This story was excerpted from Brian McTaggart’s Astros Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
HOUSTON -- Jeff Bagwell’s role with the Astros as a senior advisor to owner Jim Crane keeps him largely behind the scenes, which is how he likes it. But the Hall of Fame slugger recently opened up about his career, his family and his addiction struggles in an edition of the “The Road to Cooperstown,” a podcast collaboration between SiriusXM and the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
In a candid interview with Jon Paul Morosi, Bagwell talked about his path to the Hall of Fame, the influence of his parents while growing up in Connecticut and his battle with alcohol, saying he’s been sober since 2017. Bagwell, a four-time All-Star who won the 1991 NL Rookie of the Year, 1994 NL MVP and Hall of Fame inductee in 2017, is the Astros franchise leader in home runs (449) and RBIs (1,529).
He spent his entire 15-year career with the Astros, playing alongside close friend and fellow Hall of Famer Craig Biggio, from 1991-2005.
“It's something that Craig and I both made a point [of],” he said. “Craig and I were very conscious of wanting to finish our careers in the same organization.”
It was a degenerative shoulder condition that forced Bagwell to retire after the ’05 season, which concluded with him going 1-for-8 as the Astros' designated hitter in the World Series against the White Sox. He tried to play in the spring of ’06, but his shoulder wouldn’t let him.
It was around that time, Bagwell said, that his struggles with alcohol began, not only to help ease the pain of his shoulder, but also because he had a lot of time on his hands as a retired player.
“The few pain pills that I took, those things just helped me get through the game, but the pain never goes away,” he said. “So I started to drink a lot more, and then once you retire -- and I think you can speak to a lot of players like that -- when you wake up and say it’s April 1 and it's Opening Day and it's 2:30 in the afternoon and you're sitting in your living room and you're supposed to be at the ballpark, that's a different feeling. [It’s] really weird, especially when you played a long time, to be able to deal with that separation and, more importantly, [what] is your identity? Who am I?”
What Bagwell learned is that baseball wasn’t his identity. Sure, it helped shape him as a person and made for a rewarding career, but he had nothing to fall back on after he hung up the cleats, so he turned to alcohol. Bagwell said he has been to rehab a couple of times and might have had as many as nine interventions before he finally got sober.
That happened during the 2017 playoffs -- the year the Astros won the World Series, and also the year he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He credits friends and family, especially his wife, Rachel, and his faith for helping him get sober.
- All Hall of Fame podcasts can be accessed here: The Road to Cooperstown.
- The series is available on the SiriusXM app and on all major podcast platforms. Episodes also air Saturday mornings at 9 am ET on SiriusXM’s MLB Network Radio channel.
“When I met my wife, I truly believe that God put her in my life to save me,” he said. “She changed my whole perspective on life and believed in me, but helped me through a time when you've got to deal with your kids, who are watching their father basically melt away, and he's just not the same person.
“But she was there to save me, with God's help, and then I just kept coming back, and I just kept going and going. And I probably spent seven years really, really struggling, and now I'm almost nine years sober. So it's a heck of a journey, and I tell people this all the time … getting sober is a hell of a lot harder than it was to make the Hall of Fame.”
Bagwell said he was supposed to attend a game against the Yankees in the 2017 ALCS in Houston but didn’t show up and was banned from attending the first two games of the 2017 World Series against the Dodgers so he “wouldn’t embarrass anybody.” He said he took his last drink before Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS, which the Astros won to clinch a World Series berth.
“I’ve been sober ever since,” he said. “My wife laughs [and says], ‘You know, cats are supposed to have nine lives.’ I might have had 10, 11ish, and I take that very seriously.”