redshark63
01-26-2007, 10:00 AM
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070126/SPORTS0104/701260370/1129/rss15
'My alcoholism cost me '
Once an All-Star pitcher, later a Tigers radio voice, Lary Sorensen is trying to put his life back together.
Lynn Henning / The Detroit News
CLINTON TOWNSHIP -- He had two dreams growing up as a no-frills, working-class kid from Macomb County. Lary Sorensen wanted to be a big league pitcher. Secondly, but not secondarily, he wanted to be a baseball radio announcer, a man who one day might do what one of his heroes, Ernie Harwell, did so famously.
If only life had leveled off, jet-airliner-style, for a man after two dreams were realized. If only the dreams had not given way to the nightmare, which reached its most ghastly stage two years ago as Sorensen sat in a state prison in Baraga, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
"It was more like, 'How could I have let my life get so far out of hand to have gotten here,' " said Sorensen, sitting on a sofa in the simple apartment where he lives, alone. "I'm just fortunate I didn't hurt anybody -- except, of course, my family and those who expected more of me."
Left unsaid is that he had hurt someone else: himself.
An ex-Tigers radio broadcaster who pitched in the majors from 1977-88, Sorensen has been free since June 7, the day he completed a three-month stretch of boot camp at Saline as the last phase of a long sentence -- his court-ordered punishment following a sixth arrest for drunken driving.
More gratifying to him than the nearly eight months that have passed since he was paroled are the two years since Sorensen last had alcohol. Not that those months at three state prisons can be dismissed.
During his final stage, at the Saline boot camp, Sorensen was at the mercy of "corporals" designated to ride roughshod over men who intentionally are broken down and prepared for more disciplined lives on the outside.
He was up at 5 a.m. and in formation with other boot-camp residents. During the day, he chopped wood for the facility's furnaces. He washed dishes and worked in the prison laundry. He lost 40 pounds in 90 days, in part due to the 3-mile runs he had to complete with a corporal's spurs in his side. He was treated no different from the hundreds of other occupants, all but one of whom was younger than Sorensen, who now is 51.
"It was a place where, 'You do everything we say the second we say it,' and where you ask permission to do anything else," Sorensen recalled. "Literally, if you didn't ask permission to speak in the right way, they'd make you drop and do push-ups.
"But it was good for me. It re-instilled some of the self-discipline I had lost."
On top of his game
A decade ago, Sorensen was soaring, at least professionally. He was color man on Tigers radio broadcasts, paired at the time with Frank Beckmann. Sorensen had worked on ESPN telecasts, as well, which became the natural career progression for a man who pitched for 11 years in the majors and who had been a star at L'Anse Creuse High in Harrison Township before accepting a baseball scholarship at Michigan.
By spring of 1998, his job with the Tigers abruptly was gone, quashed by his drinking. By 2003, he was in jail for the first time. A divorce from his wife of 24 years, Trish, preceded a 2005 prison sentence that had been promised in 2003 by Judge Richard Caretti if Sorensen ever again drank and drove. Fourteen months after he was released from the Macomb County Jail, he was arrested again after driving into a ditch and bearing a blood-alcohol content of .30 -- nearly four times Michigan's legal limit.
"My alcoholism cost me a marriage, my family, my job and lots of friendships," Sorensen said this week. "It's not an unusual story. The insidiousness of the disease is that I sat there in jail every night for 30 nights (in 2003) saying, 'Boy, I'll never do that again.'
"I kept thinking I was smart enough to handle it. I don't think that anymore."
Sorensen says his drinking turned toward an addiction late in his big league career, which ended in 1988, the year he turned 33. He had broken in with Milwaukee in 1977 following a three-year career at Michigan and had early success with the Brewers before heading for shorter stays with St. Louis, Cleveland, Oakland, the Cubs, Montreal and San Francisco.
