Catching up with Middletown legend Bill Denehy

Bill Denehy remains an open book. He is 72 now and still living in Orlando, Florida. His booming voice is clear and his outlook on life upbeat as he lives with the reality of a near total loss of vision. He is blind in his right eye and legally blind in his left. He believes, and he said his doctors concur, that 57 cortisone shots over a 26-month period as a young pitcher conspired to bring him to this point in his life.

He proclaims that he is in good shape physically. He recently dropped 30 pounds using Nutrisystem, he said, which has eased the pain in his shoulders, knees and ankles.

One of Middletown’s favorite sporting sons, Denehy excelled in basketball and baseball at Woodrow Wilson High School, Class of 1964. He broke into the majors at 21 with a 95-mph fastball and a fearless, hyper-competitive and sometimes nasty streak. Shoulder pain and other matters doomed his career. He pitched for parts of three seasons with the Mets, Senators and Tigers. His career record: 1-10.

When he left the game for good in the early 1970s, he went on to coach for brief spells. With pride, he recalls his greatest students — would-be Hall of Famer Roger Clemens and 2017 Hall of Fame inductee Jeff Bagwell.

Denehy’s life story also includes decades of addiction and the costs that came with it. That period had a good ending, though. Earlier this summer, he embraced his 26th year of clean-and-sober living.

Baseball continues to be a stabilizing force in his life. Denehy spends hours listening to talk shows and broadcasts of games, and he wants to write a second book. Speaking to the Press, “Baseball Bill,” formerly known as “Wild Bill,” naturally had a lot to say.

MP: Several years ago, with your overall eyesight deteriorating, you got involved with the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation. Do you still have a guide dog?

BD: I do not. The reason is that the dog I received was a bit too rambunctious for me. Kane was very people-conscious. He was a great dog, a lovable dog, but one thing about a guide dog is he’s supposed to be a one-man dog, meaning he would ignore other people like they were not even there. Even though he had been trained in the things he had to do for me, I couldn’t get him to overcome his people love.”

BD: I got some more training to become more independent, and I use a guide cane that you see a lot of blind people use. It is 54 inches in height. Twenty months ago, I hired someone who comes in three times a week to help with things like grocery shopping, cleaning and doctor’s appointments. Donna helps get me out of my apartment, pay the bills, all that good stuff.

BD: The biggest disappointment that I have is that I can’t play golf anymore. My two daughters say, ‘Dad, you can play golf if you want to, you can join a blind golf association.’ Maybe I look at that a little further down the line. I used to play at least twice a week before the blindness came on. I really, really miss it an awful lot.

BD: I listen to as many broadcasts of Major League Baseball as I can. I follow a lot of shows and I try to stay as up to date with the three teams that were big in my life — the Yankees, the Mets and the Boston Red Sox. What people do not realize is that my second or third cousin was Moose Skowron (13 years in the majors with five teams, including the Yankees). His mother and my grandmother were first cousins.

BD: It’s something I’d like to follow through with. I want to write a 12-step guide to pitching, to be able to look at when someone first gets started in Little League, up to pro ball. Six things a pitcher needs to acquire and repeat. I’d really like to finish that book off.

BD: June 15, 1992 was the last time I used. No relapses. I was fortunate enough that when I was told that I might have a problem, the medical doctor sat down with me about the medical aspects of the disease, and mine originally came from painkillers. When I couldn’t get any more cortisone shots (as a major-leaguer), then I would get pills and they weren’t working enough. Then it was marijuana and scotch, and then cocaine. Believe me, together they killed the pain.

BD: I went to a meeting this morning at 10 a.m. I go to about four or five meetings a week, not that I fear I might relapse, but to educate and encourage people to make a commitment to it. I do have some throbbing in my (right) shoulder. I’ll have occasional massage to have them work on my neck, to stretch it out and break up as much scar tissue as they can. With all of that, if I have pain when I wake up, I take a couple of Bayer or Alleve just when needed.

BD: I think that the commitment from the parents seems to be that if their kid is not on a showcase team, where a family ponies up thousands of dollars, then the kids who end up considering American Legion ball, the parents think, ‘It’s OK if you want to play, and if not, that’s OK, too.’ Back when we were that age, as much of a rivalry as it was between Wilson and Middletown, Wilson players looked forward to having Middletown High players join the Legion team, because it joined the best with the best.

