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squandered an amazing Hall of Fame talent, and if anything, I resented him for it.
    Maybe that’s why I was so stunned at my reaction to the man now.
    After just one look into his eyes, the same eyes that used to stare down opposing batters without an ounce of fear, I could feel only one thing for him: sorry as hell. Because all I could see in those eyes now was fear.
    Cue Paul McCartney and the Beatles:
I’m not half the man I used to be.
    “What are you drinking?” I asked, eyeing the three knuckles’ worth of what appeared to be whiskey in front of him.
    “Johnnie Walker,” he answered. “Black.”
    “Sounds good to me.”
    Rumors of Dwayne Robinson’s drug use had begun by his third year of twenty-win seasons in the majors. Mind you, this was back when the worry wasn’t all about performance-
enhancing
drugs. Supposedly, he was doing cocaine and sometimes heroin. Ironically, when you shoot those two together it’s called a “speedball.”
    But if the persistent rumors were true, the two-time Cy Young Award winner wasn’t letting it affect his performance on the field. And whatever erratic behavior he displayed elsewhere was explained away by his social anxiety disorder.
    Then came the famous “Break-In.”
    With the World Series between the Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers tied at three games apiece, Dwayne was scheduled to take the mound in the Bronx for the decisive game seven. He had already won two games in the series, allowing only a single run. In other words, he seemed unhittable and therefore unbeatable.
    Only this time, he never showed up for the game.
    He disappeared for something over seventy-two hours. Hell, it would’ve been longer had the super in his Manhattan luxury high-rise—a die-hard Yankees fan, no less—not used his master key to enter the star’s penthouse apartment. Inside he found Dwayne Robinson lying naked on the floor, barely conscious. According to insider stories the irate super actually kicked the star a couple of times.
    From a hospital bed at Mt. Sinai, Dwayne told the police that two men had forced their way into his apartment and drugged him, probably to increase their odds on a huge bet they’d made on the game. So that’s why his blood tested positive for a near-lethal dose of heroin. Because of the “Break-In.”
    Naturally, it became one of the biggest stories in sports—no, make that one of the biggest news stories, period.
After Watergate, it was the second most famous break-in in history,
I quipped at the time, writing for
Esquire
.
    Of course, the difference was that Watergate had actually happened.
    While Dwayne Robinson had his supporters, the prevailing sentiment was that he was lying—that no matter how vehemently he denied it, the ugly truth was that he had overdosed on his own.
    The fact that the two thugs—whose descriptions he provided to the police—were never found didn’t exactly bolster his case.
    Within a year, Robinson was banned for life from the game of baseball. His wife left him, taking their two young children and eventually winning full custody of them. If you thought about it, and I did, it was the worst bad dream imaginable. Everything he lived for was gone. It had all disappeared. Just like him.
    Until now. This very moment. The first interview in a decade.
    I reached down and slid my tape recorder out of the brown leather bag on the floor. Placing it in the center of the table, I hit record. My hand was actually shaking a little.
    “So how’s this work?” asked Dwayne cautiously as he leaned forward in his white button-down shirt, his enormous elbows settling gently on our table. “Where do you want me to begin?”
    That part was easy.
    What really happened that night, Dwayne? After all these years, are you finally ready to tell a different story? The real story? Solve the mystery for us. Solve it for me.
    But before I could ask my first question, I heard a horrific scream, one of the most wretched, guttural, god-awful