He was glib and personable and quickly found a niche behind the microphone, first with ESPN on its College World Series broadcasts. He ultimately turned to radio full-time as the first morning anchor on WDFN 1130, which debuted in 1994. By '95, he was in the Tigers' radio booth with Beckmann, who had been brought on following the departures of Rick Rizzs and Bob Rathbun.
Finding a reason to drink
All the while, alcohol's noose was tightening. In 1992, Sorensen had his first drunken-driving conviction. Over 12 years he would be arrested six times for drunken driving and have his driver's license suspended nine times and revoked four times.
"To me, the most dangerous thing was that I found any reason to have a drink," he said. "If I did something good, I wanted to celebrate. If I did something bad, I wanted to drown it. Pretty soon, you're in a cycle."
Although he showed up for work regularly -- even when he began his early-morning shift at WDFN -- Sorensen's alcoholism was being managed in the classic style of some alcoholics who compartmentalize their addiction. Co-workers might not necessarily have known he had a problem. In fact, he broadcast Tigers games for three years before bad moments -- most in the hours well before or after a broadcast -- became intolerable. Then-manager Buddy Bell was one person aware Sorensen had a problem and urged him to get help.
No one, though, pushed harder than Trish, who wanted him in a recovery program..
"I went, but I fought it," Sorensen said. "I kept fighting it. I kept saying the right things, but I wasn't doing the right things."
On the day in 2003 when he was sentenced to 30 days in jail and three years of probation, Caretti, the Macomb County circuit judge, said to him: "I cannot caution you in stern enough terms that any violation of your probation will be dealt with harshly. You will bypass county jail and go directly to prison."
Caretti followed through after Sorensen's arrest in December of 2004. The sentence in March of 2005 was 23 to 60 months in prison, with credit for 99 days served.
When he was freed in June, Sorensen settled into a new life that hardly was liberating. He wore an electronic tether -- a monitoring device recording his location and blood-alcohol content -- as he began a minimum-wage job at McDonald's at 11 Mile and Gratiot. Minus a driver's license (he cannot reclaim it until at least after his probation period ends), he rode a bike 45 minutes to his evening shift at McDonald's and rode it home at midnight.
Working his way back
He now has a new part-time job, behind the counter at a self-storage facility a mile from his apartment (a major league pension is his fundamental means of support). To get there, he must either hitch a ride, walk or ride his court-approved electric scooter, which tops out at 20 mph. He can't enter a bar or restaurant that serves alcohol. His eating-out options on most days are Ram's Horn and Panera Bread, two alcohol-free restaurants within walking distance of his apartment. He uses the same modes of transportation to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings three nights a week.
Nothing about his new life strikes Sorensen as demeaning, or even humbling. Rather, he is grateful for the chance to rebuild a relatively young life, and even more for what did not happen during his worst days. He never had the horrific drunken-driving accident that has destroyed so many lives.
"More than a disease (his alcoholism), I broke the law. And when you break the law, you pay the price," said Sorensen, whose voice has its old broadcast-booth energy.
Patrick Corcoran, a Macomb County parole agent for the Michigan Department of Corrections, oversees Sorensen's probation and is pleased with his progress -- on multiple fronts.
"The first thing Lary has done is internalized the fact that drunk driving is a crime," Corcoran said. "It may not, in some minds, rank up there with murderers, but a drunk driver is nothing but a .38 waiting to kill a family. I think he's come to that realization."
Corcoran oversees formal support systems that accompany a man on parole battling alcoholism. There are "partners" who act as watchdogs. There are AA sponsors, as well, and Sorensen gives endless credit to his sponsor, whom he declines to identify.
Then there is family. When Sorensen leans against his sofa, smiles and says, "Life is good," he is talking about a second chance with relationships that suffered horribly when he was drinking, driving and, finally, imprisoned.
Trish was the person who picked him up on the day he was released in June at Saline. They talk each day. He speaks each day, as well, with his son, Mark, a junior at Michigan State and one of the Spartans' top pitchers, and his daughter, Laura, 24, who works in Ferndale.
