Ken Caminiti - May He Rest in Peace

Ken Caminiti died of a heart attack yesterday. He was only 41 years old. Caminiti died the day one of his former teams, the Houston Astros won their first playoff series. His life was plagued with drugs. The following is an exert from the Houston Chronicle article about his death:

Last week, after a positive screening on a drug test, Ken Caminiti was sentenced to 180 days in jail by a state district judge who revoked his probation for a 2002 drug conviction.

"Obviously, he's been through a lot of different things in the last couple of years. It's not as easy to keep contact," Jeff Bagwell said. "But special friends ... you don't always have to be in contact every second of every single day. ... Our friendship has never wavered."

Astros manager Phil Garner, meanwhile, remembered Caminiti as a father remembers a child or as a teacher remembers a student.

"He loved remote-control cars, and he would run them around the field, and my kids loved it," Garner said. "It was like he was a big kid in a man's body. That's all he was. ... My kids always loved those things and it was probably because they would go out and play with Cammy in the dirt before a game."

But Garner, who knew Caminiti when Garner was an Astros coach under manager Larry Dierker, said his first emotion on hearing the news was anger.

"Ken had a lot of guys who loved him and people who steered him in the right direction and gave him some good choices to make," Garner said. "He continually made bad choices. It's unfortunate that drugs get such a hold on your life and such a hold on you that this is what happens."

Bagwell deflected a question about any efforts he and Craig Biggio made to help their friend address his addictions.

"It's a constant battle, from what I've heard from people that have had to go through that, and there's nothing that probably any one of us in this room could have imagined," he said. "So as a friend, you can only do as much as you can. ... It's kind of a moot point at this moment.

"But as Craig said, we all loved him very much, and he loved us back."

Sometime there is not much of a gap between stimulus and response. When the gap is closed, a person goes from stimulus to response without reflecting on the moment of choice. Coach Garner was correct about "bad choices." It is sad that Caminiti didn't have one more opportunity to open his gap enough to make the right choice to move toward recovery. When a person has a healthy gap between stimulus and response, then they are able to close gaps from "where they are, to where they want to be."

The irony is that his death happened the day the Astros got the "monkey off their back," as far as not being able to get to the next level. It is sad that Ken Caminiti couldn't have done the same thing.