Death of a Salesman
Two years ago today, former Ranger and Blue Jay Doug Ault turned a shotgun on himself and committed suicide at his home in Tarpon Springs, Florida. He was 54 years old.
Ault played four seasons in the bigs in which his best was 1977, when he hit .245 with eleven homers for Toronto. He is remembered in baseball lore for one thing, which can never be taken away from him - he hit the first home run in Blue Jays history, and then the second, two dingers on Opening Day of 1977 at Exhibition Stadium.
Cut from the Jays after the 1980 season, Ault hung on with the franchise as an off-and-on minor league coach until 1994, during which time he endured a nasty divorce. He became a car salesman, first in Texas and then in Florida, where he remarried. Not much is known about what was going on with him in his last years. At the time of his suicide, he had recently been let go from a dealership in Tarpon Springs.
We do a lot of fallen angel stuff here on No Mas. We're definitely preoccupied with the guys who fly too close to the sun and then have the all-too-familiar spectacular flameout. But that wasn't Doug Ault. For all us baseball-card-obsessed sports dorks, he's a sobering reminder that the majority of professional athletes are just normal people having their fifteen minutes on the big stage that fifteen minutes later no one will care much about one way or the other. At which point, they're on their own in the big bad world, just like the rest of us.
Ault played four seasons in the bigs in which his best was 1977, when he hit .245 with eleven homers for Toronto. He is remembered in baseball lore for one thing, which can never be taken away from him - he hit the first home run in Blue Jays history, and then the second, two dingers on Opening Day of 1977 at Exhibition Stadium.
Cut from the Jays after the 1980 season, Ault hung on with the franchise as an off-and-on minor league coach until 1994, during which time he endured a nasty divorce. He became a car salesman, first in Texas and then in Florida, where he remarried. Not much is known about what was going on with him in his last years. At the time of his suicide, he had recently been let go from a dealership in Tarpon Springs.
We do a lot of fallen angel stuff here on No Mas. We're definitely preoccupied with the guys who fly too close to the sun and then have the all-too-familiar spectacular flameout. But that wasn't Doug Ault. For all us baseball-card-obsessed sports dorks, he's a sobering reminder that the majority of professional athletes are just normal people having their fifteen minutes on the big stage that fifteen minutes later no one will care much about one way or the other. At which point, they're on their own in the big bad world, just like the rest of us.
1 Comments:
True Words in that 4th paragraph. Thanks for that Large.
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