Posts tagged JimLeyritz at FanHouse

Jim Leyritz pleaded not guilty to his DUI manslaughter charge yesterday, but the judge clearly wasn't overly sympathetic. According to the New York Daily News, Leyritz was ordered not only to stay away from drugs and alcohol while waiting for his case to go to trial but also to blow into a machine to prove his sobriety three times a day.

The New York Post reported a new wrinkle to the sad story when they revealed that the victim, 30-year-old mother Freida Ann Veitch, was also under the influence of alcohol, claiming that an autopsy revealed she had a .08 blood alcohol level, which is the legal limit in Florida.

The Post doesn't cite anyone on the record making that claim, though, and the Daily News was unable to confirm the veracity of that report. But even if that's the case, it doesn't really change anything: a young mother lost her life, and an ex-jock permanently ruined his. The rest is just details.

Previously on FanHouse:
Jim Leyritz Was Well Over the Legal Limit
Jim Leyritz Charged with DUI Homicide

No news has been no news on the Jim Leyritz front for a while -- until tonight. Turns out a test of Leyritz's blood from the night he killed a woman when he was driving came back above the legal limit: .14. (The limit in Florida is .08.) What's even worse for Leyritz is that he was probably more intoxicated than his test says he was, as the test was given three hours after the collision, and his BAC had probably dwindled since the accident:

The former catcher who retired eight years ago balked at breath and blood tests for alcohol tests even after learning that 30-year-old Fredia Ann Veitch died in the Dec. 28 wreck.

The amount of alcohol in blood reaches its highest level about an hour after drinking.

A second blood test taken at 7:12 a.m., nearly four hours after the crash showed a .13 level.

So ... yeah. Given that math, Leyritz could well have been double the legal limit when he decided to get behind the wheel of a car. Not smart.

This is where we usually get all outraged and angry, and there's good reason for that, but I'll stick by my original position on this: It's incredibly sad, but not just for the family of the deceased. (Though that level of sadness is incomprehensible to me.) It's sad for Leyritz too, whose life -- though blood will still pump and lungs will still breathe -- is essentially over.

You've probably caught MTV's show about over the top Sweet 16 parties where parents try to buy their children's love and their neighbor's awe by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on birthday parties for their daughters. The show's a popular one, which is why there are a spate of similar shows popping up on other networks. One such show airs on WE and is called Party Mamas.

Neil Best of Newsday caught a recent episode of this triumph of American ingenuity and found that there was a guest whose been in the news recently. It seems that killing a mother while driving drunk with a suspended license isn't the only way Jim Leyritz tried to stay in the limelight. It's a chance to ponder the rare intersection of America's love for the excesses of money and alcohol in one fell swoop.

A woman named Cindy from somewhere on (yup) Long Island spends $30,000 on a baseball-themed birthday party for her 9-year-old son, $5,000 of which goes to Leyritz to make an appearance.

The episode was taped well before Leyritz's recent travails which still doesn't explain why a 9-year-old would be impressed by a baseball player who's only memorable moment came years before he was born.

(H/T Can't Stop The Bleeding)

Through his lawyer, Jim Leyritz has released his first public statement since getting drunk at his birthday party, driving home and killing Fredia Ann Veitch, a 30-year-old wife and mother of two. From the New York Daily News:

"Due to the tragic and unfortunate events of Dec. 28, 2007, Mr. Leyritz and his family wish to express their deepest sympathies and condolences" to the Veitch family, [Jeffrey] Ostrow said.

"Sympathies and condolences"? He can't do better than that? Who the hell doesn't offer their sympathies and condolences to the Veitch family? What he should be offering is what no one else in the world can: his apologies. Leyritz is telling the world that he feels bad, not that he feels sorry -- sorry for being either too cheap or too thoughtless to call a cab, sorry for driving on a license that was already suspended, sorry for having a history of being a drunk who gets thrown out of bars:

"I can't tell you how many times he was escorted out of the bar by the cops because that's how much of a drunk he is," said Ingrid Mahabir, a waitress at the Original Steakhouse and Sports Theater.

A bartender there, who recalled both herself and Veitch serving Leyritz drinks in the past, said, "He's a known drunk around here."
...
Mahabir said her bar is a hangout for off-duty cops, who sometimes escorted Leyritz out after he over-imbibed, and who told stories about him haughtily saying, "Don't you know who I am?" when they pulled him over for traffic violations.

Yes, we do know who you are. You're an irresponsible, immature, pathetic excuse of a man. You're a drunk, a former journeyman big-leaguer who thinks 15 minutes of fame 11 years ago in the 1996 World Series can get you some kind of permanent "get of jail free" card. Let's see what that's worth now. Have fun in prison, hero.

Previously on FanHouse:
Jim Leyritz Charged with DUI Homicide
Jim Leyritz is Thoughtless and Stupid; or, Poor Jim Leyritz
The Jim Leyritz Story Gets Even Sadder

It was already sad enough that former Yankee Jim Leyritz is responsible for killing a woman in a drunk driving accident. In situations such as these, it's easy to empathize with the family of the victim even if the victim's family is more an abstract concept than a group of people with names and homes and jobs. When they become real people, it makes things even sadder:

"I have a 5-year-old who cried himself to sleep last night," distraught dad Jordan Veitch, 29, said of his son, Julian. "He has a lot of questions."