"I think he's worked hard at becoming a father again to his two children," Corcoran said. "He's done a good job of that. The same with his ex-wife. They're communicating as a family unit, which is good. All of that is going to help him build for the future."
Sorensen is even back in the radio business, albeit not on the level he knew a decade ago. This past autumn, he hooked up with Michael Patrick Shiels, formerly producer for the late J.P. McCarthy's iconic WJR 760 morning show. Shiels is morning anchor on the Lansing-based Michigan Talk Radio network (10 statewide stations), which was happy to have Sorensen's expertise during the Tigers' World Series run.
Sorensen will fill in as host next month when Shiels vacations.
"He is very good and very steady," said Tim Hygh, general manager for the Michigan Talk Network. "It's not fun getting up that early and doing morning radio, but Lary is so energetic, and so insightful. He's not missing a beat. Every tool that was in his tool chest before (prison) is there today."
Long road ahead
Sorensen is thinking about going back to school -- to Michigan, where he is a bit more than a year shy of getting his degree. He wants to revive his broadcasting career. He also is coaching teams and individuals at The Hitting Zone, an instructional baseball complex at the State Fairgrounds directed by ex-Tigers player Dave Bergman.
Mostly, however, Sorensen hopes to reconstruct a life that begins with restoring a trustworthy man to his family and friends.
If only it were as simple as making a pronouncement, a vow, that it would now happen following all the misery and imprisonment. If only he could vanquish alcoholism, his disease, his omnipresent challenge.
"I try not to get too excited," he said this week, biting into a fried-chicken salad at Ram's Horn. "I've had periods in the past when I felt like I could do anything. Then, (alcoholism) jumps up and bites you. I don't want to have that happen this time.
"I'm taking my sobriety and recovery very seriously. It doesn't mean I laugh any less in life, or that I'm any less of a smart (aleck). But I want to keep a certain amount of fear in my life. I want to keep reminding myself every day that I've got a lot of fences to mend, and a lot of proving to do."
You can reach Lynn Henning at (313) 222-2472 or lynn.henning@detnews.com.
'My alcoholism cost me '
Once an All-Star pitcher, later a Tigers radio voice, Lary Sorensen is trying to put his life back together.
Lynn Henning / The Detroit News
CLINTON TOWNSHIP -- He had two dreams growing up as a no-frills, working-class kid from Macomb County. Lary Sorensen wanted to be a big league pitcher. Secondly, but not secondarily, he wanted to be a baseball radio announcer, a man who one day might do what one of his heroes, Ernie Harwell, did so famously.
If only life had leveled off, jet-airliner-style, for a man after two dreams were realized. If only the dreams had not given way to the nightmare, which reached its most ghastly stage two years ago as Sorensen sat in a state prison in Baraga, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
"It was more like, 'How could I have let my life get so far out of hand to have gotten here,' " said Sorensen, sitting on a sofa in the simple apartment where he lives, alone. "I'm just fortunate I didn't hurt anybody -- except, of course, my family and those who expected more of me."
Left unsaid is that he had hurt someone else: himself.
An ex-Tigers radio broadcaster who pitched in the majors from 1977-88, Sorensen has been free since June 7, the day he completed a three-month stretch of boot camp at Saline as the last phase of a long sentence -- his court-ordered punishment following a sixth arrest for drunken driving.
More gratifying to him than the nearly eight months that have passed since he was paroled are the two years since Sorensen last had alcohol. Not that those months at three state prisons can be dismissed.
During his final stage, at the Saline boot camp, Sorensen was at the mercy of "corporals" designated to ride roughshod over men who intentionally are broken down and prepared for more disciplined lives on the outside.
He was up at 5 a.m. and in formation with other boot-camp residents. During the day, he chopped wood for the facility's furnaces. He washed dishes and worked in the prison laundry. He lost 40 pounds in 90 days, in part due to the 3-mile runs he had to complete with a corporal's spurs in his side. He was treated no different from the hundreds of other occupants, all but one of whom was younger than Sorensen, who now is 51.
