The catatonic pitcher and a shower shoe: Recalling the strange demise of Rangers pitcher Roger Moret

We are creeping toward the 40^th anniversary, which, really, should mean a whole lot of nothing. Hell, Major League Baseball is a universe of recollections, mementos, odes, nods. We talk about this date and that date. When Reggie hit his 500^th. When Rickey stole his 130^th. When Dr. K struck out Bob and The Mick homered off Tim. The sport offers us a dizzying buffet of nonstop nostalgia, and therefore allows seemingly lesser moments to slip through the stadium cracks and into history’s abyss.

Not this one.

The members of the 1978 Texas Rangers seem to remember it with perfect precision. Yes, the date (April 12, 1978), and opponent (Detroit Tigers) can be fuzzy, but the location (Arlington Stadium’s home clubhouse) and the primary prop (a shower slipper) are not. Neither is the main protagonist.

“Roger Moret,” says Jim Sundberg. Then, for emphasis, a sighed repeat.

“Yup. Roger Moret.”

The former Rangers catcher is inside his Arlington home, evoking a strange man and a stranger incident that still, all these years later, leave him befuddled. Back four decades ago, when Sundberg was an American League All-Star and one of the best backstops the business, he made it a priority to forge bonds with his pitchers.

“But Roger—that really didn’t happen,” Sundberg says. “He was very edgy, very angry. Never really in good spirits.”

Moret had come to the Lone Star State one year earlier, part of a five-player package from Atlanta in exchange for outfielder Jeff Burroughs. A native of Guayama, Puerto Rico, the 6-foot-4, 170-pound lefthander went 3-3 with a 3.73 ERA for the 1977 Rangers—hardly a carbon copy of his best season (Moret delivered a 14-3 mark with a 3.60 ERA in Boston for the ’75 pennant winners) but enough to assure the 28-year old a bullpen spot for at least another broiling Texas summer.

“He was a solid arm,” says Bump Wills, the team’s second baseman. “Roger had really good stuff.”

Moret’s 1978 kicked off innocuously enough. In a 5-2 win over the visiting Yankees on April 10, he relieved Dock Ellis, picking up the save with four innings of one-run ball. Yet, hidden within the shadows of the box score, were issues. Lots of issues. Toward the final days of the team’s spring training stay in Pompano Beach, Florida, Moret demanded a trade after engaging in multiple arguments with his fellow pitchers. There were a handful of near-fistfights, often with teammates who had no remote idea what Moret was so angry about. He repeatedly threatened to “jump ship”—and found no humor when Brad Corbett, the Texas owner, told the media, “I’ll give Roger a big kiss. Everything will be OK.”

It wasn’t.

“Roger was teased a lot on our team,” says Wills. “There were a lot of Latin American players on our roster, and there was a pecking order based on country. Roger being Puerto Rican, and his inability to speak English well . . . it made him the butt of a lot of jokes. It wasn’t nice.”

Right around the time that the Rangers returned to Texas from Florida, Moret learned his Porsche had been repossessed. It was, Wills recalls, a devastating (and humiliating) blow to a prideful man who failed to fully grasp America’s governmental and financial mechanisms. There were also the drugs. Although it hardly made him unique, Moret was known to self-medicate with copious amounts of marijuana.

“From what I understood it got the best of him,” says Sundberg. “He just really had a lot of problems. I think they all merged into that one moment . . .”

Indeed.

The April 12 game against the visiting Tigers was scheduled for a 7:35 pm first pitch. The Ranger players staggered into the clubhouse beginning around 4 pm, then dressed and headed toward the field for batting practice. It was your typically hot April day, with a scorching sun and clear skies. The first sign of trouble occurred when Mike Hargrove, Texas’ first baseman, was working the bag. “Roger came along,” he recalled for the New York Times, “stopped a ball, ground it into the dirt with his spikes and glared at me.”

Um . . .

Wills vividly remembers fielding grounders with his double-play partner, shortstop Toby Harrah. Sundberg was reviewing the plan of attack with Jon Matlack, the Texas starter. In the outfield, Bobby Bonds, Juan Beniquez and Al Oliver lazily shagged fly balls.