BD: Baseball was very, very frustrating for me. I was wild. I could not throw a strike. I didn’t have good mechanics. I do not blame them — it was the way of the times — but the coaching, the instruction, was very, very poor. What my dad meant when I wrote in the book that ‘losers get nothing,’ was you have to work hard for whatever you can get. Lew LaRosa would yell out from center field during Wilson games, ‘Just throw it over the plate!’ What did he think I was trying to do?

BD: A lot of guys who throw 95 plus, they are throwers, they are not pitchers. It’s Ball 1, Ball 2, Ball 3, and I go crazy. I thought the game where Rick Porcello went the distance for Boston (a one-hit, 1-0 win over the Yankees on Aug. 3), that to me was the perfect example of pitching. A lot of times you see guys coming in with 95, 96 heat and throwing it all over the place. The velocity is there, yes, but no command. When I see young kids coming up and not being able to throw a strike in a certain situation or to a certain part of the plate, I think they’re rushed too quickly. And I also just don’t understand with a lot of these guys, they can’t hit with two strikes on them. Don Lombardo preaches this with two strikes — widen your stance, choke up and make contact.

BD: Even though I am a Yankee fan, the Red Sox have a tougher lineup to face because they put the ball in play. They can beat you with a series of doubles and singles. With the Yankees, they’re so dependent on hitting the home run. But when you get to a point where you have as many strikeouts as they do, if you hit the ball on the ground, a guy can muff it, or make a bad throw to a base. Something could possibly happen. When you strike out, you get nothing. BD: If you took Billy Martin back then and put him in a college setting, the way he could take young people and teach them the game, how to learn when to run and squeeze, things like that, he would have had a championship contender every single year, because he was great on instruction and great on repetition.

BD: On the door to every clubhouse is the rule about gambling, and it’s strict. I think Pete Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame, but I am not sure he belongs back in baseball. It’s two really different things. If someone got caught or admitted to using steroids, like A-Rod, I would not cast a ballot for him. But if no one’s been proven to have taken PEDs, just the fact someone is saying that you did, to me you have to have some real strong evidence. So for those people like Barry Bonds, who never tested positive ... I think forgiveness will come into play (for suspected PED users) later on. As we move forward, the younger writers and sportscasters have more of an affinity to forgive than the older ones who say there’s a rule and you have to be punished.

BD: Mike Trout has to be there. Mookie Betts is having a fabulous year. I love J.D. Martinez for the way he has studied hitting. I think he is obsessed with learning about hitting. I have a lot of admiration for him. But for my money, it’s either Trout or Mookie Betts.

You coached Jeff Bagwell at the University of Hartford. Now that he’s been inducted in the Baseball Hall of Fame, was there any indication back then that he was headed for greatness?

BD: That’s a great, great question. People would say, ‘Ever since I saw him play, he was going to be a majorleaguer.’ Well, in the time I was at Hartford, only two players were deemed to be outstanding prospects, and one of them was Ricky Murray, the catcher for Xavier. He was a year ahead of Bagwell. Because of my background in pro ball, I called my contacts in scouting to give me a rundown of their top prospects. Everyone knew who the top prospects were. The guys that we looked at were the close followups, the ones who could grow into a prospect. Jeff was a close follow. He hit .385 his senior year at Xavier. That’s good, but not great. His first year at Hartford, he hit .402 and was named New England freshman player of the year. He became a better hitter.

When I recruited him, I sat down with mom, dad and Jeff and offered him a scholarship. He also was a soccer player, but I said to him and his family, ‘I think your son has the ability to be a professional baseball player. If he comes to Hartford, I would be more than willing to help him achieve that goal, but he’s got some work to do. He has some holes in his swing, so he needs to really concentrate on baseball. So I have to ask you, four years from now, if you could tell me what your ideal wish list would be, what would it be? He said, ‘I want to be the shortstop for the Boston Red Sox.’ I said, ‘OK, then you play baseball full time. He said, ‘Fine with me.’ But did I think he would reach the height he’s reached? No. He was a hard worker with gifted skills, great hand-eye coordination, a tremendous student of the game. He learned and made adjustments. He wasn’t just going to take our word for it. He did most of these things by himself.