"It was a place where, 'You do everything we say the second we say it,' and where you ask permission to do anything else," Sorensen recalled. "Literally, if you didn't ask permission to speak in the right way, they'd make you drop and do push-ups.
"But it was good for me. It re-instilled some of the self-discipline I had lost."
On top of his game
A decade ago, Sorensen was soaring, at least professionally. He was color man on Tigers radio broadcasts, paired at the time with Frank Beckmann. Sorensen had worked on ESPN telecasts, as well, which became the natural career progression for a man who pitched for 11 years in the majors and who had been a star at L'Anse Creuse High in Harrison Township before accepting a baseball scholarship at Michigan.
By spring of 1998, his job with the Tigers abruptly was gone, quashed by his drinking. By 2003, he was in jail for the first time. A divorce from his wife of 24 years, Trish, preceded a 2005 prison sentence that had been promised in 2003 by Judge Richard Caretti if Sorensen ever again drank and drove. Fourteen months after he was released from the Macomb County Jail, he was arrested again after driving into a ditch and bearing a blood-alcohol content of .30 -- nearly four times Michigan's legal limit.
"My alcoholism cost me a marriage, my family, my job and lots of friendships," Sorensen said this week. "It's not an unusual story. The insidiousness of the disease is that I sat there in jail every night for 30 nights (in 2003) saying, 'Boy, I'll never do that again.'
"I kept thinking I was smart enough to handle it. I don't think that anymore."
Sorensen says his drinking turned toward an addiction late in his big league career, which ended in 1988, the year he turned 33. He had broken in with Milwaukee in 1977 following a three-year career at Michigan and had early success with the Brewers before heading for shorter stays with St. Louis, Cleveland, Oakland, the Cubs, Montreal and San Francisco.
He was glib and personable and quickly found a niche behind the microphone, first with ESPN on its College World Series broadcasts. He ultimately turned to radio full-time as the first morning anchor on WDFN 1130, which debuted in 1994. By '95, he was in the Tigers' radio booth with Beckmann, who had been brought on following the departures of Rick Rizzs and Bob Rathbun.
Finding a reason to drink
All the while, alcohol's noose was tightening. In 1992, Sorensen had his first drunken-driving conviction. Over 12 years he would be arrested six times for drunken driving and have his driver's license suspended nine times and revoked four times.
"To me, the most dangerous thing was that I found any reason to have a drink," he said. "If I did something good, I wanted to celebrate. If I did something bad, I wanted to drown it. Pretty soon, you're in a cycle."
Although he showed up for work regularly -- even when he began his early-morning shift at WDFN -- Sorensen's alcoholism was being managed in the classic style of some alcoholics who compartmentalize their addiction. Co-workers might not necessarily have known he had a problem. In fact, he broadcast Tigers games for three years before bad moments -- most in the hours well before or after a broadcast -- became intolerable. Then-manager Buddy Bell was one person aware Sorensen had a problem and urged him to get help.
No one, though, pushed harder than Trish, who wanted him in a recovery program..
"I went, but I fought it," Sorensen said. "I kept fighting it. I kept saying the right things, but I wasn't doing the right things."
On the day in 2003 when he was sentenced to 30 days in jail and three years of probation, Caretti, the Macomb County circuit judge, said to him: "I cannot caution you in stern enough terms that any violation of your probation will be dealt with harshly. You will bypass county jail and go directly to prison."
Caretti followed through after Sorensen's arrest in December of 2004. The sentence in March of 2005 was 23 to 60 months in prison, with credit for 99 days served.
When he was freed in June, Sorensen settled into a new life that hardly was liberating. He wore an electronic tether -- a monitoring device recording his location and blood-alcohol content -- as he began a minimum-wage job at McDonald's at 11 Mile and Gratiot. Minus a driver's license (he cannot reclaim it until at least after his probation period ends), he rode a bike 45 minutes to his evening shift at McDonald's and rode it home at midnight.
