.

His advice to this year’s Dodgers play­ers is telling: “Slow it down. Keep it. It’s mag­ic. And then it’s gone.”

His friend, Wells, says, “He hit the big time, then he had it tak­en away. I just hope he’s on the way back.”

Read­ing the arti­cle, I kept see­ing young Bri­an Holton sur­round­ed by my team of twelve year olds, a nice guy, fit and trim, a shy grin on his face, still brim­ming with promise, and I thought yet again about how lucky I was in 1981 to learn my les­son with­out hav­ing to pay a price that would have bro­ken me.

So I wrote Holton a let­ter, sent it to Plaschke, and asked him to for­ward it. I thanked Holton for doing a good job in the meet­ing with my team and for his clutch pitch­ing in the mid­dle innings. My let­ter is thir­ty years late and comes from some­one he couldn’t pos­si­bly remem­ber, but maybe it’ll help his recov­ery in some small way. At 57, he’s still got time, and like Wells, I hope he’s on the way back.

Mean­while, the Dodgers face the mighty Astros this week. I hope my friends in Hous­ton can main­tain a ratio­nal per­spec­tive about this series. Keep cool. After all, baseball’s only a game. It’s real­ly no big deal who wins as long as it’s the Dodgers.