pamlbeachpost.com

Jeff Allison's story mired in rumors, questions

 

By CARLOS FRAS

 

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

 

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

 

PEABODY, Mass. They speak of Jeff Allison here as if he were a ghost.

 

Some say they saw him a week ago; for others, it has been months.

 

JIM DAVIS/ The Boston Globe

 

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'What my son needs is time and space,' says Robert Allison, father of troubled Marlins pitching prospect Jeff Allison. The two are shown hugging after Jeff was selected by the Marlins in the first round of the 2003 draft.

 

SUZANNE KREITER/ Boston Globe file photo (2003)

 

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OxyContin makes the user feel invincible. It masks itself perfectly within an athlete, who is expected to be brash. That in-your-face attitude is what scouts loved about Jeff Allison, who unleashed 97 mph fastballs from the first to last outs.

 

JIM DAVIS/ Boston Globe file photo (2003)

 

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Marlins pitcher Jeff Allison, once a can't-miss prospect, is struggling with a drug problem that nearly killed him.

 

Taylor Jones/The Post

 

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Greg Bartlett

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Some say he has been working out daily, aiming at a comeback; others claim he's back in rehab for the OxyContin addiction that derailed his career as a pitcher in the Florida Marlins' organization and nearly killed him.

 

He was rumored to be working out with other minor-leaguers at a baseball academy in Bradenton at the same time he was thought to be training in Cleveland.

 

Once considered the country's top high school pitcher, a can't-miss prospect, Jeff Allison now is a phantom.

 

"I don't know why he's hiding," said Ed Nizwantowski, his coach at Peabody High School. "I would think it would help to talk to people about it."

 

During the off-season, there have been occasional Jeff Allison sightings in Peabody, his hometown 30 minutes north of Boston. Yet everyone here who speaks about him starts with some variation of "Have you seen Jeff?"

 

A Marlins source said last week that Allison still had to "get clean" before he could rejoin the organization. He might arrive as early as April, which would make it a year since the Marlins put him on the restricted list, a baseball limbo where he remains inactive and unpaid.

 

His story is a shame to those back home still marveling over his brilliance on the mound. There was the time he struck out 20 of the 22 batters he faced against Somerville. The 64 innings he pitched his senior year in 2003 without allowing an earned run. The $1.85 million bonus he received after the Marlins made him the 16th selection of the 2003 baseball draft.

 

Those closest to him his parents, his agent and a small circle of childhood friends have kept quiet about his situation and shield him from the spotlight so Allison can concentrate on his rehabilitation.

 

"He'll be there. He will report at a normal time," his father, Robert Allison, said in his only public comments to date about his son. "What my son needs is time and space."

 

How could no one see this coming?

 

Anyone who cares about Jeff Allison asks that question again and again.

 

The pride of Peabody High was a drug addict and nobody could help him.

 

The adults closest to Allison never caught on. Lifelong friends who suspected a problem couldn't make him stop. Those using drugs with him spoke out only when it was too late.

 

Allison, 20, has said that he got hooked on the prescription painkiller OxyContin after graduating from high school, using his bonus money to feed his habit. Joel Levine, a Peabody teammate who said he used drugs with Allison, told Sports Illustrated in December that Allison had been using throughout his senior year, and Allison told The Boston Globe that he first tried the drug casually his junior year, while watching football at a friend's house.

 

Those familiar with the effects of OxyContin know how tough it is to spot an abuser.

 

Someone on O.C., its street name, wouldn't act paranoid or edgy like someone on cocaine. And they wouldn't be listless like someone smoking marijuana.

 

"Your pilot on the flight home today could be using OxyContin, and you could talk to him for 20 minutes and never know he's using," said Bob Russell, a narcotics detective with the Peabody Police Department.

 

O.C. addicts crush the 80-milligram, aspirin-sized pill and snort it, effectively getting 12 hours worth of time-released painkiller in a second and a half.

 

The drug makes the user feel invincible, arrogant, cocky. It masks itself perfectly within an athlete, who is expected to be brash. That in-your-face attitude is what scouts loved about Jeff Allison, who unleashed 97 mph fastballs from the first to last outs.

 

"Between the lines, he's a warrior," Nizwantowski said. "It's outside the lines where he gets messed up."

 

Allison has not said how quickly his addiction progressed; the pitcher and his agent, Casey Close of the International Management Group, did not respond to interview requests for this story. But his ability to deal with his addiction clearly began to unravel soon after he signed with the Marlins in June 2003.

 

In his first year of rookie ball with the Gulf Coast Marlins in Jupiter, he pitched only three times, striking out 11 and allowing one earned run in nine innings. Still, the Marlins sent him home just before the end of the season because, they said, he had tendinitis.

 

Off the field, Allison wasn't sitting idle in Palm Beach County. One of his minor-league teammates, Cole Seifrig, said Allison liked to go out and "have a good time."

