I was 10 years young and had never thought about suicide when former Milwaukee Brewer Danny Thomas hung himself in prison and my dad wasn’t one of those dads who sat me down insisting I watch One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Midnight Cowboy, and Apocalypse Now. But he did play catch with me and maybe that guarded me from the not so pleasant realities that await us all….old age and in the case of Danny Thomas – broken dreams after being drafted in the 1st round (6th overall), mental health issues, him “knowing he wasn’t right,” joining the World Wide Church of God and not playing Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, 175 career at bats, charges of raping/sodomizing a 12-year old girl and ultimately suicide.
And then four years passed and Danny Thomas was still dead and the only thrills I knew were opening up packs of baseball cards and hitting line drive singles and the sing song voice of Melissa García. I wish I had more guts or smarts back then. I would have asked Melissa to take a walk along the the Milwaukee River. We could have held hands and kissed behind the Dairy Queen, next to the endless railroad track and I bet I would have remembered her eyes forever. Instead, I invited Melissa to a movie. Bad idea. No chance to talk. And then after the movie, I was too scared to kiss her or even ask her for a soda at Fitzgerald’s Pharmacy. As it turned out, I remembered her forever anyway.
I wore a winter hat in spring back then, a Cleveland Browns sand knit cap. I was afraid of nuclear disaster and dreamed of building a bomb shelter. Thankfully, I had my own bedroom and stacks of baseball cards and we had a color TV so I could watch every Brewers road game with Mike Hegan and Jim Paschke calling the action on WVTV channel 18, but then Tony Kessler came into my life and his promise of a “thrill” and the way he said it stuck out like a raft to the other side, one I never thought I’d be interested in. Then my failure with Melissa García happened and something began to eat away at me and I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe there was more and so I tagged along with a bunch of other friends, Tony in the lead, and we walked north for a good 30 minutes in a crowded forest of trees and eventually there was an opening and water below us and I immediately felt like I was atop Fenway Park’s Green monster looking 30 feet down, only there wasn’t a warning track or grass…there was water and rocks jetting out like shark fins.
I figured it was a place to wander down the ravine and maybe fish and swim, but Tony Kessler had other things on his mind and before he jumped, he dared us all to follow him and his bravery and risk taking didn’t surprise me because he had told us all that he planned on committing suicide before graduating high school. And so while he was in the air, I thought about him saying 18 years was enough and what my dad had told me about Koufax quitting while he was on top because of his arm and I later learned from the baseball encyclopedia my dad gave me that Koufax’s last season was a huge success – 27 wins and a 1.73 ERA.
As Tony emerged from the water below, he had a clenched fist raised up above his head like a Jesse Owens brother of the struggle salute. He howled, head skyward like a wolf and from that moment on, I thought of him as an Adam, a first and fearless man, someone who lived with one foot in life and the other foot in death, and that death must have fuelled his fearlessness and so I jumped too and thank God I managed to not hit any of the rocks, thank God because in the back of my mind were the Brewers being in the World Series two years earlier and how thrilling that felt and how much I wanted them to be there again. We all jumped and jumped three and four more times and we all survived and Tony Kessler did as he swore he would, he disappeared a few weeks before graduation and no one knew where he went or whether or not he killed himself and I guess it didn’t matter because we all needed that kind of mystery, that unknown as our own ferris wheels started spinning.
There were new people to meet.
brewers baseball and things 
May 7, 2024 at 7:27 am
I don’t remember the Thomas case from when it happened but it’s truly sad and tragic. Powerful post.
May 7, 2024 at 5:18 pm
Thanks Dan. I’m amazed that more players don’t experience mental health issues considering all the pressure on them to perform at such an elite level.
May 8, 2024 at 9:35 am
Tony was my favorite player for his brief time in Cleveland. I remember dad noting how tightly wound he was, He’d squeeze the bat so hard we expected it to be ground to sawdust. It seems he’s found a way to cope since.
May 8, 2024 at 9:56 am
Your dad provided a perfect visual Dan… “squeezes the bat so hard we expected it to be ground to sawdust.” I’m glad to hear/read that Tony found a way to cope. I’m reminded of Zach Greinke who suffers from social anxiety and thankfully for us fans, discovered a method to handle it and succeed.
