The most unstable athletes of all time

Good call...

 

In charge, but not of their faculties
--Billy Martin
--Bob Knight

 

Was Albert Belle anything but angry?

 

A few old-school football players with a screw or two loose:

Joe Don Looney
John Riggins
Doug Atkins (The Big Guy)
Bobby Layne
Hardy Brown

 

Basketball and baseball seem to attract more than their fare share.

Football, and to a lesser extent, hockey tend to be such violent games that I can see how it might be tough for some players to turn it on and turn it off.

 

Pacman Jones
Terrell Owens
I think someone already mentioned Alonzo Spellman and Dimitrius Underwood
Tank Johnson
Erik Williams
Dez Bryant


And that's just a few of the Dallas Cowboys.

Don't get me started on the Bengals.

 

In the old school hockey player and coach dept. it would be tough to beat John Brophy.

 

Layne was just an alcoholic.

 

Three of those guys were/are on the Bengals.

 

Waddell perfromed well when he was kept on an extremely tight leash by Connie Mack. My suspicion is that opposing players thought Waddell was a nutjob (not merely eccentric like Germany Schaefer or a run of the drunk like Bugs Raymond) and batters ere afraid to dig in against him because he threw so hard.

And, since we're talking about Rude Waddell, here's a bit more information about him.

1) His dad was actually a very stable person. He once ran for a local government post, held a stable job for a long time, was married for more than 50 years to the same woman, was very protective of his son, and was a baseball player of modest talent himself.

2) Rube actually finished school - he was still attending classes until he finished high school. He went to two different academies after high school, but probably didn't attend a single class the second time (Volant). Now - I'm not saying he graduated at the top of his class, but he had the ability to read and write, do math, and understood - at some level - the magnitude of his fame.

3) His drinking problem likely surfaced while in Chicago. Pittsburgh/Louisville management regularly went out of their way to say he didn't have a drinking problem.

4) And it's not like he was desperate for a drink. He just lacked the ability to stop when he started. As I see it, he saw things as fun and not fun - and didn't have the capacity to understand the ramifications of fun. He could go long stretches of time without touching liquor.

5) What he really lacked was a sense of basic responsibility. He married three times, but had no idea how to be a husband and made at least two lousy choices in terms of his wives. He couldn't pay bills because he couldn't remember basic obligations. He knew what to do at the time he had to do it, he could retain some information, but he frequently couldn't act on it.

6) Paying Rube in small amounts started before Mack. Barney Dreyfuss did it first.

7) He learned how to throw just about every pitch. He threw as hard as anyone, and could make a pitch move in just about any direction - and sharply.

8) Ossie Schreckongost was really along for the ride. As soon as his drinking got in the way, and Rube was punished differently for being drunk when the two went out drinking, Ossie was probably Rube's harshest critic.

9) Rube's inability to manage basic responsibilities contributed to his demise - he couldn't stay in his bed long enough to recover and didn't know how to take medicine correctly

 

Bad News.

 

Steve McMichael. The first Bears game I covered as the sidebar guy, the beat writer told me on the drive to Soldier Field: "I don't care if he returns a fumble 100 yards for the winning touchdown, don't even approach this guy."

I thought he was fucking with me, but then after the game, I saw him in all his naked glory, hunched over in his chair in front of his locker with his hair flowing down over his face. He walked over to the shower area, and when his path was blocked by a TV camera guy, he shouted "Get the fuck out of the way!"