 

Teammates remember Allison being inseparable from another Marlins prospect, Greg Bartlett, a 28th-round pick out of junior college. A month after the season ended, Bartlett went home to Arizona and died of a methadone overdose, a drug chemically similar to OxyContin and heroin.

 

Bartlett's parents believe Allison was a bad influence on their son. Since Greg's death, Allison has not spoken to the Bartletts or returned calls or e-mails, though he did post a message to Greg in an online guestbook.

 

In the e-mail, Allison acknowledged receiving a letter from Barlett's mother and wrote: "Hopefully some day I could meet her and look into her eyes and see you again. I miss you a lot.''

 

Allison's drug problem apparently got worse after he left Jupiter. He told The Globe that he spent Thanksgiving 2003 in a rehab facility in Jamaica Plain, Mass.

 

In the spring of 2004, he confessed his drug addiction to the Marlins and they placed him in a rehabilitation center in Lynn, not far from Peabody. Later, at the time pitchers and catchers were to report, he was staying at a rehab center near Jupiter, meeting with a drug counselor daily, he told The Globe.

 

Even Greg Barlett's death didn't slow Allison's abuse. At spring training of 2004, he failed two drug tests for marijuana, was fined $250,000 by the Marlins, and was put on the restricted list when he left camp without permission. To date, he has received less than one-third of his signing bonus.

 

Last July, back in his hometown, he went looking for O.C. with a friend, James Leontakianakos, but because police were cracking down on dealers, they could not find the drug. Instead, they bought a bag of heroin, chemically similar to O.C., but cheaper to buy on the street. They shot up in Leontakianakos' car, where they passed out, said Russell, the narcotics detective.

 

When Leontakianakos came to, he saw Allison was barely breathing and drove him to the hospital. Allison's heart stopped and doctors had to use a defibrillator to bring him back.

 

Talk quickly turned to who knew about Allison's addiction. Fingers pointed at his parents, teachers, police, even the Marlins.

 

Russell said he had heard informants bring up Allison's name as a drug user, but since he wasn't linked to a major supplier, he was low on the Peabody Police Department's list of priorities.

 

No one in the police department approached Allison or his family members. Allison worked for the school's athletic director, Phil Sheridan, for a year without raising suspicion.

 

The criticism fell harshly on Nizwantowski for not recognizing Allison's drug problem in high school. The coach has even been accused of overlooking it.

 

Nizwantowski believes that was the reason he was fired in January after 22 years at Peabody, where he became the school's winningest baseball and football coach and one of the most successful high school football coaches in Boston history. Nizwantowski filed a grievance with the school system.

 

How, the coach says, could he have picked up on Allison's O.C. addiction when he couldn't even see what devastation the drug was doing in his own home?

 

"I didn't know when my own son was doing it," Nizwantowski said.

 

Coach's son had problem, too

 

Brad Nizwantowski, Ed and Patty's middle child, started using OxyContin recreationally during his sophomore year at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was on a hockey scholarship.

 

Patty Nizwantowski calls OxyContin "socially acceptable heroin."

 

It doesn't have to be injected with a needle, like heroin, and is sold in the pharmacy, not on a dark street corner.

 

It's prescribed for pain associated with surgery; Ed Nizwantowski was given OxyContin after a back operation.

 

As the drug's grip tightened, Brad stole money and jewelry from his parents. "We don't have a piece of gold left in the house," Ed Nizwantowski said.

 

Brad was prone to violent outbursts, once pounding the side of his house with a hockey stick and swinging it at his father in a drug-induced rage. He was kicked off the team at Amherst.

 

One day, high on O.C., he went to an old girlfriend's house, wouldn't let her leave and threatened to kill himself with a kitchen knife.

 

He was arrested and in February 2003 sentenced to a year a in jail for kidnapping and assault, serving six months before he was paroled. Brad, now 24, still considers himself a recovering addict and knows the constant lure of OxyContin. Only a pellet of a rehabilitation drug called Naltrexone, inserted under the skin at a cost of $400 every eight weeks, quells his hunger for O.C.

 

"My parents still don't understand," Brad said. "They ask me, 'Why couldn't you just stop using drugs?' You have to live through it to understand."

 

He said he has tried to talk to Allison about getting his life back on track.

 

"I'd tell him, 'You've got to do the right thing. Respect yourself. Respect your body. Respect your talent,' " Brad said.

 

Jeff would nod in agreement, something Brad Nizwantowski remembers doing when he was hooked.

 

"It's going to take him six to seven months being completely sober for him to be completely honest with himself," Brad said.

 

Family and Marlins saying little

 

To everyone but some family and a few friends, Allison dropped out of sight for the past year.

 

He has been spotted at Peabody football and basketball games, and for a stretch in January was working out daily for at least an hour at Extra Innings, an indoor baseball facility in a neighboring town.

 

But he has not returned phone calls from well-wishers. Ed Nizwantowski expected to hear from his former star after his firing from Peabody High, but despite making at least four phone calls to Allison since November, there's been no response.