May 7, 2024 at 8:11 am
You literally took a leap of faith, Steve. And whether it was guts, peer pressure, sheer stupidity or some combination of the three that made you do it, the fact is you did it. It shows, unlike Danny Thomas, you have the fortitude to plunge ahead, and I hope any future leaps, literal or figurative, carry you along successfully on life’s journey.
May 7, 2024 at 5:22 pm
Thanks Mark for what I take as a blessing for the rest of my life. It’s much appreciated and taken to heart.
I never did hear back from the guy. None of us did, but somehow I think he stayed alive. In retrospect, it strikes me as ironic how he had so much piss and vinegar in his personality and yet talked so often about suicide.
May 7, 2024 at 11:58 am
“(W)e all needed that kind of mystery”…have truer words ever been spoken?
May 7, 2024 at 5:16 pm
Sometimes it feels like the screen impact on our lives, the smart phones and laptops and what not ruins our explorations into the unknown…..simple things like walking to work down a different street or maybe I’m becoming an anti-technology sort? I sure hope robots don’t take over baseball. I’m excited by the Brewers early season knack for bench clearing brawls. They haven’t had an edge like that in many years.
May 7, 2024 at 6:18 pm
Tony Horton was our version in Cleveland.
May 8, 2024 at 7:04 am
Thanks Dan for mentioning Tony Horton. I didn’t know of his mental struggles. I just read his bio on SABR. Interesting that similarly to Jimmy Piersall, he had a difficult relationship with his father, that striving for perfection and the ensuing pressure. It’s also interesting that Horton refuses to talk about his short stay in major league baseball which adds to his mystery.
May 7, 2024 at 10:52 pm
I find a lot of your stories comforting because I felt a lot of the same awkwardness but didn’t really talk to my friends about it. It’s good therapy in an unconscious way.
May 8, 2024 at 7:39 am
I’m glad this one and other stories resonate with you Gary. Writing can be such a lonely adventure….making connection with fellow writers like you immeasurable.
May 13, 2024 at 4:10 pm
Beautiful , Steve. So much to love here. The lost love, death, the thrill of risking it all. And the mystery of the unknown. Which propels so many of us. And which I hope I never lose.
May 14, 2024 at 8:19 am
Thanks Bob. I try to remind myself of this unknown you mentioned as I embark on every new experience. I remember after seeing the Doors movie starring Val Kilmer….my roommate and I were so inspired by the adventures a music band enjoys/must endure…..we were so inspired that we rearranged the furniture in our small apartment, not exactly a revolution, but new and fun and overall did us some good I think.
May 14, 2024 at 1:23 pm
I saw the Doors in the theater too when it came out. Definitely the energy in the movie was infectious.
May 14, 2024 at 1:34 pm
I like to think that if I were alive and a teenager in the late 60’s and early 70’s, I would have attended shows and “dug” the scene, but chances are I’d be reading the baseball box scores and collecting baseball cards, not to say one can’t do both, music and baseball, but crowds tend to scare me, but I go to baseball games anyway. I did see Pink Floyd at County Stadium in 88 or 89, “The Momentary Lapse of Reason” tour….wonderful and 55,000 people plus.
May 15, 2024 at 11:38 am
I’m not sure where I would have been in the 60-70’s. But I’m sure it would have been wild. That’s an awesome concert to have seen. Wow.
May 16, 2024 at 6:34 am
I remember sitting in the upper deck at old County Stadium, for the Floyd show. It was cool because they had huge blow up animals that slid from the upper deck into the bullpen, area, a surprise since the Animals album was so many years earlier. That’s one I would like to revisit and focus on the lyrics since it was based I think on Orwell’s 1984.
May 16, 2024 at 6:53 am
Or I mean Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM, not 1984 though there are probably similarities between the two.
May 16, 2024 at 3:34 pm
I liked Animal Farm much better than 1984.
May 17, 2024 at 6:49 am
I’m gonna reread Animal Farm. I guess it’s pretty timeless because of the themes.