Playing Through the Pain: Ken Caminiti and the Steroids Confession that Changed Baseball Forever by Dan Good (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Playing Through the Pain: Ken Caminiti and the Steroids Confession that Changed Baseball Forever by Dan Good Willie Steele Dan Good. Playing Through the Pain: Ken Caminiti and the Steroids Confession that Changed Baseball Forever. New York, NY: Abrams Press, 2022. 378 pp. Cloth, $27.00. Oftentimes, when starting a sports biography, readers find themselves identifying with a character and hoping for a positive ending for a heroic figure. Baseball fans from the late 1980s to the early 2000s will immediately remember Ken Caminiti, but his story is one of immense physical talent, legendary competitiveness, and demons that haunted him for years. Rather than finding a happy ending to this story, fans are instead taken on a journey that they already know will end tragically, a story made even sadder when they see the third baseman's career end and his life spiral downward. When reading Dan Good's biography of the tortured Caminiti, most often identified with the Houston Astros and the San Diego Padres, these fans might already know the story of the player's work ethic that made him a legend at Leigh High School in San Jose, California. Though in his early years he "was a pint-sized boy stuck in his brother's shadow" (18), by his sophomore year, "his athletic talent couldn't be ignored" (19). That talent, combined with his legendary workout regimen, were showcased against a backdrop of drug and alcohol use, something that "was ingrained in the region's DNA" (21) around San Jose and the Cambrian Park neighborhood where Caminiti lived. By the time he took the field for San Jose City College, despite the team's [End Page 148] success and his own reliable defense on the hot corner and power at the plate, "his partying became a concern" for coaches as there were whispers "that Ken likes to drink . . . Sometimes there were hints about drugs" (31). Frustrated by the time at City College and pressured by his father to become a switch hitter, Caminiti transferred to San Jose State where, in spite of even more legendary tales of drinking, he played well enough to earn an invitation as one of the thirty-one top college prospects with the hopes of making the 1984 Olympic team, a squad which would play as a demonstration sport before baseball returned to the Olympics as a full-fledged sport four years later. And while he ultimately was left off the final twenty-man roster, it showed him (and everyone who watched him) that he had the skills to lead him to a career in the major leagues. Good masterfully tells a story of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: the gifted third baseman who was described by the Columbus Astros manager as "the next Brooks Robinson" and the man with "one of those trapdoor gullets what allowed him to chug" (69). Relying on interviews with former coaches and teammates and newspaper accounts from his playing career, Good's narrative unfolds as though it's in real time while readers know of the tragic clouds looming on Caminiti's horizon. The dual reputation followed Ken Caminiti to the major leagues when he was called up to the Houston Astros in the summer of 1987: "He played hard, and he partied just as hard" and he was "caught between grown-up responsibilities and youthful indiscretions" (83). Finishing his rookie year with a .246 batting average and impressive play at third base and marrying his high school girlfriend in the off-season should have given him incentive to clean up his life and focus on becoming the best player and husband he could be. However, as Good recounts, "he still wasn't ready to slow down" (86). With the Astros today being one of Major League Baseball's most successful franchises over the past five seasons, it might be easy for readers to forget the team's ups and downs from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s. But while Good's account focuses almost entirely on Caminiti, he provides a solid retrospective of the franchise, building around players like Darryl Kile, Craig Biggio, and Jeff Bagwell. Perhaps the most impressive part of...