Darryl Kile knew better than to take baseball, let alone life, for granted.
But sometimes it might have been too easy for the rest of us to take Kile for granted.
Sadly that changed in a shocking way on Saturday.
A day earlier, the 33-year-old with one of the most reliable arms in the major leagues was at Wrigley Field, preparing to start Sunday night’s game for the St. Louis Cardinals.
It would be the last time he would do what he had always loved, playing catch while wearing a baseball uniform.
Kile, 6 feet 5 inches and rugged, looked the part in the finest uniform, but any would do.
So would shorts and a T-shirt if it meant tossing a ball to his 5-year-old twins in the back yard of their Englewood, Colo., home.
“I can’t tell you what it was about baseball that made me like it so much,” Kile once said. “I was just out there having fun. … I picked up a ball one day and didn’t want to put it down.”
He never did, really. When the three-time All-Star didn’t show up for Saturday’s game against the Cubs, he was found dead in his room at the Westin Hotel.
It was the first in-season death of an active major-league baseball player since Thurman Munson, the New York Yankees’ captain, was killed when a plane he was piloting crashed on Aug. 2, 1979.The Chicago medical examiner’s office will conduct an investigation, but it appeared Kile died from natural causes.
Pathologists will note his father died of a heart attack in 1993 when he was 44.
“My dad was a big, strapping man, and to see the way he crumbled was hard to comprehend,” Darryl Kile said at the time. “But it gave me a different perspective. It made me realize this is just baseball and there are other things to worry about. I mean, what’s worse? You can go out and give up five runs in an inning, or you can lose a loved one.”
Kile built a legacy that reflects the balance of a healthy life. He leaves a wife and three children, the youngest of which is a son who will have an empty chair where his father should be at his first birthday party.
He also leaves a long trail of friends in a relatively short lifetime, including many with three organizations, the Cardinals, Colorado Rockies and Houston Astros.
Tears were shed over Kile in clubhouses across North America. Jeff Bagwell, who along with Arizona slugger Luis Gonzalez broke in with Kile on the 1991 Astros, was so shook up by the news that he didn’t start Saturday night’s game. Instead, Bagwell hit a game-winning pinch-hit single in the 12th inning to give Houston a 3-2 victory over Seattle.
“He was a great guy, was in a good mood all the time and was a professional at everything in life,” Colorado right fielder Larry Walker said. “It’s going to be hard to deal with.”
As a pitcher Kile was known as the ultimate teammate. Scouts described him as “the guts” of the pitching staff that had carried St. Louis into the playoffs each of the last two seasons. Nobody every questioned his toughness.
His final outing at Wrigley Field typified his approach.
Facing the first-place Cubs last July 27, Kile gave up a first-inning homer to Delino DeShields, then used his fastball and nasty curveball to retire 10 of the next 11 hitters.
After a Mark McGwire error extended the fourth inning, Robert Machado drilled a line drive back at Kile. The ball glanced off his glove and hit him squarely in the mouth.
Blood soaked a trainer’s towel, yet Kile stubbornly insisted on staying in the game. He pitched until the sixth inning and only then went to get stitches in his lip.
In a sport where players earned a total of $317 million while on the disabled list last season, Kile worked 2,165 innings in the majors without spending a day on the disabled list. This didn’t mean he was never hurt, of course. He just found a way to get himself onto the mound.
That’s why Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, Mike Mussina and Chuck Finley are the only pitchers to start more games than Kile in the last 10 seasons.
Twice Kile performed well enough to earn votes for the National League’s Cy Young Award. He was fifth in both 1997, when he won 19 games for Houston, and in 2000, when he won 20 games and helped the Cardinals reach the NL Championship Series.
Kile was back in the playoffs last October. He started the third game of a first-round series against Arizona that turned on two wins by the Diamondbacks’ Curt Schilling.
Not many people knew Kile was pitching in pain until a few weeks later, when the club announced he had undergone surgery to repair a frayed labrum. Like clockwork, he was back in manager Tony La Russa’s rotation in April.
This is the kind of toughness that earns respect in baseball clubhouses. It was in keeping with the simplest of mission statements. “My only goal is to be ready whenever [my manager] needs me,” Kile said this spring. “That’s the only goal I’ve ever had.”
In a season in which La Russa has already used 11 starters, Kile was second to Matt Morris with 14 starts and 84 2/3 innings pitched. He won five games, including his final start. That 7-2 victory against Anaheim at Busch Stadium, which came on the day of Hall of Fame broadcaster Jack Buck’s death, put the Cardinals into first place in the NL Central by themselves.
It was the 133rd win of a career that divides neatly into three parts. Kile spent seven seasons with the Astros, for whom he started the opener of a playoff series against Atlanta in 1997, and then was lured to Colorado by a three-year, $24 million offer. Like Mike Hampton would after him, he lost his effectiveness in the thin air of Coors Field.
Cardinals general manager Walt Jocketty took a big risk by trading for Kile after he went 21-30 with a 5.84 ERA in two seasons with the Rockies. It paid off with a 20-win season and Kile repaid the favor by quickly agreeing to a three-year, $22.5 million extension.