 

Noreen Allison, who used to talk regularly to Patty Nizwantowski about their sons' drug problems, has not returned the Nizwantowskis' calls. Patty Nizwantowski believes Noreen Allison remains understandably in a phase where she is covering for her son rather than making him face his addiction. She was the one who told friends and family, after Jeff's overdose, that he had just checked into the hospital with pneumonia.

 

On a cold February morning, Noreen Allison walked out of her small New England cottage at the end of Hourihan Street, crunching the snow under foot. The childhood home of Jeff Allison, with its white siding and black shutters, is now eclipsed by a number of towering new homes.

 

Asked about her son, she offered a polite "no comment" and said "we don't even know" if Jeff would play baseball again this year. Allison broke his silence momentarily to tell the local newspaper, the Salem News, that he had talked with the Marlins and intended to be back for spring training.

 

The Marlins have refused to discuss anything about the Allison situation, from his future with the organization to the violation that caused his suspension to Allison and Bartlett overdosing in a span of nine months.

 

"Jeff Allison's status with the team remains unchanged," Marlins General Manager Admin Beinfest said.

 

Peabody's school board responded to the fallout from Allison's overdose with a campaign against drugs, including a poster contest for teens with the theme of "Help Make Heroin History.''

 

The Nizwantowskis, who shared their story nationally, now feel like outcasts in their hometown, shut out of even church events. Ed Nizwantowski is interviewing for coaching jobs outside the town. "It's almost like they would have preferred to keep it a secret," Patty Nizwantowski said.

 

Allison stays within a close circle that includes Bobby Celantano and Artie Gernerazzo, childhood friends who played baseball with Jeff since their Little League days. But even they are reluctant to talk about their friend; Celantano's mother, Pattie, said her son did not want to be quoted about Jeff's recovery.

 

"It's tough when it hits so close to home," said Pattie Celantano, who said in late February that it had been weeks since Jeff had visited her house. "We're hoping he can go back. But his health, right now, is the most important thing. We love him and we hope he gets better."

 

LOST PROSPECTS: A two-part story

 

TODAY: Marlins prospect Jeff Allison and his struggle to overcome his drug addiction.

 

WEDNESDAY: The short life and and painful legacy of Greg Bartlett.

 

Jeff Allison drew notice for the heat of his pitches; Greg Bartlett, for the warmth of his personality. Allison and Bartlett were drafted by the Marlins in June 2003 and played rookie ball together for the organization's Gulf Coast League team.

 

Allison, who grew up outside of Boston, was the Marlins' top pick. Bartlett, who was raised in Phoenix, was selected in the 28th round. They were pitchers from different backgrounds, shouldering different pressures, who came together as teammates and friends for one fleeting summer in Jupiter.

 

Brought together by the Marlins, Allison and Bartlett forever will be linked by tragedy. On Oct. 1, 2003, less than a month after the end of rookie ball, Bartlett died of an overdose of alcohol and methadone in a suburb of Phoenix while in the company of some high school friends. Nine months later, Allison overdosed on heroin in a suburb of Boston while in the company of a high school friend. He lived only because the friend rushed him to the hospital.

 

Just because kids can pitch out of jams doesn't mean they can extricate themselves from trouble outside the lines. Allison, it would come out later, was addicted to OxyContin by the time he was drafted by the Marlins out of high school. Bartlett, who was 20 when he died, had no history of drug abuse but did drink alcohol.

 

Two prospects from the same draft class overdosing less than a year apart is a dark mark on the Marlins. Like every new steroid revelation, today's story about Allison and a piece to follow Wednesday on Bartlett give lie to the illusion of baseball as an immaculate field of dreams.

 

as it says in the final parapgraph "Two prospects from the same draft class overdosing less than a year apart"... crazy

Cant the Marlins find players not addicted to drugs. Its always boggled me that these teams who invest so much money on players, cant do a little investigative work and find out if these guys are drug addicts.

 

This was a really good article, read it this morning

This article was a case of an editor, who having sent his writer to Massachusetts, and who then came up empty (it was after all about as a non-story story as you can find) felt compelled to show something for his expenditure and had the writer write it anyways.

 

Carlos Frias might as well gone to Cleveland to research this one.

Cant the Marlins find players not addicted to drugs.711715[/snapback]

 

When you have a player who was projected to go in the top-3, and couldn't conceivably make it out of the top-5 fall into your lap, you take him with little hesitation, and it works 99% of the time.

 

The Marlins didn't think there was any chance that they'd have gotten Jeff Allison, so they didn't do any research, and even the teams that did didn't know about it. Read the SI article on him from over the winter; the entire town of Peabody pretty much covered his ass, and it's hard for anyone to get anything substantive out of a small working-class town like Peabody, towns where everyone knows everyone and the "outsiders" aren't welcomed with open arms...