Pubdate: Sat, 30 Jul 2011
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Sophia Hollander

TREATING ADDICTS USING BATS, BALLS

Every weekend, softball teams dot fields across the city, office
bragging rights in the balance.

On a recent Saturday, players from two rival teams agreed that the
stakes in their league were a little higher: their lives.

They had come to Marine Park, Brooklyn, to battle for first place in
the Therapeutic Community Association league. Made up of 13 teams from
addiction and rehabilitation centers in New York state, the league
provides a rare weekend outlet for participants; there's also an
eight-team women's league.

At times, teammates-who include staff and alumni as well as
addicts-can even become unlikely enforcers of the treatment program.

When a player from Daytop Village, one of the league's top teams, was
found to be violating program rules banning cigarettes, his teammates
led an intervention. "We want to make it a team issue," said manager
William Torres. "We're dealing with everybody's lives. We're very close."

Players on the verge of leaving a program are frequently coaxed back
by a league rule, many participants said: If you leave treatment
early, you cannot play. "They have a commitment to the softball team,
as crazy as it sounds," said Scott Lynch, who coaches and plays center
field for Dynamite.

On a recent weekend, Dynamite, one of only two youth teams in the
league, swept the older and burlier Samaritan Village squad in a
double-header under a searing sun, seizing first place. "It's a pride
thing; you want to beat the other programs," said Mr. Lynch, adding
that players sometimes switched teams as they shifted between
programs. "It adds a little more juice to it."

Dynamite's players are members of Dynamic Youth Community, a center
based in Brooklyn, and they range in age from 14 to 23. They begin
their three-year rehab program by spending a full year at an upstate
facility situated more than two hours from the city before they make
the transition to a center downstate.

At one time, heroin and cocaine additions predominated, program
officials said; the current trend is abusing prescription drugs.

Some come to the program after court orders, while others are
"momdated," Mr. Lynch said, referring to those whose parents march
them into the facility. Others arrive on their own, often afraid of
where their lives are heading.

"I was basically just becoming a loser," said 19-year-old Chris M.,
who confessed his addiction to his parents.

Once they arrive upstate, the enrollees are isolated from their old
friends, and family contact is limited, at least initially.

At first, Chris resisted admitting that he needed such an intense
rehabilitation program, he said. He kept to himself for the first
weeks upstate, unwilling to make friends and avoiding the softball
team. After receiving encouragement from his father and staff members,
he reluctantly tried out. Now he is Dynamite's starting second baseman.

"Softball definitely kept me [in the program] after the first week I
played," he said. "I was like, 'All right, I'm going to do this. I'm
going to stay.'"

The program's constraints transform softball into a rare phenomenon:
an activity that can rouse gloomy adolescents from their beds before
dawn-some even starting the day with smiles. Players must arrive at
the fields by 8 a.m.

"They're up, like, 15-20 minutes before they have to be," said staff
member Jesus Maldonado, 29, who wakes up at 4:30 a.m. each Saturday to
drive them down to the city and also plays on the team. "Today they'll
start counting down to next week."

Messrs. Lynch and Maldonado are graduates of the program and started
playing when they were going through treatment.

Dynamite is now seeking its third straight championship-after going
more than 30 years without a single title.

"They're fast compared to us slow old guys," admitted Mr. Torres, who
is the league's commissioner in addition to coaching Daytop Village.
"They create havoc once they're on the bases."

Better havoc on the bases than in their lives.

Dynamite player Derek W. struggled to express his emotions in the wake
of his parents' divorce when he turned 12. The suburban New Jersey
athlete started acting up in school-and then tried drugs on a whim. By
age 20, he had dropped out of school, sped through 13 separate rehab
programs, and was living on the streets of New York City after both
parents had kicked him out.

"Baseball was a big thing growing up," he said. "I lost touch with it
once I got into drugs."

Now, "I have it back again," he said.

Dynamic Youth Community, which runs an annual Olympics-style event at
its upstate facility, is hoping to encourage other programs to expand
the number of sports leagues, even though it is costly to do so. Each
men's team must pay $1,000 to participate in softball; the women's
teams pay $800.

"For a lot of these young kids, drugs have played a major part of
their life," said William Fusco, Dynamic Youth Community's executive
director. "When you take that away, you've got to try to put something
back in there."

Sports is a natural substitute-and the games can get unusually
intense.

"They feel like they haven't won in a long time and they don't want to
lose," Mr. Fusco said.

That competitiveness has created heated rivalries-and occasional
trash-talking.

"Because we are so young, they call us the Barbie dolls," said
22-year-old Shalina B., who plays for the women's team, with a
sheepish smile. "They'll say stuff like that, do dance moves and stuff."

"They look pretty silly, grown women doing stuff like that," sniffed
teammate Marcella Z, also 22. "We take the high road."

They are not the only subject of ridicule. For five straight years,
from 2005 until 2009, Daytop Village's men's team earned a spot in the
championship game. It lost every time.

"We became the Buffalo Bills of the TCA," Mr. Torres said. "We're
trying to get that label off of us."

Two of those losses came to Dynamite. Mr. Lynch expects another
Daytop-Dynamite showdown this year, he said.

Mr. Torres agreed-and offered his own prediction. "Our pitching can
stop them," he said.

But Mr. Lynch is already considering a more pressing problem. When
Dynamite won its first championship in 2007, the program distributed
jackets to the team. Championships the past two years brought branded
windbreakers and hooded sweatshirts. If they win this year, what's
left?

For once, Mr. Lynch said, "It's a good problem to have."
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