Today's Fantasy Rx

More magazines tomorrow, but now I'm going to write a little bit about a subject I'll call:

Burn in Hell, Michael Curtis Darr

You may want to avoid the remainder of this article if you think kindly about drunk drivers, alcoholics, and those that support them. On the other hand, if you consider yourself human, please continue reading.

For those of you who intend to write in to complain about this section, all I ask is that you please read the entire segment before e-mailing me. I have no intention of printing any responses since this is a rant I've been mentally writing for a decade, and now I have an appropriate forum to air my thoughts. However, if you still choose to take issue with any of my comments, I'll be happy to further explain my reasoning if I somehow fail to state my viewpoints in a clear and understandable manner. I fully anticipate a few flames sent my way due to this piece.

Now I'm sure this argument would be more effective if I actually believed in a concept of hell other than some variation of Jean-Paul Sartre's "Hell is other people", but I'll pretend that Darr's off roasting somewhere nice and warm for the purposes of this segment.

Michael Curtis Darr, it's good that you don't have to live with yourself any more. You killed one of your oldest friends. You widowed your wife and left your children without a father. You threw away a promising career in which you'd only need to play a game of physical skill for a few more years to set your family for life. You are a murderer, and if the word victim should ever be associated with you, it should be in the context of "suicide victim". You weren't even wearing your seat belt.

Natalie Darr, your husband just killed himself and one of his friends, widowing you and your two children. Did you know that he was capable of these reckless actions? Did you marry him in spite of his recklessness, or even because of this wild streak? Did you bring two children into this world in full knowledge of the tiny little fact that your husband obviously didn't care about killing himself or others? I can't believe all these other web sites are offering condolences to you.

If you didn't know about these tendencies, then you weren't his wife in any meaningful sense of the word.

If you knew and didn't force him to get help, then you're equally responsible for the death of your sons' father.

Please don't tell me that you can't "force" an addict to get help. You can certainly force the issue by, oh I don't know, refusing to associate with him if he's intent on destroying himself. Perhaps you shouldn't marry him, or bear him two children likely to grow up with a single parent.

To Mike Darr, Jr. and Matthew Darr, I'm so very sorry for your loss. I doubt you'll ever read this, and I see no benefit in sending this to you since your mother likely won't want to acknowledge the truth of these words. You're growing up without a father who obviously did not care about you at all if he so willingly killed himself. Sure, he wasn't the best baseball player in the world, and he'd be lucky to earn more than a million or so dollars a year playing a game for a living, but that's still no reason for him to off himself.

Duane Johnson, you died because you were dumb enough to both ride with a drunk driver and not wear your seat belt. This combination of decisions constitutes a "death wish" to most of the rest of the world. I hope you're pleased that you deserted your family and helped made Mike a murderer by your rash actions.

Ben Howard, you lucky bastard. You were smart enough to wear your seat belt, but yet dumb to let Darr drive. Your only guilt should be in not driving yourself, unless, of course, you were also bombed out of your mind, not an unlikely scenario considering all the stories we've heard about hard-partying minor leaguers.

I'm sure most of you are rather shocked at this attitude, especially in a fantasy baseball column of all places, but I approach this issue from a very personal, very biased standpoint.

A drunk driver murdered my friend David almost a decade ago. He was in a car with his fianceé when some drunken bastard crashed into them head-on while crossing out of his lane.

Please don't even try to argue that it wasn't murder; the drunk announced his willful intent to kill someone the moment he started his car.

I'm thankful he likely didn't suffer, and I know his family will never recover, but I can only tell you about how deeply this affected me.

I've been exposed to death my entire life. My Nani, my mom's mom, lived with us for my entire life until she died of cancer when I was four. I have distinct memories of trying to help her but only mostly getting in the way of my parents.

Nani had six brothers and sisters, and I've been at wakes, funerals, or memorial services for all of them, as well as most of their spouses. I was an honorary pallbearer for my other grandma's brother a few weeks after Nani's death, and I've been to more wakes and funerals of my friends' relatives, and my parents' friends, and my parents' friends' relatives than I can count.

We attended church in Chicago, the church where my parents and both of their parents were married, for much of my childhood. Our weekly Sunday excursion included a direct trip from church to one cemetery for my dad's side of the family, and then the other cemetery for most of my mom's side of the family.

I don't relate this history to brag about my "death exposure" in any way; I just want to explain that I understand that death is the natural end to human life. I've understood this simple concept from a very young age, and I was always mystified at why my friends were shocked when their grandparents died. It took me several years to understand that, as teenagers, my friends were only then attending their first memorial or burying someone they know.

David died at the age of 21. I didn't see him often, but I'd known him all my life, and I had never really experienced an unnatural death like his. Even when my mom's cousin Dennis died a few years earlier due to a massive heart attack at the age of 40, widowing his wife and three children, I still understood it as a natural death, largely due to more than 85% blockage in both of his main arteries.

David died while I was on a class trip to Washington, DC. I walked around in shock for most of the day and then cried myself to sleep on the train ride home.

He died because some bastard, previously convicted of drunk driving, was allowed back on the road.

He died because someone in the justice system neglected to understand that the only way to prevent these deaths is to either lock drunk drivers up forever or ban them from owning or operating any vehicle under penalty of a felony conviction. We could also simply ban alcohol altogether, but I doubt many of you would support such a step.

So what could I do to prevent drunk driving, or to decrease the chance of this happening to someone else I know?

Well, I stopped drinking alcohol. Not that I ever really started in the first place, but once I truly understood why his death had affected me and what caused it, I eliminated all alcohol from my life, up to and including communion and cooking wine.

What else can I do? Personally, I think this is a very good step that has already alienated people I knew in college when almost my entire floor got blitzed on the night of the first frat party. Pretty much most of the freshman class was too drunk to walk in a straight line, leaving me with some very unpleasant memories and almost nowhere to go that could reasonably be defined as "safe".

We don't serve alcohol in our home and avoid it completely when we're out. We openly discourage all our close friends and family from drinking at all, though we're not going to really complain about anything they do away from us.

As long as they don't drive after drinking.

As long as they don't operate heavy machinery after drinking.

As long as they don't kill themselves or their loved ones or friends like Mike Darr did.

Okay, now I'm finished.

Flame away.

I'm sure Mike Darr's enjoying the same treatment.

Today's Fantasy Rx: Consider this one of the few true prescriptions I ever plan to write out for you, and this one's a lifetime order:

Don't You Ever Drive After Drinking More Than The Smallest Amounts of Alcohol!

Buy yourself a cell phone if you don't have one, and keep it on you and charged at all time. Program in the number of a taxi company wherever you live or travel, and always spend that extra money on cab fare away from and back to your car.

You owe this to yourself.

You owe this to your family and friends.

Most importantly, you owe this to my dead friend David.