“So we’re all out there, doing our thing,” says Wills. “And after a while a trainer comes to the field. And he says something that’s so weird, you only hear it once in your life. I mean, so weird.”

What was it?

“He looks at us,” Willis recalls, “and he says, ‘Roger Moret is standing in front of his locker on one foot with a shower shoe in the opposite hand. And he’s been that way for 30 minutes.’”

“The shower shoe,” adds Sundberg. “That’s a big detail.”

As word spread from Ranger to Ranger, the entire roster seemed to make an ant line from the field to the clubhouse. And there, in the middle of the room stood Moret. His left leg was off the ground, bent at the knee. His left arm was extended into the air and his right hand held a white plastic shower shoe. His eyes were glassed over. His mouth was closed. He wore white underwear, but no shirt.

“You could see his face was sweaty, and his heart was beating really fast,” says Sundberg. “I think he might have been making some swirly motions with his left hand.” According to B.J. Mycoskie, the team doctor, Moret had not budged. “He definitely went into a catatonic state,” Mycoskie later told United Press International.

“It was scary,” said Billy Hunter, the Rangers manager. “He was like a statue.”

Wills, who spoke broken Spanish, tried reasoning with Moret. Nothing.

Others yelled at him. Nothing.

Clapped in his face. Nothing.

Laughed. Nothing.

Tapped his shoulders. Nothing.

A psychiatrist entered the clubhouse but offered nary a solution. The administrator of Arlington Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital followed. He, too, knew not what to do. Finally, an exasperated Mycoskie administered five back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back sedative injections into Moret’s arm.

Gradually, as his teammates returned to the field, the pitcher snapped from his state. He slowly, steadily slumped onto a chair, then laid flat on a table. By now 1 1/2 hours had passed.

“I mean, what did we just see?” says Sundberg, recalling his feelings. “What the heck just happened to Roger Moret?”

Behind the complete-game brilliance of starter Mark Fidrych, the Tigers beat the Rangers, 3-2. Not that Moret would ever know. Before the evening came to an end he was whisked off to the Arlington Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, where he would spend the next 2 ½ weeks being evaluated and treated.

When asked after the loss to Detroit whether he thought Moret might ever return, Hunter callously snarled. “I don’t think the rest of my players should have to stare at a statue in the middle of the clubhouse,” he said, “and wonder when he’s not going to be a statue anymore.”

Put different, it was the beginning of the end for Roger Moret.

He actually appeared in five more games for Texas but didn’t pitch well. (The tone-deaf Rangers insisted upon a welcome back press conference, and it proved disastrous. Wrote Mike Granberry of the Los Angeles Times: “(Moret) appeared frightened, watery-eyed and weary from sedation, thin and terribly vulnerable. He appeared to have only a remote perception of English, and his face bore the pain of confusion.”)

Two years later, following a stint in the Puerto Rican Winter League, he was invited to spring training with the Cleveland Indians but failed to stick.

“Some guys come and go and you never hear from them again,” says Wills. “Like Roger Moret.”

In 1987 the Los Angeles Times actually tracked down Moret, who was living in San Juan and earning $32 a month making wallets by hand. According to Luis Escabi, a psychiatrist, Moret was diagnosed with chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia. “One day I drove my car to the beach and threw my shoes in the water,” Moret told the paper. “I don’t know why. Another day I threw my furniture, my stereo and other things out the window of my house. I don’t know. Just crazy things like that.”

In 1985 he was arrested for selling marijuana, and sentenced to time in prison. Escabi insisted the blame wasn’t entirely Moret’s; that the schizophrenia, plus low intelligence, resulted in some seriously bizarre behavior.

Moret was last seen in 2016, when he returned to Boston as a 66-year-old senior citizen to sign autographs at a Holiday Inn.

The crowd was small, the memories of a long-lost pitcher fleeting.

But in Texas, the Ranger history books will always have April 12, 1978.

They will always have the shower shoe.

(Top photo: Ray Stubblebine/AP)