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Hacksaw’s Thursday Podcast..1:30-pm
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“ANGELS SEASON–GONE TO HELL”
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It cannot get much darker in the history of Angels baseball than the dark times this franchise is encountering now.
At this hour, it is beyond last year’s 99-loss ugly season.
More than this season’s second half collapse.
Beyond the year by year failures of the team’s highest paid players.
Not even counting the annual siege of injuries that have sidetracked stars.
No, at this hour, the Angels are about to be plunged into the abyss in the aftermath of the tragic drug induced death of pitcher Tyler Skaggs in 2019 while on a road trip.
Skaggs family has filed a massive lawsuit against owner Arte Moreno and the Angels organization in the aftermath of the conviction of PR-Director Eric Kay’s conviction for dealing drugs to players and a 22-year prison sentence handed down because Kay provided Skaggs with pills laced with fentanyl that killed him in a team hotel on the road.
The story is more than just 1-pitcher’s addiction and the PR director. It’s a web that has spread to other Angels players, players Skaggs played with in Arizona, a team physician, and what front office people knew about Kay and what they did or did not do.
Skaggs family maintains the Angels knew Kay had problems, and paid for his rehab entrance. They maintain the Halos should have known he was obtaining drugs and distributing them.
The Angels say the family knew Skaggs was addicted to percocet pain killers while pitching in Arizona and never told them of that addiction.
The wife of Eric Kay alerted the Angels to her concern he might be dealing drugs.
The family says the team refused to remove Kay from his job, but the club maintains federal law ordered them to reinstate him once he was released from drug rehab hospitals, on 3-different occasions.
Front office execs have been dragged into this. So have veteran players like Matt Harvey, CJ Cron, Cam Bedrosian and others, who got drugs, or shared drugs with Skaggs, obtained from Kay. Insinuations that Skaggs himself distributed pills to teammates.
And now former teammates on other clubs will be dragged in to testify what they knew and why they did nothing about it.
Kay may testify. Matt Harvey may testify. Mike Trout, the superstar, who offered to pay for Kay’s entrance back into a drug rehab center, was deposed and may testify.
Of all the bad years the Angels have had, of all the bloated bad contracts they gave out, of all the bad injuries and tragedies this team has encountered, this feels as deep and dark and ugly as the franchise has ever had to deal with.
It’s history is stained by the Lyman Bostock shooting death, the Nick Adenhardt drunk driving death, the Minnie Rojas auto accident fatality, the Donnie Moore suicide, and now this horrible moment.
It will be an angry trial, with hurt feelings, with blame to be spewed all over the courthouse. And for the jury, a very hard decision coming.
Are the Angels to blame for Skaggs’ death. Or is Skagg’s addiction to be blamed for his own loss of life and the stain that is everywhere around Angels baseball.
A season gone to hell, by losses and another non playoff season.
A franchise credibility gone to hell again for problems with their players.
An October trial nobody really wants to have to sit thru begins in a week.
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Lee – You missed one Angel tragedy. Was it SS Mike Miley who died in, I think, a single car accident in Louisiana roughly 40+ years ago? Unsure of the guy, but the story is correct.