Working his way back
He now has a new part-time job, behind the counter at a self-storage facility a mile from his apartment (a major league pension is his fundamental means of support). To get there, he must either hitch a ride, walk or ride his court-approved electric scooter, which tops out at 20 mph. He can't enter a bar or restaurant that serves alcohol. His eating-out options on most days are Ram's Horn and Panera Bread, two alcohol-free restaurants within walking distance of his apartment. He uses the same modes of transportation to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings three nights a week.
Nothing about his new life strikes Sorensen as demeaning, or even humbling. Rather, he is grateful for the chance to rebuild a relatively young life, and even more for what did not happen during his worst days. He never had the horrific drunken-driving accident that has destroyed so many lives.
"More than a disease (his alcoholism), I broke the law. And when you break the law, you pay the price," said Sorensen, whose voice has its old broadcast-booth energy.
Patrick Corcoran, a Macomb County parole agent for the Michigan Department of Corrections, oversees Sorensen's probation and is pleased with his progress -- on multiple fronts.
"The first thing Lary has done is internalized the fact that drunk driving is a crime," Corcoran said. "It may not, in some minds, rank up there with murderers, but a drunk driver is nothing but a .38 waiting to kill a family. I think he's come to that realization."
Corcoran oversees formal support systems that accompany a man on parole battling alcoholism. There are "partners" who act as watchdogs. There are AA sponsors, as well, and Sorensen gives endless credit to his sponsor, whom he declines to identify.
Then there is family. When Sorensen leans against his sofa, smiles and says, "Life is good," he is talking about a second chance with relationships that suffered horribly when he was drinking, driving and, finally, imprisoned.
Trish was the person who picked him up on the day he was released in June at Saline. They talk each day. He speaks each day, as well, with his son, Mark, a junior at Michigan State and one of the Spartans' top pitchers, and his daughter, Laura, 24, who works in Ferndale.
"I think he's worked hard at becoming a father again to his two children," Corcoran said. "He's done a good job of that. The same with his ex-wife. They're communicating as a family unit, which is good. All of that is going to help him build for the future."
Sorensen is even back in the radio business, albeit not on the level he knew a decade ago. This past autumn, he hooked up with Michael Patrick Shiels, formerly producer for the late J.P. McCarthy's iconic WJR 760 morning show. Shiels is morning anchor on the Lansing-based Michigan Talk Radio network (10 statewide stations), which was happy to have Sorensen's expertise during the Tigers' World Series run.
Sorensen will fill in as host next month when Shiels vacations.
"He is very good and very steady," said Tim Hygh, general manager for the Michigan Talk Network. "It's not fun getting up that early and doing morning radio, but Lary is so energetic, and so insightful. He's not missing a beat. Every tool that was in his tool chest before (prison) is there today."
Long road ahead
Sorensen is thinking about going back to school -- to Michigan, where he is a bit more than a year shy of getting his degree. He wants to revive his broadcasting career. He also is coaching teams and individuals at The Hitting Zone, an instructional baseball complex at the State Fairgrounds directed by ex-Tigers player Dave Bergman.
Mostly, however, Sorensen hopes to reconstruct a life that begins with restoring a trustworthy man to his family and friends.
If only it were as simple as making a pronouncement, a vow, that it would now happen following all the misery and imprisonment. If only he could vanquish alcoholism, his disease, his omnipresent challenge.
"I try not to get too excited," he said this week, biting into a fried-chicken salad at Ram's Horn. "I've had periods in the past when I felt like I could do anything. Then, (alcoholism) jumps up and bites you. I don't want to have that happen this time.
"I'm taking my sobriety and recovery very seriously. It doesn't mean I laugh any less in life, or that I'm any less of a smart (aleck). But I want to keep a certain amount of fear in my life. I want to keep reminding myself every day that I've got a lot of fences to mend, and a lot of proving to do."
You can reach Lynn Henning at (313) 222-2472 or lynn.henning@detnews.com.