“He was the ace of the staff, the type of guy you build your staff around,” Jocketty said. “We needed a veteran leader of the staff, and that’s what he really developed into.”
Kile never enjoyed talking about the two years with the Rockies. “I went to Colorado and, unfortunately, I didn’t pitch real well,” he said.
These setbacks might have had more of a lasting affect had Kile’s career not blossomed from modest beginnings. He was drafted in the 30th round from Chaffey Junior College in his native California. The Astros saw his potential as a freshman but didn’t decide he was worth a $100,000 bonus until after his sophomore season.
“I was horrible when I was younger,” Kile said.
Kile grew more than six inches and added 30 pounds between June 1987, when the Astros drafted him, to May 1988, when they signed him.
“I was real uncoordinated,” Kile said. “I was weak and skinny. In my mind I always knew what I wanted to do, but my body wasn’t ready to do it.”
Kile struggled with his control early in his career. He led the NL walks in the strike-shortened 1994 season and walked at least 94 for four consecutive years, ending in 1999. Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan helped Kile lose his wildness. He struck out 192 and had only 58 walks in 2000.
Pitchers are often derided for a lack of athleticism. But Kile was respected enough that he was sometimes used as a pinch-runner, even by La Russa in the playoffs.
Kile was capable of greatness. His 1993 no-hitter against the New York Mets put him on a list with Houston greats like Nolan Ryan and Mike Scott. But he was never truly comfortable with celebrity. He dreaded the mass interviews associated with postseason games.
“If I looked uncomfortable, it’s because I feel uncomfortable talking to media every time,” Kile said last October. “It’s not that one time in particular. It’s not something that I’m good at.”
As much success as he experienced, Kile never stopped getting a kick out of the places baseball had taken him.
“A guy like Randy Johnson, the way he dominates a game, that’s amazing,” Kile said. “I got to see Roger Clemens pitch in person for the first time at the All-Star Game. I was fascinated watching every step he took on the field.”
Kile took some pretty remarkable steps of his own.
Major-league reaction
Flags were lowered at Minute Maid Park in Houston and there was a moment of silence at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. The Cardinals flag was at half-staff at Turner Field in Atlanta and two pictures of Darryl Kile were put on the scoreboard in Montreal. Here is what people in Major League Baseball had to say about Darryl Kile:
“You don’t expect a guy in his prime playing a professional sport to pass away. We all take it for granted sometimes that whatever plans we had for tomorrow we’re going to be able to fulfill them. Tomorrow may not come.”
–Atlanta pitcher Tom Glavine
“My deepest sympathies go out to Darryl’s family, his friends and the St. Louis Cardinals ballclub. All of baseball mourns his passing.”
–Commissioner Bud Selig
“It’s just a shock. He’s 33 with three kids. I’m 31 with two kids … I can’t imagine what [his wife] is going through. I can’t imagine what that phone call to his wife was like. Just devastating.”
–Cubs pitcher Jason Bere
“He was a warrior when he was here. It’s sad. A lot of people gave him a hard time here. A lot of people were very, very opinionated about his talents in the press. And the one thing the man never did was never back down from an opportunity to pitch. He took the ball every time he was asked to take the ball. That’s the thing I remember about him the most.”
–Colorado manager Clint Hurdle
“It’s devastating. Here’s a guy you’ve been competing against almost all your career and you’ve had some good battles. To hear that . . . it’s almost like a teammate, one of your family members. To just not wake up? It affects you.”
–Pirates first baseman Kevin Young
“He was an adviser for me. He told me one time that tough times never last; tough people do. I took it to heart.”
–Tigers pitcher Jose Lima, who played with Kile in Houston in 1997
“In my mind, I can see Darryl Kile right next to me. We always joked together. I can’t believe he’s dead. I have to see it to believe it. We have to realize that he’s dead, but in my mind, he’s alive because he was one of the greatest.”
Montreal third baseman Fernando Tatis, who played with Kile in St. Louis
“This hits close to home. I can’t even imagine what they are going through in St. Louis if we are having the feelings we have. It certainly changes things.”
–Brewers manager Jerry Royster
“We called off batting practice because the atmosphere in here is kind of eerie. I knew Darryl. When a guy dies like that, it hits home.”
–Reds first baseman Sean Casey
“I don’t even know if I’m here. This is a tough one. It’s hard to accept right now. He was just an awesome dude. The players used to love him, they knew what a competitor he was, what a joker he was, he used to pull tricks. That’s why it’s a tough one.”
–Yankees outfielder John Vander Wal, who played with Kile in Colorado in 1998
“He loved to sit around and talk pitching, and he was a severe gamer. He loved to grab the baseball and pitch. They had trouble trying and getting him out of a game because he wanted to go all the way every time.”
–Dodgers pitcher Jesse Orosco, who played with Kile in 2000 with St. Louis
“Honestly, the last few days have been tough. First Jack Buck, who I knew, he dies and we were out there playing and there are ashes falling from the sky, and now you lose a friend. It will be really tough to play.”
–Colorado’s Larry Walker, choking back tears while talking about his former teammate