"He asked me why Mommy wasn't going to come home; why Mommy was in the grass and who's going to take care of him," the unshaven and teary-eyed father said yesterday on the doorstep of his suburban Fort Lauderdale home. "She was a good mother and a great wife."

"I'm upset that I lost my wife and he's out of jail in nine hours," said Jordan Veitch, flanked by his lawyer and the father of his wife's older daughter. "I have to explain to my son why he doesn't have a mother."

OK, so that's pretty heartbreaking. Combine those quotes with the tragedy that is Leyritz's existence now -- with the unquantifiable guilt he must be feeling -- and you've got yourself (tangentially) baseball's saddest story of the year. Sorry, No Photos

Jim Leyritz could have been known for his season-changing home run in the 1996 World Series. As of approximately 3:30 this morning, he is instead known for allegedly getting drunk, deciding to hit the road in his SUV, and killing a woman.

Not long after I read that, I learned that Jim Beauchamp, the Braves' longtime ex-bench coach who watched Leyritz's home run from the dugout, passed away on Christmas Day. As you might know, I'm a longtime Braves fan, and I remember all those times he just stared, fascinated, at Leo Mazzone as he compulsively back and forth in his seat. I'd conservatively estimate that he dragged manager Bobby Cox away from about 25 ejections. Braves fans will miss him.

This Dugout, after the jump, focuses on the Friday these two men had -- one in Heaven, one in jail.

Former World Series hero Jim Leyritz is by no means a hero in real life this day, as he's in a world of trouble.

Former Major League ballplayer Jim Leyritz, a one-time World Series hero, is in Broward's Main Jail, charged with DUI homicide after a Friday morning crash in Fort Lauderdale.

Leyritz, whose 44th birthday was Thursday, was in a car accident near Southwest Seventh Avenue and Second Street -- the heart of Fort Lauderdale's Himmmarshee Street bar district.

The jail website indicated Leyritz was charged with two counts of drunken driving, including DUI that causes death to a human. He had not posted an $11,000 bond as of Friday afternoon, records show.

A call to Fort Lauderdale police was not immediately returned. WPLG-ABC 10 reported a passenger in the car Leyritz allegedly hit was ejected from the car and died at the scene. The former baseball pro refused a sobriety test, the station reported, citing police.

Past athletes who have been involved in vehicular homicide cases include former Oiler and current head coach Craig MacTavish and current Rams linebacker Leonard Little. MacTavish received a year in jail after pleading guilty in 1985, and Little did 90 days in jail after his case in 1998. So if those are any indication, and if Leyritz is indeed found or pleads guilty, Leyritz will probably receive a sentence in that range. The stigma of being any part responsible of the death of another human being will no doubt stay with Leyritz forever.
Sorry, No Photos

By making Joe Girardi their new manager the Yankees have put him in a delicate position. Girardi, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera were all key cogs in the late '90s Yankee machine and now the latter three, if Posada and Rivera return, must take their orders from a guy who used to dress next to them in the locker room. Another Yankee on those teams, Jim Leyritz, tells the New York Post he thinks that will make the new skipper's job more difficult.

"My only concern for Joe is how the players are going to look at him as far as treatment. Playing with a guy is a lot easier than having him as your manager. It's a lot different. How will they react to him?"

I don't really think it's that big a deal. In every other line of work in this country people get promoted ahead of others in the same job and become their boss. Some people can handle that new relationship and those that can't usually end up finding a new place to punch the clock. Why should it be such a big deal in baseball?

What's interesting is that Leyritz doesn't seem to disagree with me or even agree with himself.

Former Yankee and current MLB.com analyst Jim Leyritz has made his preference known for who he thinks is fit for the vacant Yankees job -- as well as who he thinks is not. From the New York Post:

"Donnie [Mattingly] is the only logical choice," Leyritz said. "He's a guy with the star power, and they've been grooming him for the job. I think Donnie is ready for it. I don't see any other choice."

Leyritz shot down Joe Girardi as a candidate, saying Girardi, who was a teammate of Leyritz's on the Yanks, is still connected to the veterans - Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte (presuming any of the last three return) - and it would be too hard for them to respect Girardi's managerial authority.

Girardi last played for the Yankees in 1999, and even if he remains close to some of the elder statemen on the team, those are hardly the type of players that any manager needs to spend much time worrying about. And besides, it's not like anyone on the Yankees were worried about this in 2005 when Girardi served as Torre's bench coach. The next year, in his first (and only) year as skipper of the Marlins, he exceeded everyone's expectations and won Manager of the Year honors.

Now, if you want to say that Don Mattingly is more qualified because he's a bigger star and has been Joe Torre's bench coach more recently, fine, but I won't buy any argument that suggests Girardi can't command the respect the position deserves.